Six weeks ago, Civil Beat reported former First Lady Vicky Cayetano was considering a run for governor in 2022.
On Sunday, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Cayetano is expected to make a formal announcement today.
She filed an organizational report for her campaign committee, Vicky for Governor, on August 18, listing Loretta Sheehan, attorney and former Honolulu Police Commission chair, as her campaign chair, and CPA Gilford Sato as treasurer.
I do not know Vicky Cayetano, and don’t believe I’ve met her, although I’ve known Ben since my days as executive director of Common Cause Hawaii nearly 40 years ago (can it really be that long??? I’m afraid so).
I’ve heard comments from several people who believe Vicky is a Republican, although she intends to run in 2022 as a Democrat. So I decided to look at the evidence, the record of campaign contributions going back 15 years or so. Campaign Spending Commission records available online go back to November 2006, while the FEC database went back to 2004.
For the record, I found no evidence Vicky Cayetano has supported Republican candidates, the Republican Party, or GOP-oriented political action committees.
None. Zero. No evidence.
She has made campaign contributions totaling $42,825 to federal, state, and local candidates in Hawaii since 2006. None went to candidates running as Republicans in partisan races.
I didn’t find any contributions made by Cayetano or her company to any political committees except for two contributions to the Democratic Party of Hawaii federal account in 2009 that were reported to the Federal Election Commission.
Here are the results of my search of records of the Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission and the Federal Election Commission.
Click on either list to see a larger version.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Perhaps her contribution to Blangiardi and work on his campaign are why some think she’s a Republican.
Case is not acting much like a Democrat. Perhaps, like him, Vicky Cayetano is a Democrat with Republican priorities.
I’ve contacted Ed Case a couple of times about issues and got encouraging responses. He gets good to excellent grades from ACLU, ADA, AFL-CIO, Human Rights Campaign, LULAC, NAACP, and Planned Parenthood. He gets terrible grades from Club for Growth, Conservative Union Foundation, Conservative Review, FreedomWorks, and Heritage Action for America. Sounds like a Democrat to me. In the recent legislative struggle over budget and social welfare first or infrastructure first he grouped himself with a handful of right-wing House Democrats but ended up with both bills passed, both, as he pointed out, priorities of President Biden.
Case seems to me to lean libertarian. Socially very liberal (he and Mazie were among the very few Democrats who openly opposed the same-sex marriage amendment), but seems to be centrist to maybe a bit on the right on fiscal issues.
IMO, we need more centrists, both Democrat and Republican. But our partisan primary election systems push us away from that.
Wasn’t C. Djou a Republican?
I think this (last line in article) may have been the initial public perception of why people thought of her as being Republican. It was mine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120430025500/http://archives.starbulletin.com/97/05/06/news/story1.html
Seems pretty cut and dry that she donates along the party line despite what some may perceive as her being a “DINO”.
Is it wrong that a (truly) self made entrepreneur is business minded or fiscally prudent AND has a social welfare conscience? At least she’s not a conspiracy theory guided whack job with white supremacist tendencies!
Djou ran as a Republican until the party embraced Trump.
It could be argued that Vicky Cayetano’s donation to Charles Djou is evidence of her Republican ties. But I assume those donations occurred during Djou’s tenure as a non-partisan member of the City Council.
Charles Djou ran and was elected as a Republican during that period.
It may be slightly more complicated than that. Charles Djou ran for US House as a Republican and won (and lost a few times) during that period, but Ian’s lists don’t show Vicky Cayetano contributing to him in those races. They show her contributing to him in campaigns for state or local office. What state or local offices did he go for during the time covered by the lists? Honolulu city council. Honolulu mayor. Nonpartisan races. So he was a Republican back then, but not, in those elections, a party candidate.
But he said she didn’t contribute to any republicans, not to any Republican partisan campaigns. No one has ever been sure about Carlisles affiliation either.
But most of us assumed she tamped down on her GOP activities when she married Ben, and that was longer than 15 years ago. We shall see what policies ideas she’s puts forward, but she’s starting from the default position of DINO.
If memory serves, Djou did run, and win, as a Republican for State House before running for Council and US Congress.
Kelly Kitashima is a Republican, so was Charles Djou, though your report doesn’t indicate if Vicky’s donation was made before or after Djou let the party.
Most people consider Peter Carlisle, Rick Blangiardi, and Heidi Tsuneyoshi as Republicans. Lei Ahu-Isa ran as a Republican for the State Senate in 2002. Most people also consider Ben Cayetano, Ann Kobayashi, Lorraine Inouye, Calvin Say, and even Dale Kobayashi as DINO’s. Same for Ed Case, Tulsi, and even Hanabusa.
That’s more than half of the people she contributed to. Given the above, painting Vicky Cayetano as a Republican or at least a DINO appears apt to many people.
She said today that she was a Republican “a long time ago”…….
Believe it or not, she actually visited our house a long, long time ago. I was only a child back then, but she struck me as being someone with intense focus and a quiet intensity. I have no doubt that her IQ is much higher than the average person.
I wonder who appointed the people who get to decide DINO or, for that matter, RINO status. For example, only two people voted against insulating the Bishop Estate from scrutiny: Ed Case and Patsy Mink. Is their principled opposition a DINO or a RINO position? Although I disagree with Case’s cautious position on the recent infrastructure bill (at my age I say, “Damn the deficit, full speed ahead”) I find him, along with Brian Schatz, to be the most intelligent, principled members of Hawaii’s congressional delegation. Ms. Hirono is an intellectual train wreck who seems to think that profanity is a mark of sincerity. Kahele appears in action, although not ideology, to be Gabbard-Lite. As for Vicky Cayetano’s entry, I just hope that she repeats her husband’s efforts to curtail the power and benefits which we have carelessly allowed to accrue to the public employee unions. Some consider that a Republican-oriented position; I consider it a Democratic one since Democrats have a greater stake in good government than Republican do since Democrats actually believe in the possibility.
Case’s ‘cautious position on the recent infrastructure bill’ is consistent with my perception of him leaning libertarian. Fiscally cautious, but socially liberal/progressive.
Okay you think that Djou is not a Republican anymore but was and if she gave him a donation it seems for that amount it was for congress