Political ads and a website sponsored by Pacific Resource Partnership accuse former Gov. Cayetano of taking more than a half-million-dollars in illegal campaign contributions — such as over-the-limit, or false name — then giving millions in no-bid contracts to those donors, and not returning the donations due to a loophole.
Now the man in charge of the Campaign Spending Commission at the time, along with other commission members, is coming to Cayetano’s defense.
“Look at the ad, it’s just fraudulent, bogus,” said Bob Watada, former Commission executive director. “Contributors give money to a campaign committee, and rarely does the candidate know whether John Smith and Jerry Smith are the same person."
Watada explained that while the donations in question were illegal, the impropriety was on the part of the givers, not the recipient.
"The contractors knew very well that if you didn’t make a contribution you didn’t get a contract,” Watada said, adding that many others received money that turned out to be illegal, among them mayors Jeremy Harris and Mufi Hannemann, governors Cayetano and Linda Lingle, congressional candidates Ed Case and Mazie Hirono.
“They’re trying to confuse the issue by saying everyone else did it,” said John White of the Pacific Resource Partnership, “but the reality is he’s running for an office that’s going to give hundreds of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts, and he has put people in place who were part of that system."
"I don’t think it’s fair,” Cayetano said. “Yhe guy didn’t have anything to do with it, once the money in the account is either spent or distributed to the state, that’s it, I returned in 2002, that’s 10 years ago."
See the original article at: KHON2 Local News
