The news of new advertisements promoting Derek Kawakami came through a text, “Heard a radio ad for Kawakami on the radio by the carpenters. They starting early. Was a good, positive ad.”

Kawakami had announced only a couple of weeks before that he was filing to run for the office of Lt. Governor, challenging incumbent Sylvia Luke. Curious about the timing, it didn’t take long to see the visual version of the message — broadcast during prime time news.

And the first thing this blogger identified is that the tone of the ads was very easy on the eyes, and pleasant to hear as the voiceover of the ad is all Kawakami, speaking at a state of the county address in Kauaʻi.

There was something else, and it was a much deeper interpretation of a political ad, taking this watcher back to words written about another political advertisement campaign that was successful in a challenging primary campaign – just like this one.

That campaign, to the keen Hawaiʻi political pundit, was Tom Coffman’s Catch a Wave. For those not familiar with this pivotal work, Coffman details the primary election between incumbent governor John Burns vs. the current Lt. Governor, Thomas Gill, who was running to become the Democratic party nominee in the 1970 election.

Burns, spending a lot of money, and as Coffman describes,

“For two weeks, the local agency had guided a Medion (mainland advertising firm) crew through some two hundred interviews covering Burns’ family friends, administrators, and political allies. In the process, the Medion crew shot twelve miles of film at sixteen millimeters, which, according to television technicians, was enough for more than thirty-six hours of viewing time.”

An image of Burns was created that both reintroduced the incumbent to the public while also redefining his image to be something more than just being governor.

As also described by Coffman, the opening of the ad campaign,

“The opening scene flashed on the governor driving over the Pali, then on the governor dedicating a space laboratory, then on Burns in his office talking into a telephone: ‘Arthur, I’ve established that some people are going over to Maui. We have troubles on Maui?” Fadeout Burns, cut to Fujio Matsuda, Burns’ transportation director: “I don’t think he’s just dreaming up a utopia that we can never achieve. He’s thinking about an achievable future for us.” Fade out Fujio Matsuda, cut on the ever-present Dan Aoki: “When you’re riding on top of a wave, you just sit on the wave. You just go…” You just go.

The wave rolled in, a brilliant blue, the epitome of beloved and idyllic Hawaii, as the Beach Boys came across in loud rock….Catch a wave.”

Note: Archival footage of the opening sequence referenced here is available through ʻUluʻulu: https://uluulu.recollectcms.com/nodes/view/47730

A lot of this imagery was reproduced, albeit in a more modern fashion, to introduce Kawakami to the state, complete with the surfing waves. Where it diverges from the Catch a Wave style is that the only person speaking in that ad is Kawakami itself. He makes remarks, emphasizing crisis leadership during floods and the pandemic. Rather than scripted campaign messaging, it relies on existing public footage to project authenticity and governing credibility.

Similar to what Burns did with Medion, there are a lot of images of Kawakami, including multiple pieces where he is speaking directly to the camera – film used from the Kauaʻi County State of the County address. As with Catch a Wave, the Kawakami/ For a Better Tomorrow ad has a simple mission – to introduce the candidate to a statewide audience, and tell everyone who they are.

And who is Derek Kawakami in these ads? It portrays him as a leader in crisis (angling toward Kauaʻi, addressing the COVID crisis) who provided steady governance. While done differently in Catch a Wave, it also portrayed the same tone, albeit with different people speaking on his behalf, until the end when Coffman described the ad closure.  

“Finally, John Burns, again: “My view of my father when I was small was he was God, he was king, he could do no wrong. I’m sure he swore, but I never heard him swear. I’m sure he was as human as the next man, but he always, at least within my view, controlled himself to the point where I never saw him do anything wrong – except, perhaps, lose that Irish temper once in a while.”

John Burns, nonetheless, appeared to be human, seated on his back steps, dressed in an aloha shirt, his face muscles taut, his voice quivering in temper: “Taking a stand is anything anybody can do. The governor or chief executive of the nation is not a guy going around taking stands. That’s the way to absolve yourself of any responsibility is taking a stand…..Any damn fool can take stands.

“And I say damn fool,” his voice rising, “Any fool can take a stand.

“Does that make sense? Take a stand.”

To Catch a Wave faded in soft music, leaving the governor pruning a tree in his lawn, remarking gently to his Beatrice on the fruits and blossoms.

In comparison, for the Kawakami/ For a Better Tomorrow also has him speaking about what his vision is. Admittedly, it’s a much more unifying message, relaying a vision of one Hawaiʻi. Like Catch a Wave, the For a Better Tomorrow ad avoids policy detail in favor of presence. It asks the viewer not to evaluate a platform, but to recognize a leader already in motion.

That kind of messaging also signals a phase shift (as noted in prior articles about the issues facing the current Lt. Governor). Earlier parts have been reactive — defined by response and positioning. This ad, instead, does something different. It doesn’t engage in that back-and-forth. It moves past the current issue and looks forward.

In that sense, this begins to look like a transition into Phase 3 — where the goal is no longer to respond to the narrative, but to replace it.

Set against that shift, the similarity becomes clearer: both use the voice and image…who they are and what they’re driven to do. In essence, the Kawakami/ For a Better Tomorrow ad does not invent a new style of message that Hawaiʻi has never seen before. Instead, it tweaks it to make the candidate the main focus and character you are seeing, while Catch a Wave was more of a testimonial of the candidate, focusing back on him only at the end, with his own voice and image.

And at the end, the iconic image of the wave is still there.

The question now is whether Kawakami’s campaign will ride it — or simply follow the current that’s already been set.

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Book citing:
Tom Coffman’s Catch a Wave: A Case Study of Hawaii’s New Politics (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1973)

While this blogger was attending a conference in Washington, D.C. during the week of March 15, 2026, a blockbuster event unfolded on the other side of the country—California. It would only be after returning to Hawaii that the revelations against Farmworker Union leader César Chávez came to light, with immediate effects from it.

During that week, within 72 hours, accusations against the former United Farm Workers Union head came to light, with immediate actions to de-emphasize Chavez in celebrations, holidays, and roads named after him. Now there are movements to change the names of state holidays that honor him, to focus more on the people that he served – the farmworkers in California, Arizona, Texas, and other associated areas.

Recent reporting has raised serious allegations of sexual abuse involving women and minors tied to Chávez, along with claims of long-standing silence within the movement. I won’t go into the details here, but this well-written article is worth the read if you want the full picture

What has been intriguing, though, is how quickly things moved from mere information release to a judgment on Chávez himself, complete with actions to strip his name from things. It shows, again, that the social credit of any one person—even one as revered as Chávez—can be taken down quickly. And once it falls, it is rarely restored.

And it also shows how the construction of our modern-day “heroes” happens. While not a hard and fast rule, raising someone in a movement or in society to the level of being revered many times strips away the complicated nature of the person themselves.

Instead of resolving those issues so that they are seen as “flawed but clean” in the eyes of society, the “sins”, if you will, of that person are buried one way or the other. Some dismiss these issues outright. Others choose to bury them entirely.

And that is why César Chávez is a useful case study precisely because the problem is not simple.

His place in American public life was not invented out of thin air. He helped build one of the most recognized farmworker movements in the country, co-founded what became the United Farm Workers, and became a symbol of labor rights, Latino political identity, and moral struggle on behalf of people long ignored by power. That is why his name ended up on schools, streets, parks, and public memorials across the country.

And that gets to the larger point. The same reverence that elevated Chávez may also have helped shield him from scrutiny.

When a figure becomes bigger than the movement, protecting the symbol can begin to matter more than confronting the truth. That appears to be part of the reckoning here. The recent reports and subsequent reactions from advocates have centered not just on the allegations themselves, but on the culture that allowed silence to persist. Because too many people believed the cause was too important, the icon too valuable, and the damage to the movement too great if the story came fully into view.

Ultimately, those directly affected—including his co-founder, Huerta—chose to put the record forward, regardless of the impact on the movement.

At the end of the day, it seemed that the Chávez enigma appears to have been built on a structure that always carried the risk of collapse as it did. And that is the peril of political and social hero worship.

The lesson to all public leaders, and those who lead in organizations that have a reverence for title and position, accountability delayed doesn’t fade—it accumulates. And when it finally surfaces, it doesn’t ease in. It hits all at once, collapsing reputations, reversing public sentiment, and forcing a rapid reassessment of what was once beyond question.

Chávez, in that sense, is not just the subject of the story. He is Exhibit A for how fragile public sainthood really is.

The hard question is whether it is wise to build our leaders as heroes at all? Because at the end of the day, the practice of building up a hero for the sake of a movement or organizational structure today sets up that same person for an inevitable fall from grace when detrimental disclosures are made of the person.

Or, despite this development, does the human condition that allows for this to happen, and thus affect society in detrimental ways, show us to be, as said by Plutarch to Katniss in his letter at the end of Hunger Games Mockingjay, part 2, “stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift of self-destruction.”

Or, as a concurrent, again from the movie, we will “enter a period where everyone agrees that our recent horrors should never be repeated.” And unlike in the past, the lessons stick for longer than just the usual moment.

We’ll see.

Right in the middle of what can now clearly be called Phase Two of the Sylvia Luke story, the Lieutenant Governor took to Instagram on February 23^rd to address the campaign donation controversy directly.

On the surface, the video is her attempt to explain what happened and clarify how her campaign handled the donations in question. But politically, the move is also something quite familiar in Hawaiʻi politics — when the headlines start to cool, but the questions remain, Lukeʻs most recent action is a classic direct appeal to voters themselves, in an effort to steady the ground while the formal investigative process continues in the background.

In the video, she presents from her perspective a clarification of the stories and actions of her campaign. She states that she has not personally enriched herself, never granted special favors in exchange for donations, and never violated campaign spending rules. She talked about how she has worked to keep her integrity and emphasized her transparency.

To demonstrate that, she outlined a plan to rectify the situation by putting up information on her campaign website and hired a consultant to look at her books to see if there are any other issues and to uphold compliance.

She, at the end of the video, does address that trust is earned, and it seems through this video that she is trying to regain or reaffirm that trust.

The video illustrates that the story remains firmly in Phase Two — the stage where clarification and positioning take place. While investigators continue their work, political actors are already shaping how the story will be understood by the public. Luke’s decision to address voters directly suggests that the interpretive phase has begun to form even before the investigative (phase three) is complete.

The second issue has to do with the effort by Luke to try to resolve all the questions and hope that the answers will assuage the target audience to both believe it and then support her as she potentially ramps up for re-election this year.

And who is the target audience, you ask?

Well, it would be the electorate itself that is not already tied to organizations backing her. The latest of these is the HSTA, which came out with its rather uniquely worded letter of support for Luke.

So the real question is whether the video answered the concerns of voters who are still looking at the situation and deciding what they think about it — and whether that will translate into support for Luke in the Primary.

Ultimately, the answer will come at the ballot box in the August 8 Primary. But before that, there may be signals about whether the video actually worked.

It really comes down to two things.

First, whether it was convincing enough for any potential challenger to Luke in the Primary to decide to sit on the sidelines or file for candidacy to run against her. While there has been no announcement by anyone that they intend to make a challenge, a signal as to whether Luke is still seen as strong enough or not for reelection will be demonstrated by how others act, or do not act, as potential candidates.

That would lead to the second action, in which there is no real gauge as to how high or low “political goodwill” is for Luke. Political goodwill, while not a technical Political Science term, is something that exists. Defined, it describes a reservoir of public trust, patience, or tolerance that voters extend to a political leader or institution.

Another way to look at it, political goodwill is a kind of public credit line. Voters extend it to leaders they trust — but like any credit line, it can be drawn down quickly if the withdrawals exceed the deposits.

What a savvy political observer in Hawaii, therefore, should be looking for is whether Lukeʻs goodwill “bank,” if you will, with the electorate still has a positive balance, zero balance, or negative balance. One can assume her gathering of organizational support denotes that she is working to make sure the balances are in the positive, so that there is no question of whether she has the strength and ability to both run and win for re-election.

However, organizaitons donʻt vote for candidates – all they do is influence the voter. Its the individual voter – it’s the electorate that chooses the desired candidate. And in this case, the majority of votes cast wins.

So, the questions that come from this latest move are simple: is Luke seen as weak enough that someone will step forward to challenge her, and does she still have enough goodwill with voters to carry her through the Primary? Those answers come in Phase Three of this story — when voters interpret what they have heard, weigh it against what they believe, and decide whether to act on it at the ballot box.

However, as with many things in Hawai‘i politics, the investigation may determine the facts, but the political outcome may be decided much earlier by how voters interpret what they have already seen.