The Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission’s report before the general election revealed the staggering extent — perhaps unprecedented in the nation — to which a single interest group has attempted to control a local election.
Of about $6 million spent through Oct. 22 in the Honolulu mayor’s race between Kirk Caldwell and Ben Cayetano, $3.5 million, or nearly 60 percent, was associated with the Carpenters Union, which led the opposition to Cayetano in an attempt to save the $5.26 billion Oahu rail project.
Pacific Resource Partnership, an alliance of the carpenters and unionized contractors, reported that its political action committee spent $2.8 million against Cayetano, while the Hawaii Regional Council of Carpenters contributed $700,000 to another anti-Cayetano PAC, Workers for a Better Hawaii.
These numbers, which eclipse the combined amount spent by the candidates themselves and the relatively paltry $180,000 spent by two pro-Cayetano PACs, will grow when spending for the final two weeks of the campaign is reported.
It raises fundamental questions about whether our democracy can still truly be called that when a union of some 6,000 members and its corporate partners can so profoundly drown out other voices with a heavy-handed barrage of TV and radio ads, paid canvassers, mailers, push polls and robo-calls.
PRP’s extreme spending was made possible by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allowed labor unions and corporations to spend virtually unlimited amounts to sway an election without fully revealing the source of their funding.
The court gave organizations the same free-speech rights as individuals, effectively providing those with money free rein to shout down those without money — often with gross misinformation.
Few organizations in Hawaii politics can match PRP’s financial resources, and the scary thing is that the group could have afforded to spend many times more than it did.
Pacific Resource Partnership is a trade name for the carpenters’ Market Recovery Program Fund, which receives funding from about 200 contractors that have agreements with the union; for every hour a carpenter works, the employer pays 78 cents to PRP.
In a 2010 report to the IRS, the tax-exempt PRP reported taking in $3 million from employer contributions that year, bringing its net assets to $17.2 million; the money spent in the mayor’s race barely made a dent in the reserve.
PRP, whose sole purpose is increasing construction work, is governed by a 14-member board, with 12 seats divided between carpenters and contractors and the other seats held by executives of the General Contractors Association and Hawaii Employers Council.
The building industry has every right to a voice, but should any single interest group in an election have a right to let its money shout so loudly that other voices can’t be heard?
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Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com or blog.volcanicash.net.
