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Are you personable, enthusiastic and eager to earn up to $400 a week talking to fellow residents? If so, I Mua Rail wants you.
The multimedia campaign designed to beef up support for the city’s $5.26 billion rail project has been making that pitch in emails designed to solicit canvassers to walk door to door in support of rail.
Pacific Resource Partnership, which is an alliance of the Hawaii Regional Council of Carpenters (formerly the Hawaii Carpenters Union) and the state’s largest contractors, began fielding unemployed carpenters last year to canvass neighborhoods in support of the rail project.
Now I Mua Rail, a pro-rail campaign launched by PRP, is casting the net wider to recruit more manpower. Online ads sponsored by I Mua Rail offer up to 35 hours of work a week for people willing to walk Oahu neighborhoods delivering literature and making the case for rail in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 6 general election.
The fate of the rail project may hinge on the election now that former Gov. Ben Cayetano is running for mayor. Cayetano has vowed to stop the rail project if he is elected, while former city Managing Director Kirk Caldwell plans to complete the project if he is elected mayor.
A spokeswoman for PRP declined to discuss the ad or provide details on how much is budgeted for the canvassing effort.
Longtime rail opponent Cliff Slater said he doesn’t remember rail advocates hiring supporters to canvass neighborhoods before this year, but said rail supporters used this tactic aggressively in the months before the August primary election.
"When this first started, we got calls from all over the place, people knocking on doors," Slater said. "I mean, it would have taken an army to get the number of phone calls that we were getting." Slater said he expects the pro-rail canvassing will influence some voters, but said rail opponents don’t have enough money to match the effort.