Civil Beat column criticizes Amemiya tactics

In her Civil Beat column today, Lee Cataluna comments on the negative campaign tactics by candidate Keith Amemiya.

In the column, Cataluna writes:

In a mayoral campaign that’s supposed to be an even match between two smart jocks, somebody has to blow a whistle on Keith Amemiya for unsportsmanlike conduct.

In an ad released last week, Amemiya used mere seconds of an hour-long interview his opponent Rick Blangiardi did with Civil Beat’s Christina Jedra and Chad Blair. In that brief clip, Blangiardi answered a question asked by a viewer – a question Blair said he didn’t have to answer – about who he voted for in the 2016 presidential election.

“I did vote for Donald Trump,” he said.

Blangiardi followed up that statement by saying he no longer supports Trump, but Amemiya’s team pounced like they had caught the golden snitch.

The very next day, Amemiya released an ad making it sound like Keith was running against Trump himself for the soul of Hawaii…

Cataluna also notes:

It’s a shame a candidate like Amemiya, with so much going for him, would indulge in such ugly fear-mongering about his opponent and burn book-style campaigning.

The guy making accusations about ties to Trump is being pretty Trumpy himself. Amemiya doesn’t need to go there, but he went there. He’s stopped by several times…

And she concludes:

It might benefit Amemiya, who is trailing in the polls, to live up to his good-guy image, because there is the palpable sense in the community that everyone is sick of name-calling and mud-slinging, and in this case it sure looks like he started it.

Read the entire column at https://www.civilbeat.org/2020/10/lee-cataluna-the-honolulu-mayoral-race-has-devolved-into-ugly-tactics/