John Fund reveals that there is Trouble in Paradise:
This year, political reporters have been trooping to Hawaii to see if the entrenched 40-year-old Democratic Party machine--dubbed "Hawaii Four-O"--will finally lose a race for governor and open up the Aloha State's politics.I already mentioned the disgraceful Patsy Mink death story, but for the latest update see On Being Mink from HawaiiReporter.com. This really is a cast of thugs.
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The marginalization of critics is one reason the Democratic machine has survived for four decades. Ed Medeiros, owner of the Aloha Flea Market, saw his site on the grounds of a state-owned sports stadium taken over by the government after he openly campaigned for Ms. Lingle. Lowell Kalapa, head of the state's Tax Foundation, was removed from a state tax-review commission he had co-founded after criticizing the state's fiscal policy. Sam Slom, one of only three Republicans in the state Senate, was put through a full-fledged ethics investigation for using a press release sent out on his personal stationery tweaking the governor about his purchase of a $1 million house lot in Mr. Slom's district.
Media critics have also felt the machine's sting. Malia Zimmerman, a reporter for Pacific Business News, was fired in 2000 after the governor filed a complaint with the state's Media Council over one of her stories. The story, which was accurate, was about a leaked report of the governor's own Small Business Task Force that found a pattern of retribution and intimidation of business owners by state agencies. This February she started up a news Web site called HawaiiReporter.com (motto: "Freedom to Report the Real News") that has already become the state's alternative source for hard-hitting political news and a frequent source for talk-radio hosts.
HawaiiReporter has had a lot to chew on lately. Rep. Patsy Mink, a veteran of the 1960s Democratic takeover of the state, died on Sept. 28, after the state's deadline to name a replacement for her on the November ballot. Allegations swept through political circles that party officials had concealed the grave nature of Ms. Mink's illness until key election deadlines had passed.
Gov. Cayetano promptly moved to ignore state law and asked the courts to authorize a snap special election on Nov. 5 for the unexpired portion of Mink's term. When told there were technical as well as legal problems preventing this, Mr. Cayetano's response was brusque: "I'm really tired of hearing this kind of talk. If the court says we can hold this election on Nov. 5, then the elections office better be ready to print up some ballots and if they have to count manually then they should do it. Just do it. Don't tell me it can't be done." The courts ignored this imperious request as well as a later one that Mink's name be replaced on the ballot by a Democrat handpicked by the party. Gwendolyn Mink, the late congresswoman's daughter, denounced all the maneuvering as "a move, again, to change the rules in the middle of the game."
