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Mufi Hannemann, Neil Abercrombie and James “Duke” Aiona traveled to the Plaza Club — — on the top floors of Pioneer Plaza Wednesday to share their thoughts on growing Hawaii’s high-tech industry.

Their audience was a group of people who know what to do with money — the Hawaii Venture Capital Association. HVCA President Bill Spencer said tech businesses generate $3.5 billion annually in gross revenues.

As investors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, politicians and other well-connected audience members noshed on lunch and had their coffee, water and tea repeatedly freshened, the three candidates for governor talked tech.

What the audience heard from each candidate often overlapped — e.g., dual-use technologies for military and commercial purposes is the way to go, the governor’s cabinet needs a techie-in-charge, the expiration of Act 221 tax credits for high-tech companies was a damn shame, the Hawaii Superferry fiasco could have been handled a lot better, the state needs to improve its education system to build its human capital, and “I’ve got the best track record on these issues and I’m the one you should put in Washington Place.”

But the high-tech talk was also the first time this election that the top three candidates appeared together, which proved as interesting as what they had to say. Civil Beat assesses the campaign snapshot.

With no debates set yet, this may have been one of the few times we’ll be able to contrast the candidates side-by-side.

Abercrombie: Education Is the Answer

The former congressman is never at his best when reading from notes, and yet that’s what the Democrat did Wednesday. He also made repeated references to his in case people want to read his platform papers.

Most people don’t. Instead, they want a sense of what you’ve done and what you’re going to do about an issue. They want to size you up in the flesh.

“Why is technology and innovation important to me?” Abercrombie read. “People are worried about kids being able to make a future here in Hawaii. We need to have good-paying jobs here in Hawaii.”

Pure boilerplate, delivered without enthusiasm, from a man legendary for his enthusiasm.

Abercrombie proceeded to explain away what happened with Act 221, whose tax credits will now expire this year.

“Maybe people took advantage of it, but that was not the authors’ intention,” Abercrombie said, calling Act 221 a bipartisan act of “good faith.”

He then launched into specific things he’d do as governor: create a governor’s tech council and a chief information officer, promote STEM curriculum in schools (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), push biofuels with the help of the military, and — above all — “turn loose” the University of Hawaii, “the greatest untapped resource in the state.”

There were also a few digs at the media (they offer “superficial analysis” of tech), at Hannemann (with a Governor Abercrombie, the state “need not worry about transitional leadership”), and at Hannemann (the state does not need “narrowmindedness or xenophobicness…our diversity defines us and describes us, not divides us”).

But Abercrombie gave the lines no punch. The most often repeated words in his speech were “uh” and “um,” as if he were Caroline Kennedy auditioning for the U.S. Senate.

The candidate was more articulate responding to a question about the Hawaii Superferry: “We are the only island entity in the world without a ferry system…We’re not Kansas. We’re not separated by water but linked by it.”

But he was vague on how he would have handled the Superferry better, and on a second question asking how he would improve the state’s bureaucratic permitting process.

“Expand government, make it a little larger,” he said about permits. “It’s a personnel question, principally…it’s psychological.”

An off day for Neil Abercrombie, who may have sensed the HVCA wasn’t his crowd to begin with.

Hannemann: Credibility Is the Answer

The freshly unemployed Hannemann took to the podium like he was still mayor of Honolulu: smoothly in charge.

His first anecdote described how he and wife Gail always feel a touch of sadness when placing lei on graduation students.

“This is the first step of taking them away from Hawaii,” said Hannemann, meaning the students would have to find decent work on the mainland, not here.

Hannemann then sharply distinguished himself from his rivals (“I’m the only guy who has actually worked in the private sector”) and identified, in his view, his strongest selling point to be governor: “I suggest that at end of day it is all about who has the credibility to make it happen and who can truly be that champion.”

Hannemann uses the phrase “at the end of the day” way too much, but he does have a knack for citing specific accomplishments that appeal to whatever audience he is addressing. Among those he identified for the HVCA were the transformation of the city’s information technology system (Hannemann said it had been in “the Dark Ages”), improving efficiency, cutting paperwork, and saving money.

“We’ve got free public WiFi from Chinatown to Kailua,” he boasted. He added that on his last full day in office his administration unveiled the initial phase of a software application based on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to improve public safety and better manage the city’s land and facilities.

Hannemann also has a habit of building on the strengths of others in a way that one-ups them. He did it to Abercrombie when he said education extends to community colleges and high schools, not just UH, and embraced a technology transformation initiative promoted by UH President M.R.C. Greenwood.

Hannemann also got his digs in, laying the blame for the Superferry squarely on Gov. Linda Lingle (“they did not do an EIS”) and Act 221 (there were “inconsistent messages” from the “present administration” that translated into “a lot of confusion”).

The former mayor has an unfortunate tendency as well to turn criticism that has been directed toward him toward someone else, as if to nullify the original charge. On Wednesday, for example, he took Lingle to task for governing through press releases and press conferences — something Hannemann has been guilty of, as recently as last week.

He also seemed to once again make a local pitch, saying that when he walks through a door in Washington and elsewhere, people know he is from Hawaii — “maybe a security guard,” he added, getting big laughs.

And did he mention that he went to Iolani School? “Guy Kawasaki was a classmate,” he noted.

Still, Hannemann won the day, rarely reading from notes, charming the venture capitalists with lines like “If there is no money there is no honey,” and joking once more — as if anyone could possibly observe otherwise — that he is 6-feet-7.

Aiona: Jobs Are the Answer

Poor Aiona had to speak last, when many in the tech-savvy audience were busy scrolling through their Blackberries.

He also read entirely from his prepared remarks, which were dryly ordered in outline form.

Here’s the Cliffs Notes: clean energy good, targeted tax credits good, STEM good, public-private partnerships good, astronomy and aerospace good, ocean and marine sciences good, development of human capital good, innovation incubation facilities good.

Aiona sometimes says what he doesn’t mean to say, such as things like “access to capital is a major barrier” when he means to say “lack of access to capital is a major barrier.” And he said he would continue the state’s plans to modernize its harbors, airports and highways — as if not modernizing them is still a possibility after the extensive, bipartisan work has already begun.

Aiona ended his talk with “and may God’s grace be with all of you.”

During the Q&A, Aiona came alive.

Asked to name the three best and three worst tech accomplishments of the Lingle-Aiona administration, he rattled of the good — clean-energy initiatives, support for dual-use technologies, and fostering digital film and creative media.

He also admitted the administration could have done “much better in education, obviously,” and then deftly turned the negative into a positive by saying the word failure was not in his vocabulary.

“I don’t like that word,” he said, with clear sincerity. “I believe only in hard work to do better.”

Aiona went on to say that the furlough fiasco “put us over the tipping point,” underscoring his philosophy that educational reform is at the core of Hawaii’s potential to succeed or fail.

“You are the educated ones out there,” he told the investors, lawyers, entrepreneurs and politicians, speaking from his head and heart, not his notes. “I bet a lot of (your) children don’t go to public school.”

Advantage, Aiona.

Aiona closed with big laughs by referring to Hannemann’s Ivy League pedigree and directing the audience to read more about educational reform on his .

Let’s hope, for Hawaii’s benefit, voters see more of Duke Aiona unplugged, the good parts of Mufi Hannemann, and Neil Abercrombie back in fighting trim.