Remembering Ben: The Cayetano Years
01/20/2012
bencayetano.com
Jack Burns? Party patriarch who walked on water.
George Ariyoshi? Tall, quiet and effective.
John Waihee? First Hawaiian governor.
Ben Cayetano? How about one tough S.O.B.?
Ten years after the nation's first Filipino governor left politics, Cayetano, 72, is back in the arena, doing something that most former governors — save California's Jerry Brown — would never do: run for a lesser office.
Cayetano, after all, was reviled by many of his fellow Democrats and labor union supporters when he completed his second and final term in December 2002.
So sick of the Democratic Party machine was Hawaii's electorate that it rejected Cayetano's sitting lieutenant governor, Mazie Hirono, and gave the reins of the state to the first Republican in 40 years, Linda Lingle.
But there is another side of Cayetano, one perhaps forgotten by many or not known to younger voters.
He is a smart student of politics and history; a principled man who does his homework and thinks through positions; an independent not afraid to buck his own party nor alienate the people who put him in office; a Filipino-American who courted and won heavy Japanese-American support; and a fighter who never lost an election and was twice elected governor despite trailing strong opponents by large margins.
Let's revisit the Cayetano years, 1994-2002.
