Honolulu rail CEO Lori Kahikina gets mixed marks on running a railroad, but she’s an ace when it comes to boardroom politics.

In her 3-1/2 years atop the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, Kahikina opened the first leg between Kapolei and Honolulu Stadium, reached a recovery plan with the Federal Transit Administration, solved construction and routing problems left by predecessors and secured a contract to build the final leg to South Street.

Her sometimes abrupt and abrasive style, however, contributed to turnover among key HART employees and tensions with the board of directors led by former U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, who criticized Kahikina for poor communication.

The latter were key themes of a tepid performance evaluation, and it appeared Hanabusa — who already had the scalp of one CEO, Dan Grabauskas, from a previous term as HART chair — planned to engineer Kahikina’s ouster as her contract expired.

That’s where the politics between the two got interesting.

Hanabusa is one of Hawaii’s most gifted politicians, having risen through the state Senate to become its first woman president and won election to Congress twice.

Kahikina is basically a bureaucrat, though one akamai enough to land a position in Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s Cabinet and the lucrative HART job at $275,000 a year, though lacking transit experience.

But Hanabusa picked the wrong time to move on Kahikina and underestimated the political skills she’d bring to the fight.

HART had just completed the recovery plan with FTA and was awaiting critical bids for the final segment through the city center.

FTA and the public were looking for stability and it was the worst time to reignite turmoil that’s endlessly plagued HART.

If the board had issues with Kahikina, it could have minimized the drama by giving her a one-year extension to be reevaluated after the city center was settled.

Kahikina, who was seeking a three-year contract, wouldn’t have liked it, but it would have been a reasonable proposition.

Instead, Hanabusa sharply dressed down the CEO at a board meeting and the fight was on.

Kahikina said she didn’t know if she could work with Hanabusa and warned the project could collapse if contractors, bidders and key employees didn’t know who would be in charge.

She rallied HART employees behind her and appealed to Mayor Rick Blangiardi, who couldn’t afford to see the calm he’d achieved at HART return to chaos and pressed the board to extend her contract.

She got the three-year deal, with a 22% pay raise to $336,000, and options for further extensions that could carry her through the planned completion of the rail line in 2031.

Hanabusa announced she’d step down as board chair at some future point, although it’s unclear what that means.

Kahikina’s new contract strengthens her hand vs. the board, but it doesn’t guarantee stability at HART. The city center bid came in at $1.66 billion, $300 million over budget, and the rail agency can afford it only if it makes cuts elsewhere.

The contractor, Tutor Perini Corp., is known to be demanding on costly change orders, Kahikina says. We’ll see if she’s as good fighting for taxpayers to minimize those as she is fighting for herself.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.