On June 28, 2009, I announced my candidacy for Lieutenant Governor for the 2010 election. We challenged 6 other candidates, some with big name recognition because they ran in larger races before, although unsuccessful attempts, their names were now known. Our leading opposition out-spent us 8 times more. All opponents were great candidates and the race was very cordial.
I passed out about 72,000 pens and several thousand cheese crackers to people throughout the state from June 1, 2009 to September 17, 2010. My loyal campaign team passed out 20,000 hand fans to people. Our core of the campaign was the old school style of grassroots campaigning where the candidate meets as many people as he can one-on-one. With grassroots at a statewide level there is a lot of hit and miss because not all individuals are likely voters. Out of almost 1.3 million people, only a couple of hundred thousand people vote in the Democratic Primary Election. In a smaller race, a candidate can walk to homes that are registered voters or even likely voters because they voted before. There needs to be a mixture of grassroots and media.
For our television (TV) commercial, we aired 30 spots on KGMB9, 4 spots on KHON2, 1 spot on KITV4, and 4 spots on KIKU, far less than our opposition. The opposition barraged the air waves with hundreds of thousands of dollars in TV commercials. Repetitive TV commercials are effective in a statewide race because it is difficult to meet most of the likely voters. Name recognition is fed to the voter very quickly and often with the strategy of airing many TV commercials, which is better than the voter having to take the time and go out of his or her way to read a brochure or research the candidate.
We aired zero radio commercials. Some of our opposition aired radio commercials.
We had only one print advertisement. Our opposition had more print ads.
I mailed my economic and education goals for Hawaii to 67,357 households. My opposition also mailed brochures.
We received zero endorsements just like my first House race in 2002, which we won. However, in this race, endorsements may have played a role, especially with so many undecided voters in the Lieutenant Governor’s race? In a State House race, one can walk and meet so many voters multiple times to get voters to vote based on who you are rather than relying on the union endorsement. However, in a statewide race, I learned that grassroots can only go so far. Television commercials are very important and endorsements play a role, especially with the undecided voters.
Brian Schatz, a former colleague of mine in the House of Representatives emerged as the winner for the Democratic Primary race for Lieutenant Governor. After eight years, he left the House in 2006 and ran an unsuccessful bid for Congress in Congressional District 2. In 2007, he emerged as the spokesperson for the Barack Obama campaign for President of the United States and in 2008, as Chairman of the Democratic Party of Hawaii.
My father taught me to always learn from any loss in life. My mom taught me to look at all the positive you gained despite the loss you experienced. These lessons my parents taught me makes the experience positive despite how difficult it was. Losing the Lieutenant Governor’s race was a big learning experience for me. On the positive side, I am grateful for all who supported me, the new friends I made, and being able to get reacquainted with old friends. We need to keep moving forward no matter what. I will continue to do all I can to touch people’s lives. I wish compassion, good health, and happiness to everyone.
JON RIKI KARAMATSU 