A.A. "Bud" Smyser, the longtime Star-Bulletin editor and columnist. would advise reporters going into the field on election night: "Write about the winners, not the losers."
That is still good advice, but this year something should be said about the careers of Democrats Ed Case and Mufi Hannemann.
Both answered the bell this year after losing two years ago and not thinking enough about why they lost.
Sadly, both men are talented, hard-working and smart. Both would be good for Hawaii, but, after their losses, it is doubtful either can run again or should.
Both Case and Hannemann’s campaigns failed not because of opponents spending more money or by their opponent being the most popular girl in the class.
Rep. Mazie Hirono beat Case by 16.5 percentage points, or 39,181 votes. That is a big win for the usually low-key Democrat who kept much of her campaign cash in reserve.
Hannemann’s 20.4 percentage-point or 23,700-vote defeat was Hannemann’s second blowout drubbing in two years. He lost by a similar percentage-point margin to Gov. Neil Abercrombie in the 2010 Democratic gubernatorial primary.
Again, Hannemann didn’t lose because he was outspent, or because Councilwoman Tulsi Gabbard was so overwhelmingly popular, because across the state six months ago, Gabbard was known by precisely nobody.
Hannemann and Case lost because after losing in the past, they didn’t face up to the fact that they lost because people didn’t like them.
As simplistic and obvious as that sounds, it may be the most difficult thing for politicians to accept. The failures of Hannemann and Case come in two parts.
First, Hannemann lost because people didn’t like the way he ran City Hall and he rammed through a not-much-liked heavy-rail plan and tax increase. Case lost because he tried to take out a venerated and much-loved political icon, Sen. Daniel K. Akaka.
Second, neither apologized and asked for help in moving on.
Right after Case said he would run against Akaka, national conventional wisdom called it a mistake, because going against a sitting U.S. senator in your own party’s primary was foolhardy. Case then appeared to be building some sort of an argument that Akaka was old, that Hawaii needed to rebuild seniority and he was just the guy to do it. At the end of the campaign, it was gatecrasher Case against the beloved uncle whom everyone hopes will sing at your Christmas party.
For Hannemann, his mistake was compounded by going through this dance of the seven veils about whether or not he would leave City Hall and run for governor. Apparently he thought the public bought the goofy logic that the people demanded he quit his job to go run for governor. Hannemann was unable to remember that he had already lost races to Abercrombie, Pat Saiki, Patsy Mink and Jeremy Harris. So if there was a gubernatorial groundswell, it wasn’t tickling his mayoral feet.
Before he was president, Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, a job he won, lost and then won back. After losing, Clinton biographers write that he obsessively spent a week calling up all his supporters apologizing and asking what they thought he did wrong and how he could fix it.
If he blamed his supporters, complained that everyone else ran a negative campaign, that he was outspent or that the machine was out to get him, it is not noted.
The public waited to hear both Case and Hannemann say, "I made big mistakes, pride got the best of me and I apologize." Failing to hear that, the public moved on without them.
Whether the public would believe them now if they said "sorry" is probably too much to ask of our aloha spirit.
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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com
