Mufi Hannemann’s campaign calls this campaign mailer “Compare and Decide”.
It’s what you might expect from a campaign mailer late in a potentially tight race. That is, designed to mislead the reader and distort the records of both candidates, one positively and the other negatively. Of course, that’s what a lot of campaigning is all about.
Mufi looks pretty impressive, at least in his own telling, but the comparisons, although full of distortions, helped me to understand the broad differences .
It boils down to this.
Mufi’s whole career has been as the candidate of the corporate-political elite. He’s been encouraged to run, supported in his campaigns, and “taken care of” with corporate or political appointments when he lost, and has the perspective and baggage that flows from that privileged position.
Neil Abercrombie has run for office at every level of government–county, state, and federal–and he has won on his own, the voters choice and not the corporate elite’s choice. He’s won despite the fact that the power structure, from Senator Inouye to the insider corporate circles, would have preferred someone else.
Voters have trusted him, not because he doesn’t make mistakes, but because they are his own mistakes, not those of the elite who would cozy up to him to do their bidding. When push comes to shove, he’s been on our side, not theirs.
So you’ve got Mufi, the consummate insider, and Neil, the outsider who has fought for and earned each of his positions.
Rather than tagging each of the distortions or omissions in the “Compare and Decide” mailer, I’ll just demonstrate what would happen if the spin were different?
It might look something like this.
Education:
Neil: Masters Degree and Ph.D.
Mufi: No graduate degree
Experience in elected office:
Neil: elected to city, state (House and Senate), and federal offices
Mufi: Experience limited to city government
Other experience:
Neil: Chaired the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Air and Land Forces, with oversight for U.S. Army and Air Force operations, budget, and equipment and weapons systems procurement worldwide.
Mufi: Managed the Punaluu Sweetbread Bake Shop (Naalehu, Hawaii)
Compare and Decide!
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I thought Punaluu Sweetbread Bake Shop was kinda cute myself.
I thought it was hilarious. Thank you for the comment. It was along the lines that I thought of when I first read the mailer. LOL
Let’s put the embezzlement issue into context (what a concept!): The woman in question stole money from THREE members of Congress and Neil’s staff people were the ones who helped catch her!
Thank you for telling the rest of the story!!!
Ian loves bearded men, kind of like the extremist taliban of social justice. They live in a land of peace and equality (Ka’aawa) and highly degreed intelectuals who love cat’s and all things green.
Tree Trimming:
My comparison would be Mufi’s so tall and strong he can pick coconuts without climbing the tree and turn huge corp profits at stadium swap meet. Neil is so short all he can do is nible at the roots, troll around and grumble about the lack of equality.
Composting:
Mufi will mix it with concrete to repair are streams and Neil will personaly incinerate it in his turbo pipe with (R) Cynthia and Laura Thielen.
Education:
Neil, higher much higher philosiphy. Mufi school of hard knocks and lickins.
Religon:
Duke’y Aiona….praise the hope chappel and pass the peanut butter.
Wow! Go Bob….I love it.
Fair and moderated! I have slamed all three candidates!
It’s pathetic that Mufi plays the local, i.e. race, card in the first line of the flyer. How can the Democratic party support this tactic? It’s hypocritical, offensive, and smacks of desparation. He just lost this haole’s vote.
I haven’t seen the Mufi flyer yet (I put the stuff dropped off by canvassers this weekend aside with just a glance at whose people came by– Mufi, Leona Bak Nomura, Neil and Gil Keith-Agaran) but did get emails from Neil responding– perhaps that reflects where the two campaigns are (Mufi has the money and bodies to mail or walk the hit pieces on a well-planned schedule while Neil has to hope that digital responses are enough). It’s a shame that it’s getting so bloody in the minds of partisans of the two major Democrats (I recently got something from Miles Shiratori, too) because I certainly don’t want another four years of GOP governance.
That flyer irritated me at first glance and left me disgusted after reading the whole thing. So today I called Hannemann’s campaign headquarters and advised them of my response and that as a result I am sending the odious thing back, marked “return to sender”. I’m hoping they will have to pay postage, however small, for the return of it. Would be nice if everyone who objected to that type of “campaigning” did the same.
I know many people admire Mufi for his looks and the way he seems so respectable, not a dayum hippie, (and he’s tall!) but I see no evidence that he would be good for Hawaii.
Abercrombie’s got the chops. I respect experience. I think Job himself would have problems dealing with the nasty politics of Hawaii and Washington and always remain a nice guy using pure language.
I also think Oahu residents have desensitized themselves to the deteriorating environment around them.
And this is just me, but I could never vote for a Mormon.
Amen to that last line, so to say.
Not only Mormon but, along with Aiona, associated with “International Transformation Network” – one of those nutty politically-interfering mega churches
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2010/4/17/112159/323
I may have to grow a beard after this.
I get the general feeling on the Big Island that Abercrombie is way more popular here then Hannemann.
Mufi is way to Oahu centric to represent the entire state.
Makes me wish I lived on Oahu so I could vote against Mufi.
It’s a statewide race. You can vote for Governor.
Jan, the post office will not “return to sender” a mailer that is not first class. Very few political mail is sent first class so the only way to send it back is to stick a first class stamp on it.
As far as a campaign putting out comparison pieces, it’s as old as the hills. Of course, you put a nice photo of your guy and an unflattering photo of the other guy. And, of course, you puff up your guy and deflate the other guy.
Ho hum.
Are you saying the “shock and indignation” might be a tad faked.
Hannemann has been doing a HUGE amount of negative campaigning.
If that pettiness is all Mufi’s got … that doesn’t bode well for him. That flyer just made me shake my head, not that I was going to vote for Mufi anyway (I did vote for him for mayor).
Hey. I won third place in the beard contest at the Gold Rush Days annual celebration at Dahlonega Georgia in 1971 when I was a professor at Emory University. Hoo, you should have seen the first and second place winners — real “mountain men.”
Hilarious–thanks, Ian.
I suspect Mufi is getting nervous because his in-house polls are showing that Neil is holding strong despite Mufi’s recent media assault. If this continues, you can expect Mufi’s tone to grow increasingly negative. This mailer smacks of desperation, and I believe it will backfire on Mufi big time!
The Jury must be in– DAN says the Senior Senator has his own style of campaigning and Sen. Inouye wouldn’t have sent out that flyer, and Mufi made a point of acknowledging in his “debate” opening statement that there have been people who were offended by the flyer. The mistake was perhaps not just sending out the flyer but not anticipating very well the reaction or winning the spin cycle (I thought Mufi’s side lost when the MSM in most coverage lazily accepted Neil’s characterization of the flyer as a hit piece or a negative, including the listing of respective spouse names, and educational backgrounds). Neil’s video email response set the tone and the spin (I think I saw a blog comment that Mufi insiders are now blaming the flyer on a “mainland” consultant– that’s kinda funny that the hometown boy decides to do out-Local Neil with advice from abroad). But I think the UH-thing might be real whack from Compare-gate: there a helluva more folks in the islands with ties of some sort to UH than to Harvard. Even if an Ivy League education is nothing to sneeze at (and moreso for a kid from Kalihi), that accomplishment is a personal thing that shouldn’t have been used to subtly sneer at a UH graduate degree. That would be like the State Senate rejecting a female UH law grad for Chief Justice but saying No Problema for the tall guy who went to Harvard and then a law degree from U. Chicago, which would never happen. . . .