When I checked the S-B early this a.m., I quickly noted this interesting item:
“» TheBuzz: HSF rebrands itself”
Wow! Rebranding the Superferry already? Not so. It appears this was a typo, as Erika Engle’s TheBuzz column was actually about rebranding by the Hawaii Advertising Federation, HAF.
Monday was a busy day for candidates, with quite a few filing their nomination papers ahead of today’s last minute crush. The State Office of Elections already updated its candidate list to reflect the day’s activity.
Sen. Ron Menor got his papers in. Three more candidates filed in the Big Island’s 1st Representative District, where Rep. Dwight Takamine’s Senate run left an open seat. Gene Ward won’t get a free ride this year after retired foreign service officer Amy Monk filed to run against him as a Democrat. That should make for an interesting race. Rep. Jon Riki Karamatsu picked up both a primary opponent and a Republican opponent.
I wonder whether there will be any last minute surprises before today’s 4:30 deadline?
If you run into this week’s Pacific Business News, don’t forget to check Cathy Cruz-George’s story on attorney John Komeiji’s jump to Hawaiian Telcom, which she agrees is “unusual”. The story outlines many of the issues raised here last week, and this blog is mentioned at the tail end.
Komeiji’s move fueled whispers that the interconnections between Komeiji’s firm, Hawaiian Telcom and Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. were pointing to some sort of merger or linkage. Jeffrey Watanabe, of counsel to Watanabe, Ing & Komeiji, is non-executive chairman of the board of HEI, and until recently Yeaman was a top executive of the utility company.
The talk broke beyond Bishop Street when they were reported on a blog run by former newspaper reporter Ian Lind.
“The first time I heard about it was when I read Ian Lind’s blog,” Komeiji said. “I read it and laughed.”
Unfortunately, the story failed to break through the “aw, shucks, it just sounded like a challenging job” narrative, so we’ll have to wait some more for the “real” story.
Check out the long list of comments on this blog, Patterico.com, which invited readers to interpret Honolulu’s Charter provisions for placing initiative questions on the ballot. The identity of the city and the political context were not disclosed in order to avoid coloring the responses. Very interesting. Says one reader: “Looks like Gertrude Stein is back from the dead.”
On the rail issue, one person I spoke with yesterday said she came out against rail after Mayor Mufi responded flippantly to a serious question about the impact of energy costs on the rail’s long term operating budget. Hawaii’s rail system would be electrically powered, and Hawaii has perhaps the highest electricity costs of any city with a rail system, meaning that energy costs to run the system will exceed those in any other part of the country. In her telling, the mayor failed to deal with the issue. It seems like a good point, another reason that the economics may not work out as favorably here as they have in other communities.
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I got tricked into checking that SB article too. It does seem like their marketing campaign has changed under Fargo, and their web page was redesigned to look like an airline reservation page. Brad
After reading through the 70 some odd comments on the Charter wording and the rail petition the consensus at the blog seems to be evenly split between stringing up the county clerk or the person who wrote the provisions.
But most see it as having been written to avoid the added cost of holding a special election when a regular election is already conveniently scheduled, not to impede getting an initiative on the ballot
Interesting posts though because they are “blind” as to the specifics but free of the emotional biases of our discussions here in the islands. Since the author finally reveled some details I added that the call for the special election isn’t in the text but in the preamble. They will probably drive those who scientifically analyzed the provision and wanted to know more specifics up a wall since it was not listed as one of the variables by any of the posters.