One of the many bad things that can happen to politicians who fall victim to the bullying and sleazy smear attacks that pass for political dialogue of the Hawaii Carpenters is that they lose their voice.
Losing is always the worst thing that can happen in a campaign battle, but the chance of holding office is not the only thing taken from a candidate. Hawaii politicians should consider how their careers are threatened by the Carpenters’ election- year slams.
In jeopardy when organized political pressure groups go for the jugular is a candidate’s power of political speech. We are all hurt because if one side is shut out of the debate we are all victims of censorship.
In the last campaign, state Rep. Sylvia Luke was attacked by the political ads sponsored by the Carpenters group.
Despite the Carpenters’ dirty politics, Luke won her primary campaign and goes on to team up with current Lt. Gov. Josh Green in a campaign for governor and lieutenant governor.
“The ad uses a mishmash of disconnected facts to impugn my integrity and confuse voters,” Luke said during the primary election attacks. “I have no quarrel with a union supporting a candidate. But these ugly tactics do our electorate a disservice.”
Not mentioned at the time, but still important, was the fact that just putting Luke’s campaign on the defense robs the veteran Democratic lawmaker of the ability to explain her own campaign.
“In the last two weeks of the campaign, we had to address the negative campaigning,” she said. “We had to adjust and pivot; you are right, we had to react.
“The Carpenters spent over $4 million in the lieutenant governor’s campaign. We could have used the time on community outreach and highlighting our platform; negative campaigning does not (just) do an injustice to election integrity but also community relationships and input,” Luke said in an interview last week.
As she explained it, money spent by the Carpenters did no good — Luke now goes on with a strong Democratic campaign in the November general election.
“The public reacted and I hope it was a teachable moment for the Carpenters,” Luke said.
A spokeswoman for the Carpenters’ campaign defended the attack ads by saying in a blanket statement: “We are part of the middle- class and the foundation of Hawaii’s economy. While our ad is bold and hard hitting, it is factual and accurate.”
The words and sentences may have all been correct, but the assembled statements implying that Luke was linked to a series of ongoing political scandals was a smear job.
You get that in politics: It’s a blood sport, and if there are winners, there are also losers.
Hawaii lieutenant governors do not go quietly into political obscurity; they live on and almost always battle again.
The fight with Sylvia Luke may be one the Carpenters wish they had not started.
