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The 2020 mayoral election is one of our most consequential ever as voters choose a leader to lift our city out of a deadly pandemic, sinking economy and budget-busting rail disaster.
The need for high-minded and
detailed debate of these and other issues is especially great because Keith Amemiya and Rick Blangiardi are both first-time candidates little known to many voters.
Their campaign videos since the primary election offer little promise that we’ll get the elevated campaign we need.
Blangiardi, a former TV executive, is selling hope, as in, “I believe in hope. Hope is what inspires all of us, but I don’t believe in false hope.”
That’s why, he said, “I’m not somebody to start spewing a lot of campaign rhetoric and … making promises that you know aren’t going to get kept because there’s no guarantee on that at all.”
So exactly what kind of hope are we talking here?
“Real hope, done in measurable ways, where people start to feel good and build toward confidence.”
Tells you all you need to know about how we’re going to fix the economy, doesn’t it?
Amemiya’s latest TV spot pitches local values, Hawaii political code for “Don’t vote for the rich haole” — a derivative of former Mayor Mufi Hannemann’s more blunt “I look like you, you look like me.”
“My opponent and I, we just have different values,”
Amemiya starts. “A media mogul with no plans saying he’ll just hire the right people and that running government is easy — we’ve seen that before.”
He then flashes to a picture of Donald Trump — whom Blangiardi doesn’t support and strongly disagrees with on racial equality, climate change and gay rights — before making a final reverential reference to “the values that make us special.”
The only Trumpian thing here is the playbook of guilt by false association.
The shots at Blangiardi’s wealth and
executive experience are curious given that Amemiya isn’t exactly Joe Working Stiff.
A lawyer with elite family ties, he held highly paid executive jobs with Hawaii high school sports and the University of Hawaii before the patronage of wealthy downtown tycoons landed him a high executive position with a large insurance company, putting him well on the road to moguldom himself.
Before voters get swept away by the babble about hope and values, they should consider this: The administrations of Gov. David Ige and Mayor Kirk Caldwell, as well the Hawaii Legislature and the Honolulu City Council, all are filled with politicians who campaigned on hope and local values.
How has that worked out for us in terms of competent management of the coronavirus pandemic, our dead economy and Honolulu rail?
If we don’t demand better than the same old vacuous campaigning, we can only expect more of the same old ineffectual government.
Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.
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