With former Gov. Ben Cayetano ahead in the polls for mayor and the rail project he vowed to block in trouble with voters, the Pacific Resource Partnership turned to high-powered political consultants in 2012 who devised a calculated strategy to portray Cayetano as corrupt.

A trove of private emails, poll memos, advertising scripts and opposition research, obtained by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser from James Bickerton, an attorney for Cayetano, offers a peek inside PRP’s $3.6 million campaign to prevent Cayetano from being elected mayor.

As Ben Tulchin, PRP’s California-based pollster, wrote in a May 2012 email, "we need to start laying down foundation for ‘corruption’ attack." Given Cayetano’s favorable ratings, he wrote, "it will take a bit of time for voters to really accept that he’s corrupt."

The documents were released a week after the announcement that Cayetano and PRP had agreed to settle the former governor’s defamation lawsuit that alleged PRP had unfairly tarnished his reputation. PRP, a consortium of union carpenters and private contractors, took out half-page ads in the Star-Advertiser on Sunday and Thursday that included an apology and a pledge to donate $100,000 to the University of Hawaii medical school and $25,000 to the Hawaiian Humane Society in Cayetano’s name.

In candid emails, PRP’s consultants mapped out a deliberate advertising and media narrative to paint Cayetano as corrupt. The strategy was rooted in the fact that Cayetano’s campaign had taken more than $500,000 in illegal contributions in his close re-election campaign against Linda Lingle, a Republican, in 1998. But it also depended on linking Cayetano to the "pay to play" political culture involving state and city contracts at the time and implying that Cayetano had found a loophole to avoid paying the illegal money back, allegations that were never legally established.

Cayetano, who has said he was not aware of any illegal contributions until long after the money had been spent by his campaign, was never accused by the state Campaign Spending Commission of any wrongdoing.

"The issue is that he was informed by the commission that he had taken illegal contributions, and if he didn’t know who did?" Martin Hamburger, PRP’s Washington, D.C.-based media consultant, wrote in a May 2012 email to John White, PRP’s executive director. "These were big contributions. We can do a chart and show the names and amounts.

"We can go back to the clear timeline that he closed the account to exploit a loophole in the law to his advantage. Show he declared political bankruptcy. Then we go to pay to play. Donations from no-bid contract recipients.

"Basically, we put you on TV and get him denying it again, on TV. All not talking about rail, all reinforcing our corruption message. It just doesn’t do as much good in Civil Beat."

Tulchin, in a June 2012 email to White and others, recommended a swift and aggressive response to weaken the credibility of Bob Watada, former executive director of the Campaign Spending Commission, who returned to Hawaii to exonerate Cayetano.

"We need to stay on the front foot in this debate," he wrote. "It is the best hit we have vs. (Cayetano) so we cannot let them take it away or weaken it for us."

PRP, through a public relations firm, declined to comment on the documents. Tulchin and Hamburger could not be reached via email Thursday. Other PRP consultants during the 2012 mayoral election chose not to comment.

Bickerton provided the documents to the Star-Advertiser but did not disclose his source for the material.

"I hope that we won’t see these consultants being used in Hawaii again," Bickerton said of PRP’s mainland experts. "They bring a level of nastiness and falsity that could really change the climate here. And I think anybody who’s serious about their politics should work hard to make sure that these people don’t get hired by any campaign here."

Jeff Portnoy, an attorney for PRP, said Bickerton’s release of the documents could potentially be a violation of the settlement agreement.

He said he found the release "very disappointing and a potential breach of the terms of the agreement."

Along with the $3.6 million spent by PRP’s political action committee — or super PAC — against Cayetano, PRP also spent an undisclosed but significant amount of money in 2012 on I Mua Rail, a pro-rail campaign. In addition, the group conducted an intensive voter outreach effort on behalf of Kirk Caldwell, who would be elected mayor in the November runoff after finishing second to Cayetano in the August primary. Mayor Peter Carlisle, who finished third in the primary, supported Caldwell in the runoff.

While political analysts continue to disagree on PRP’s full impact on the mayoral election, the documents appear to validate the belief among many that PRP’s negative ads helped keep Cayetano from breaking 50 percent and winning the election outright in the primary.

PRP’s polling data, like the Hawaii Poll, had Cayetano leading Carlisle and Caldwell in the primary but under 50 percent.

The documents also show that some of PRP’s local consultants were aware that the negative ads were turning off some voters and had sought to tone down — but not back away from — the "corruption attack" on the former governor.

"Jim (McCoy) and I have gotten a lot of push back from people who read public blogsites, including reporters, saying the negative ads are turning them off," Barbara Tanabe, PRP’s local media consultant, said in a July 2012 email to Andy Winer, a top local Democratic strategist who served as a PRP consultant. "However, we think pay to play is the one issue that creates more doubt about the candidate."

Winer, who is now chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, had just shared with Tanabe and McCoy — Tanabe’s colleague — polling data and the script for a new radio ad that claimed Cayetano was still involved with "pay to play cronies" and could not be trusted by voters.

Winer wrote back to Tanabe and said the negative ads appeared to be working with undecided voters or voters whose support for the candidates was weak. "The people on blogsites and reporters fall into the category of high information voters, while we are after lower information voters who are just beginning to tune in," he wrote.

Winer said he believed the negative ads had halted Cayetano’s momentum. "Anyway, as long as we make it to the general, we are in a good position to move past Ben pretty quickly," he wrote. "This particular ad is designed to ensure that we keep undecideds from breaking in Cayetano’s direction."

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