Kirk gets his hands dirty

My first freelance cover, published by Honolulu Weekly on Wednesday, June 20 (also the summer solstice, if you care about that sort of natural thing) depicts Honolulu mayoral candidate, Kirk Caldwell, as a roll-up-the-sleeves, "hands-on" kind of guy who will work closely with people on the ground to spritz up the city and make it shiny and nice looking. At least that's what he said in the Weekly's interview with him. 

I'm not sure how many people in the state consider Caldwell a lightweight, but I think that will be his main problem to overcome in this election: making people believe he has the chops for the job. He was promoted to acting mayor after former mayor Mufi Hannemann resigned to run for governor (he then lost to Neil Abercrombie, whom I can't wait to draw in some capacity), but was quickly booted out himself during the special election by Peter Carlisle, who is the current mayor of Honolulu. Now Caldwell is trying to recapture his seat, by vote this time, but he's up against Carlisle as well as former Hawaii governor Ben Cayetano, who has come out of retirement to run for mayor on an anti-rail platform. Cayetano has the best shot, I think, at winning. He stands out from the other two in a number of ways besides his anti-rail stance. He was governor. Boom. That means a crap-load to a lot of people. And even though he was a giant bully while he was in charge, there are a lot of people, especially among lower wage earners, who support him outright. Caldwell is lucky that he has union endorsements because that's the only defense he has against Cayetano stealing more lower income voters from him.

Second cover for the Weekly is currently in production and will be posted next week sometime after it is officially published on the 27th. It is, incidentally, about Cayetano and his anti-rail stance. The Weekly interviewed Cayetano who is claiming that HART is building rail against the best interests of Hawaii's people and in a dishonest, non-transparent way. He also claims that the city is buying the election away from him by using tax-payer money to fund pro-rail/anti-Cayetano advertisements. He's calling the whole business Railgate. We shall see if that is accurate or not.