It’s Round 3 of the match: Kirk Caldwell faces Peter Carlisle, his predecessor, as each seeks a return to Honolulu Hale.

Former Mayor Carlisle fell to Caldwell in the three-way race of 2012, which also included former Gov. Ben Cayetano, a vociferous foe of the rail project. Carlisle and Caldwell first squared off in 2010, when the former beat the latter in a special election to fill the mayor’s seat vacated by Mufi Hannemann for his gubernatorial bid.

In 2012, Caldwell and Carlisle both backed rail, and they’re unlikely to move off that basic position. But now that the feared pricetag has zoomed to $8.1 billion, it’s an even more politically sensitive issue. If the construction noise doesn’t drown it out, the sound of campaign spin will be heard. It’ll be mighty interesting to hear the variations this time around.

Ellison backs cancer center; too bad it’s not Hawaii’s

We should be so lucky.

Seeing “Oracle co-founder” and “$200M for cancer center” in a weekend headline raised a split-second of hope — after all, Oracle’s Larry Ellison has a strong Hawaii connection as 98 percent owner of Lanai, and the University of Hawaii Cancer Center is struggling mightily for funds.

But alas, no Ellison money for UH. The recipient of the billionaire’s largesse is the University of Southern California, which is creating a new cancer center to seek new ways of understanding the disease, moving away from the traditional approach of categorizing cancers by body part.