Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 13, Number 12, 1 Kekemapa 1996 — Different Election [ARTICLE]

Different Election

continued from page 1 more like a mainstream campaign." But unlike the trend in other political races in Hawai'i, Aeto said. "All of the OHA candidates showed a lot of integrity. They focused on their own platforms and didn't follow the negative attack ad trend." "We' re getting a broader base of participation. In the past there were one or two trustee candidates with creative campaigns. This year we saw a lot of grassroots candidates stepping in with radio messages. There were about 9-10 players in radio in the eampaign. Out of the four elected, three were of this group." However, he noted that incumbent Moses Keale stands as an exception to the rule since Keale did not advertise (except in the Ka Wai Ola O OHA) and he was still re-elected. Since the largest populahon of Hawaiians, both in a listening audienee and registered OHA voters, lives on O'ahu, Aeto says KCCN-KINE tries to position their stations to reach this target audience so clients don't have to "buy the market," that is, all the other non-Hawaiian listeners. "We feel we've been a bigger force in getting people's word out." He estimated the potential audience at 200,000 lis-

teners per week on all three stations combined (KCCN FM100, KINE 105FM and KCCN 1420 AM.) Station policy is to Iimit candidates to a weekly maximum of 30 units — either 30 thirty-second spots totaling $1800, or 30 sixty-second spots totaling $2100. Aeto said the majority of candidates "maxed out" on this radio buy. He said the differenee was in the number of weeks a candidate would buy. Some candidates went from the last week of September right up to the eleehon. "Even the grassroots ran in the last week or two," Aeto said. In addition to promoting candidates through advertising, station KCCN 1420 AM aired a public affairs show whieh invited all OHA candidates to "talk story" for half an hour about why they were running for trustee. All incumbents and most of the leading candidates participated, Aeto said. "What we really saw were more creative radio ads — Hawaiian language as a major tool, use of clergy and kūpuna as spokespersons for their candidates, more issues featured in spots." He found it interesting that frequent OHA critic Mililani Trask, Kia'āina of Ka Lāhui, did an ad endorsing candidate Sam Kealoha.

Severe rainy weather, flooding and poor road conditions on Election Day may have affected voter turnout despite a one-hour extension of voting hours. This year there were a record 87,298 registered OHA voters, but

actual voter turnout was only 52,102, or 59.7 percent. In 1994, there were 75,766 registered OHA voters, but turnout was higher at 55,424, or 73.2 percent. ' A