Nobody wants to be the elected leader of a community when a natural disaster strikes.

The person in charge gets second-guessed on every decision. They are blamed for not anticipating situations that no one anticipated. They are picked apart by detractors certain that somehow, they are responsible for every loss and every inconvenience that must be endured. When folks are sitting at home in the dark with no A/C, no internet and no cold beverages, they can come up with some angry conspiracy theories about the luxuries local leaders must be enjoying high above the misery of the people. No one wants that kind of paranoid scrutiny.

Except Derek Kawakami.

Or so he says.

Kawakami has expressed his good fortune to be Kauaʻi’s mayor multiple times since Hurricane Lowell crashed past Kauaʻi and Niʻihau on Monday night, taking out vacation rentals in Poʻipū, terrifying out-of-town journalists who reported from the lobbies of their hotels, and upending the lives of Kauaʻi families, those salt-of-the-earth folks who park their cars in the driveway because the garage is for parties, who use both a clothesline and a dryer depending on the slant of the afternoon rain, and who remember from Hurricane Iniki how to cook rice and cowboy coffee on a kerosene camp stove.

“I feel like I’m the luckiest mayor in the world, which may seem odd for me to say under the current circumstances,” he told KITV anchor Lei Uʻi Kaholokula. “But when you have a community that is just, from their DNA on up, just willing to put aside differences to help out fellow humans and just look past all of the manini stuff, and look at the big picture, my gosh.”

Gosh indeed.

Kawakami, in case you weren’t aware, is term-limited as mayor and is running for lieutenant governor. But of course everyone knows that because, before the primary election in August, Hawaiʻi was bombarded with unavoidable campaign ads that his campaign did not produce nor pay for nor, ostensibly, coordinate or approve. 

Those commercials, paid for by the carpenters’ union and contractors, featured a montage of clips taken from Kawakami’s social media accounts and his voice lifted from a previous speech. They went past ubiquitous and became almost cloying, and the message that came through was not so much, “Kawakami is a good guy” but “The big union in town is telling us who to vote for.” The campaign may have helped Kawakami with name recognition, as he won the Democratic primary, but it felt like the boost of those slick ads and avalanche of mailers came with a cost.

Ideas showcases stories, opinion and analysis about Hawaiʻi, from the state’s sharpest thinkers, to stretch our collective thinking about a problem or an issue. Email news@civilbeat.org to submit an idea or an essay.

Read More

This week brought a look at Kawakami free of packaging and promotion by a deep-pocketed PAC.

He was there at the county emergency operations center holding a stack of papers but not referring to them. Instead, he spoke extemporaneously, assuring people that everyone was going to get through the storm together. Kawakami came off as someone who believes the best in people. He has said over and over again how proud he is of Kauaʻi.

“We have this tremendous opportunity, I mean, if you take a look at the news around the world all eyes are on Kauaʻi and Niʻihau right now, and this is our opportunity to let people know who we are, how we come together as a community, how we take care of one another, and how we just make lemonade out of lemons day after day.”

In contrast, the City and County of Honolulu’s pre-storm press conference was a lot of scolding, including a Grumpy Uncle line from one department head telling people to stay off the roads: “Don’t be niele. Don’t be mahaʻoi. This is not the time to be capturing content.”

As the days passed and the daunting scope of the restoration work became known, Kawakami’s tone shifted a bit. As he took to social media to warn Kauaʻi of another possible rainstorm heading toward the island, he said, “At worst, we get hit with rain, thunder, and everything else that comes with it, but we are prepared. At best, we get hit with weather that we’re used to and all of you folks can blame me once again.” 

In another video, when he uttered one of his favorite terms, calling first responders and restoration teams “brave hearts”, his weariness made it sound more like “brain farts”, which was funnier and more real than anything on his sometimes cringy social media feed.

Kawakami is not known as a policy wonk. Neither does he present as a slick wheeler-dealer nor an “I alone can solve it” egoist. He comes across as a people-person. He’s not a booming orator or a wit who can bring down the house, but he’s a guy who can speak from the heart, which is a rare thing for politicians these days and possibly his ticket to higher office. 

There have been a long line of politicians who lost their footing after a storm. This week, Kawakami established his statewide brand without looking like that’s what he was trying to do.