Honolulu Prosecutor Race: In With the Old
Keith Kaneshiro will no longer be known as a “former” Honolulu city prosecutor anymore.
Kaneshiro, 61, won a special election to fill the position vacated by Peter Carlisle, who resigned in July to run for mayor. Kaneshiro, who served two terms as city prosecutor from 1989 to 1996, will be sworn in on Oct. 8.
Kaneshiro beat Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for the City and County of Honolulu, Franklin “Don” Pacarro, Jr., and former Deputy Prosecutor Darwin Ching.
Kaneshiro won with 76,999 votes, or 40 percent. Pacarro received 58,732 votes, or 30.5 percent, and Ching got 28,554 votes, or 14.9 percent. It was a winner-take-all election.
He didn’t take too much time to celebrate – Kaneshiro was already prepping himself for his new role Saturday night.
“The first thing I have to do is see what’s new in the office and organize the office,” Kaneshiro said. “I want to start working on my priorities. The first thing is working on the drug abuse.”
In just under three weeks, Kaneshiro will be in charge of about 290 employees and a budget of almost $18 million. His salary will be $129,312.
The race was dwarfed by the high-profile Democratic governor’s primary and the winner-take-all mayoral election. But more than 160,000 Honolulu voters still cast a vote in the race.
Fundraising Differences
Campaign finance reports indicated strong support across the board prior to the election.
Initially, Pacarro jumped to an early lead when it came to raising money, but Ching wasn’t far behind.
Between January 1 and June 30, Pacarro raised more than $113,000 and Ching, about $83,000.
Kaneshiro was hiding in the woodwork.
While his campaign amassed a whopping $0 by June 30, he surged back by September 3, raising more than $74,000 in just two months.
He rode that financial momentum to victory.
Positions Varied
The candidates had different ideas about how to run the office.
In August, Civil Beat asked each of them to answer 10 questions about themselves and their views. You can read their answers here.
Ching was the most drastic, proposing that the prosecutor’s office completely shift its approach to fighting crime.
Kaneshiro and Pacarro were more traditional in their responses. Kaneshiro said he plans to create “specialized units in sex crimes, domestic violence, drug crime, economic crimes, elder abuse and violent juvenile crimes.”
He also said that he would offer more opportunities for rehabilitation of offenders.
