This week marks the first 100 days of the administration of Hawaii’s most surprising politician, Gov. David Ige.

It can be argued that Ige’s dark-horse campaign of 2014 was the most dramatic upset in Hawaii’s political history. Now this first page marker in his new administration shows this has been mostly a drama-free zone.

Last year, facing a glib and flashy Gov. Neil Abercrombie, Ige, the Pearl City Democrat, mounted a grass-roots campaign with as much sizzle as could be expected from a quiet and earnest electrical engineer.

It was enough. The difference between Ige and Abercrombie drove people to the veteran state legislator as they shunned the Abercrombie bombast.

Today Ige is still backing away from the oratory and instead, is mostly minding the details.

The Ige administration is akin to someone taking seriously the presidential campaign promise of Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot, but without the flash.

Perot twice ran for president as an independent with the pledge: "I’m going to be up there with a wrench in my hand under the hood of the car working night and day to turn all that around."

So far that is Ige. He may not be under the hood, but he is comfortable writing the code and reprogramming the system.

One of his big concerns is getting the troubled Hawaii Health Connector online. Ige reports that he is trying to bring the different groups together and add a potential new customer — public employees — to bolster the system.

"We are trying to make it stable and sustainable," Ige said in a 30-minute interview in his office last week.

The system needs to plug in data from the state Medicaid system, but, Ige said, the computer systems were about as compatible as Microsoft and Apple.

"If we can get the Medicaid eligibility system, which is in the state, and the Health Connector on the same IT platform so we can reduce the ongoing costs and add whatever systems that share the same functionality, it will reduce the ongoing costs," Ige said, proving he is still an engineer.

If the result is having the more-than-40,000 public employees shopping for health plans on the Health Connector, it would add stability and customers to a system that needs both.

Ige, the former Senate Ways and Means chairman, already knows how to say "no" to government plans and programs — but now, Gov. Ige’s rejection makes not just a budget cut, it makes state policy.

The Abercrombie administration, for instance, was eager to jump into "public-private partnerships" such as the $3 million the Omidyar Ohana Foundation, via the Hawaii Community Foundation, gave to the state to support a new state Office of Information Management.

"We are looking and being very clear on how we want to deal with external groups or nonprofits providing funds for the office. We are very clear there can be no strings attached," said Ige, who added that the Attorney General’s Office is drawing up specific guidelines.

And finally, Ige is moving away from the Abercrombie administration’s full support for the laptops in the classroom project, until it can be clarified and brought up on a school-by-school basis.

Ige called the $20 million request "top-down management."

Some schools are ready to use tablet computers, but others are not and have not had the needed training.

"It is about making resources available at the school level so they can implement programs that they believe have the best opportunity to improve student learning," Ige said.

By trying to make progress instead of headlines, Ige may be running counter to most political impulses, but then, there are many ways to be surprising.

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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.