If Mufi Hannemann isn’t humming “On the Road Again,” as he starts his fourth campaign since leaving City Hall, he should.

Asking for votes as a political underdog is never easy — but Hannemann, who stands 6 feet 7 inches, will actually be punching up as he campaigns again to become mayor of Honolulu.

Hannemann, 65, is running against former Democratic Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa, retired television executive Rick Blangiardi, City Councilwoman Kymberly Pine and insurance executive Keith Amemiya, among others.

So far his political career could be seen as a caution against boundless political ambition.

Hannemann served two terms on the City Council and was Council chairman when he resigned in 2000 to run against Mayor Jeremy Harris for the top city job.

Hannemann lost, with Harris actually beating the Pearl City Democrat so decisively in the primary that no general election runoff was needed.

Hannemann came back, running for mayor again in 2004, beating the late Councilman Duke Bainum by just 1,300 votes in the general election.

Hannemann was elected for two terms as mayor, but again the lure of a political promotion was too much to resist, and in 2010 he resigned to run for governor against Neil Abercrombie, who had resigned as a 10-term U.S. congressman to run for governor.

Both Hannemann and Abercrombie called the other a “quitter” for leaving their elected posts. Hannemann said Hawaii was “left in the lurch” because of Abercrombie’s departure, and Abercrombie came back saying Hannemann was leaving Honolulu when the city faced a multitude of financial issues.

The 2010 Democratic primary election wasn’t even close: Abercrombie beat Hannemann 59% to 37%. The loss set off a string of biennial defeats for Hanne- mann stretching from 2010, to 2012 and then 2014.

After losing to Abercrombie, Hannemann in 2012 ran against City Councilwoman Tulsi Gabbard for Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District seat. Hannemann lost by 20 percentage points.

Then in 2014, Hannemann ran for governor as an independent. His political reasoning was that he was unable to crack the Democratic primary, but would be more popular in a general election with Democrats, independents and Republicans all able to vote for him. That didn’t work and he lost, getting less than 12% of the vote against David Ige, who was then a state senator.

Hannemann now says that the three he lost to — Gabbard, Abercrombie and Ige — have all suffered their own changes in public perception.

“I thought at that time that I had something more to offer on the table. The people obviously felt different. So I say to you: Do you still feel the same way about those folks that I lost to that you did then, today? That’s my answer. Think about who I lost to,” he said in an interview on KITV News last week.

Hannemann, president and CEO of the Hawaii Lodging and Tourism Association, is now stressing his experience in business as providing the needed leadership to bring Oahu out of the current recession and unemployment crisis. Along the way, Hannemann — who could be considered the father of Honolulu’s rail project because he steered the tax increase funding needed for the project through the state Legislature and then strongly advocated for it as mayor — will face questions about rail’s future as it is bogged down with questions of cost overruns and failing to meet expected deadlines.

For Hannemann, however, it will all be another day “back on the road again.”

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.