A looming three-way race for Honolulu mayor poses a dilemma for voters, who could be forced to choose between allegiance to political party or their position on the biggest public works project in the city’s history.
Former acting Mayor Kirk Caldwell is expected to formally announce today his bid for mayor, challenging incumbent Peter Carlisle. Caldwell, a former state representative and city managing director, has been raising money for a potential mayoral bid but has not officially declared his candidacy.
Caldwell did not immediately return messages seeking comment Wednesday.
Meanwhile, former Gov. Ben Cayetano also has been mulling a potential mayoral run and said Wednesday he is not ready to announce whether he will run, but offered an upbeat assessment of his prospects.
"I’m still looking and talking to people to see what the landscape looks like, and it looks pretty good, frankly," Cayetano said.
Carlisle won a special election in 2010 to fill the final two years of the term vacated by Mufi Hannemann, who resigned to run for governor. Carlisle won with a 39 percent plurality in a four-man race, despite being outspent more than 2 to 1 by Caldwell, who finished second with 34 percent.
Because it is a regular election, as opposed to a special election, if one candidate secures 50 percent plus one vote in the Aug. 11 primary, he will be declared the outright winner. Otherwise, the top two vote-getters will advance to a runoff in the Nov. 6 general election.
Messages left with Carlisle campaign officials were not immediately returned.
Neal Milner, University of Hawaii political science professor emeritus, said a three-way Carlisle-Caldwell-Cayetano race would confound some of the usual political calculations.
"They split the votes in funny sorts of ways," Milner said.
Although the mayor’s race is officially a nonpartisan contest, voters generally know the candidates’ party affiliations, and party membership still sways many voters.
Caldwell, 59, is a one-time Democratic House majority leader and former legislative aide to U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, while Cayetano, 72, is a former two-term Democratic governor who served until 2002.
Carlisle, 59, the former city prosecutor long associated with the GOP, declared that he was not a Republican before running for mayor in 2010.
A three-way race would leave the Republican neighborhoods in East Oahu and Windward Oahu without an official Republican candidate to support, Milner said, adding that staunch GOP voters on Oahu would have to choose a candidate based on something other than party.
Rail might play an important part in that calculation.
The rail project tends to be less popular in East Oahu and Windward Oahu than it is elsewhere in Honolulu, and voters in those areas could gravitate toward an anti-rail candidate such as Cayetano, who is among the named plaintiffs in a lawsuit aimed at stopping the rail project.
The support of the construction trades and public worker unions could also be important, but it isn’t entirely clear where that support would land in a three-way race.
A Cayetano candidacy might get a cold reception from the unions because Cayetano clashed repeatedly with the public worker unions during his years as governor, Milner said, and because Cayetano is a determined opponent of the $5.27 billion Honolulu rail project.
The rail project has been embraced by the carpenters and other construction unions because they see it as a job creator and a source of relief from the construction industry’s long slump.
Both Carlisle and Caldwell support rail, so it isn’t clear which of them would appeal most to pro-rail voters. It is possible they would divide rail supporters, including union members, between them.
But Milner said a three-way race would be more than just another referendum on rail because "Cayetano is not simply an anti-rail candidate. … Ben brings a lot more to the table than that."
The race may end up being largely about leadership skills, management abilities and the accomplishments of the candidates, Milner said.
Milner said it appears that Carlisle as the incumbent and Cayetano as a well-known former governor would appear to have an advantage heading into a three-way campaign, but said that could change.
Caldwell received numerous union endorsements in 2010 while raising and spending more than $1.2 million. According to his most recent campaign spending report, filed in August, Caldwell still carried a campaign debt of about $178,000.
