Progressive activist Bart Dame has posted a couple of very interesting items this week about the nomination of Carleton Ching to head the Department of Land and Natural Resources. They are worth sharing.

First, he posted a graphic distributed by the Building Industry Association attacking the State Historic Preservation Division of DLNR. Until his nomination, Ching served on the board of the BIA.

Here is a logo the Building Industry Alliance sent out to its members and circulated to the public at trade shows.

Now, a member of the Board of the BIA, Carleton Ching, is seeking to become Chair of DLNR and to be put in charge of the State Historic Preservation Division.

You see why folks think he may be a bad choice for the job?

And then he provided this thoughtful perspective on the political dynamics at work. I’m sharing this long post with his permission.

There is a lot of “inside baseball” stuff going on in the Senate which complicates understanding the reaction of the body. Two Senate leaders visited the Fifth floor to ask the Governor to withdraw the nomination. It is my understanding the Governor intends to stand by the nominee, an admirable attitude, since it was the Governor’s people who had sought out Ching in the first place.

While I can respect the Governor’s loyalty, he needs people around him to help him overcome those personal feelings and do what is best for both the state and his ability to function as Governor. Unfortunately, it was the people around him, his closest advisers, who apparently chose Ching in the first place. So the problems with the Ige administration appear to be much deeper than the Ching nomination.

Some senators may feel “they ought to be deferential to the governor” in his appointments. But they cannot so easily abdicate their responsibilities when a nominee lacks the qualifications for the job as Ching obviously does. Their “advise and consent” responsibility obliges them to protect the public interests when the Governor makes a serious mistake. For the good of the state, but also for the good of the Governor.

Many of the Senators have been laying low, dodging and weaving on the nomination. It is understandable most of them would wait until the hearing and the committee’s recommendation before committing to either support or opposition to the nomination. But there are also other, unseemly considerations which appear to be distorting the process. The administration has been offering financing for Capital Improvement Projects in the home districts in exchange for votes.

In addition, factional considerations have been at work as well, distorting the process. Senator Green is aligned with the “Chess Club” faction, the faction to which Ige belonged when he was their colleague. Despite their personal friendship with Ige, it is the senators aligned with the Chess Club who appear to be most concerned about the nomination, both as policy and for the damage it may do to the Ige administration.

The leaders of other factions, sensing the ill-ease of the Chess Club members, and not caring one way or the other about the Ching nomination, seem to be taking a “wait and see” approach, reluctant to help Ige, their Chess Club colleagues or to align with the environmentalists and cultural practitioners opposed to the Ching nomination. Who can offer them what? Do the constituents in their district really care about this to the point they have to act? Or will it all blow over?

Your editorial points out David Ige is an engineer. Yep, and I liked that in Ige the candidate. I expected it meant a pragmatic, problem-solving approach to the challenges we face, swayed by reason, after due diligence and consideration. But Ige is also a businessman, who apparently shares the Castle & Cooke, LURF, BIA attitude of Carleton Ching, that natural resources are there to be transformed into a revenue stream. And David Ige is also an honorable man, who feels bound to support Ching after his people talked Ching into putting forth his name.

While I would prefer Ige listen to his senate allies who are advising him to withdraw the nomination, or the calm, rational engineer who can see how destructive this will be for his ability to govern over the next four years, I expect this to unfold like a Greek tragedy, where the virtues and flaws of the protagonist lead, inexorably to a predictable result as the audience watches it unfold, feeling sad but powerless to intervene. I guess those of us commenting here have been assigned the role of the Greek Chorus.

Would this have played out differently if Senator Inouye were still alive, helping steer the ship of state to avoid running into shallow reefs?