Debate underscores rift between Ige, ex-lieutenant governor

U.S. Rep. Colleen Hana­busa sharply criticized Gov. David Ige during a televised forum Monday for freezing out former Lt. Gov. Shan Tsutsui from Ige’s administration, and also implied Ige may be lying about whether Tsutsui could have assumed more responsibility during the three years he served under him.

However, Tsutsui essentially agreed in an interview Tuesday with Ige’s description of the opportunities Tsutsui had to participate in the administration. Tsutsui resigned as lieutenant governor earlier this year, and is now supporting Hanabusa.

Tsutsui has publicly expressed unhappiness with his limited role in the Ige administration, including in an account in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in 2015 where he contrasted his close working relationship with former Gov. Neil Abercrombie with his reduced role with Ige. Abercrombie was unseated by Ige in the Democratic primary in 2014.

Hanabusa prompted the candidates’ exchange about Tsutsui’s role by telling Ige during the forum: “Our friend Shan Tsutsui, who by the way is in the audience today, had asked you time and time again for different work that he could do to help in your administration, and you basically didn’t give him work to do, so in frustration Shan resigned, and I think we’ve lost a great talent the government had because of it.”

“My question is, Governor Ige, why? Why wouldn’t you give Shan the work to do?” she asked.

Ige replied that Tsutsui was included in his Cabinet and was invited to every Cabinet meeting, and “do you really want to know how many meetings he came to? He came to zero meetings. He never thought it was important, I’m not sure.”

Ige said he spoke to Tsu­tsui on several occasions, and “every single project that he asked to work on I approved, and you know, if he would come to the Cabinet meeting, he would see all the different things that we were working on. We were working on homelessness; I asked him if he wanted to get involved in homelessness; he was not interested.”

Hanabusa replied, “Well, I think we’ll find out the truth somewhere, because there have been articles written about this specific issue, and the bottom line though, governor, is he is not a Cabinet member. A lieutenant governor is not a Cabinet member. A lieutenant governor is an elected official by the people of the state of Hawaii.”

She continued, “I understand what your position is, but I guess we’ll all find out, because I’m pretty sure someone’s going to interview Shan Tsutsui, who happens to be here this evening, to hear you say what you just said, and we’ll get to the truth.”

In an interview Tuesday, Tsutsui said Ige was being “a little misleading” when he told the forum audience that Tsutsui had a standing invitation to attend Ige administration Cabinet meetings.

Tsutsui said he normally sent his chief of staff or deputy chief of staff to Ige’s weekly Cabinet meetings of department directors. Tsu­tsui didn’t attend those meetings even when Abercrombie was governor, and said, “I don’t think that that was ever an expectation. (Ige’s) never come up to me and said, ‘Hey, Shan, I think you should be at those meetings.’”

Tsutsui said he and Abercrombie “had our own standing Cabinet meetings — the governor, myself, his chief of staff, my chief of staff — we did that at least once a week.”

In describing his relationship with Ige, Tsutsui said that “he and I have had attempts to create our own Cabinet meetings, and they haven’t, unfortunately, been as consistent as they were under Governor Neil. It would kind of be hit and miss.”

When asked about Ige’s assertion that he always approved Tsutsui’s requests to work on specific issues or projects, Tsutsui replied, “I think, unfortunately, it worked mostly one way, so I had to keep going to him.”

“The role was really different, I guess, with Ige and myself versus Abercrombie and myself in the sense that Abercrombie really made me feel a part of the entire administration from top down,” Tsutsui said.

For example, Abercrombie sought out Tsutsui for assistance in coping with issues such as the shutdown of the federal government, and “I never, ever had those types of high-level discussions with the Ige administration,” Tsutsui said. “I attribute that to a different style of leadership.”

Lieutenant governors in Hawaii have publicly disagreed with governors on many occasions, and some did much more than quarrel. Lt. Gov. Tom Gill unsuccessfully challenged Gov. John Burns in the Democratic primary in 1970, and Lt. Gov. Jean King ran against Gov. George Ariyoshi in 1982.

Tsutsui said Ige once told him that some members of Ige’s campaign team, including Ariyoshi, were worried that Tsutsui might run against him in 2018. Tsutsui said he believes the political system should be changed to allow Hawaii candidates for governor to select their own running mates.