Pacific Resource Partnership, a pro-rail alliance of carpenters and contractors that is spending millions to falsely malign the honesty of anti-rail mayoral candidate Ben Cayetano, has a new ad repeating bogus claims that Cayetano ran a "pay to play" scheme when he was governor.
The hypocrisy is that the city’s $5.26 billion rail project is becoming the mother of all pay-to-play magnets — and PRP is at the forefront of making it so.
PRP’s accusations involve $500,000 in illegal donations Cayetano unknowingly received in his 1998 re-election campaign for governor.
The state Campaign Spending Commission ruled the illegality was on the part of the donors and that Cayetano did nothing wrong.
Bob Watada, the commission’s former chief who ran the investigation of pay to play, said Cayetano advanced campaign finance reform as governor and is one of the most honest people he knows.
PRP Executive Director John White conveniently doesn’t mention that his former boss, Mazie Hirono, also received the same kind of illegal donations he attacks Cayetano for.
Selective use of data to weave a web of innuendo that falsely trashes the integrity of an honest man is sleazy and malicious politics.
It’s especially so given the pay to play inherent in PRP’s attempt to buy the election by spending more than $1 million against Cayetano in the primary and an expected like amount or more in the general.
Rail is about more than building a commuter train from Kapolei to Honolulu; it’s also about transferring $5.26 billion from taxpayers’ pockets into the pockets of unions, contractors, landowners, developers and banks.
These interests like heavy rail better than less expensive bus-based transit alternatives because rail spreads around far more money.
And they’re willing to pay plenty to get in on the action. Rail-related donations helped fuel Mufi Hannemann’s campaigns for mayor and governor and the two campaigns of his managing director, Kirk Caldwell, to succeed him as mayor.
Rail critics note that the much-ballyhooed $1.55 billion federal check for rail — if it materializes — will effectively be endorsed by the city and sent off to the Italian company Ansaldo, which pulled out the political stops to win the lucrative contract to build rail cars for the system.
PRP, which is backing Caldwell against Cayetano, refuses to disclose the donors financing its lavish spending on TV ads and canvassing, hiding behind a controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing political action committees to spend unlimited amounts from secret contributors.
While the voting public will never know who’s paying for PRP’s extravagant efforts on Caldwell’s behalf, you can bet the Caldwell camp will know who the donors are and will be expected to take care of the benefactors if he’s elected.
Did somebody say pay to play?
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Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com or blog.volcanicash.net.
