The goodwill test for Sylvia Luke

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.