Voters rejected the outspoken and sometimes controversial City Councilman Tom Berg on Tuesday night, and instead chose state Rep. Kymberly Marcos Pine by a wide margin as the new Council member representing the Leeward Coast, Kapolei and parts of Ewa.
In urban Honolulu, political veteran and state Sen. Carol Fukunaga also won election to the Council, besting a crowded field of 16 candidates in a winner-take-all race to replace Tulsi Gabbard in a midterm special election.
Gabbard won the Democratic primary in her bid for Congress, and had resigned from her District 6 Council seat in August. That Council district includes Nuuanu, downtown, Moanalua and a portion of Aiea, and Fukunaga will serve out the remaining two years of Gabbard’s four-year term.
Meanwhile, Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi easily dominated political newcomer Jim Hayes in the race to retain her Council seat, which covers Kaimuki, Manoa and Makiki.
In the Leeward race, Berg has been a sharp critic of the city’s $5.26 billion rail project, voting against funding for the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation and describing the entire rail project as a “con job.”
Pine, a Republican who was first elected to the state House in 2004, supports the rail project. She cited her record of working cooperatively with her colleagues in the state Legislature to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in improvements to schools, roads and other facilities for Leeward areas.
Pine defeated Berg by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. Pine credited “a lot of hard work by a lot of good people” for her victory.
“They just wanted change. They wanted a leader who can work hard for them to get results,” she said. Pine said her supporters in the nonpartisan election made up a coalition of Democrats and Republicans. “It blended, and our campaign united everyone on the Leeward Coast,” she said.
Berg, 48, is a former state legislative aide and former tea party activist who had a thin base of support from the start. He came into office in the 2010 special election to fill the final two years of the term of ToddâApo, who resigned to take a job with Disney’s Aulani Resort. That 2010 election drew 14 candidates, and Berg won with 2,326 votes, or 18.5 percent of the 12,559 votes cast in the 2010 race.
It was clear Tuesday night that Berg has expanded his political base during the past two years, but it was not enough to compete with Pine.
“I’ll tell you what it does mean,” Berg said of the election returns. “I’m beholden to no one, and Rep. Pine has raised over $100,000 to my zero.
“I’ve had no fundraisers. Why? Because it’s people like this that are seeking justice,” he said, gesturing to his supporters. “There’s no money in my camp. It’s about justice.”
BERG was perceived by some to be vulnerable this year because of his noisy style of advocacy.
Police were called to two public meetings in the past year when participants felt discussions involving Berg were becoming too heated.
Another controversy during Berg’s first two years in office was a videotaped argument between him and Secret Service agents outside a Waikiki hotel last year.
In the District 6 Council race, Fukunaga entered the contest after losing her state Senate seat in the August primary election.
Fukunaga, 64, served for 20 years in the state Senate representing Makiki, Ala Moana and Punchbowl but lost a Democratic primary election contest this year to Sen. Brian Taniguchi after reapportionment placed them both in the same district.
Fukunaga represented portions of Council District 6 as a state senator, and after the primary she moved into District 6 to become eligible to run for Gabbard’s vacant seat. Fukunaga’s closest competitor was Sam Aiona. Aiona is a former chairman of the Hawaii Republican Party and served in the state House from 1996 to 1998.
Aiona billed himself as the most prominent rail opponent among the 16 Council candidates. Fukunaga supports rail.
Trailing in third place in that race was Jon Yoshimura, 53, who held what was the District 6 seat from 1995 to 2002 and served part of that time as Council chairman.
In the District 5 race to represent Kaimuki, Manoa and Makiki, former state Sen. Kobayashi held a commanding 4-to-1 lead over Manoa resident Hayes.
Kobayashi has been a persistent critic of the rail project at Council hearings. She has questioned the cost of the project, and warned that rail would put the city deeply into debt.
Hayes is an employee of Parsons Brinckerhoff, which is a major contractor working on the rail project, and was elected twice to the Sierra Club Oahu Group executive committee.
