LEGITIMACY OF FALEOMAVAEGA CANDIDACY QUESTIONED; Dem. Party, Fono and Others Working Around Him

In the first commentary since the departure of the Congressional delegation last Sunday, Samoa News Editor-in-Chief Rhonda Annesley, in an August 15 signed editorial questioned whether Faleomavaega legally can run for re-election this November without setting foot in American Samoa in over a year.

“I have a simple question:” asked Annesley, “Can Faleomavaega Eni Hunkin legally run for office, without having to step on American Samoa soil?” 

Since only Congress can establish the eligibility of its members, the answer would seem to be yes, he can, but the question certainly is reasonable since, until recently, even prospective voters—including those serving abroad in the military or attending school—could register to vote only in person in American Samoa and only during the period the election office has the rolls open.  The cost of coming back to the island was a severe hardship for scholarship students who might have turned 18 only while away at school and virtual impossible for members of the armed forces—especially those deployed in combat zones.  A change in federal rules to ease overseas voting forced American Samoa to loosen its requirement.

However, Annesley shared our lament in our earlier post that he might campaign for re-election as an absentee candidate, rhetorically asking: “Can he run a “talofae” [sympathy] campaign — ‘I have served you faithfully for 28 years, I am recovering… please… vote for me one more time?’”  Sarcastically viewing it as a bad idea, she concluded: “Hey, I’ll vote for him… if he’s running… I’m all about ‘talofae’… GONGGGG!” [Gong meaning not]

The impact of having an ailing delegate continues to be felt.  Had he been a member of the Natural Resources Committee-led visit here last weekend, there should have been no question that American Samoa would have been more than just a refueling stop.  Or, perhaps, despite his very high seniority, he simply lacked the clout with the Committee to get them to stay longer, calculating that it would be better to stay off the delegation and not telegraph his inability to get a longer, substantive stop than to hope the delegation would get in and out of the territory with little public notice.  So far, it appears he has succeeded since only this blog has made much ado about his absence and we do not believe we are read much at the village level.  We cannot substitute for local media coverage.

In her editorial, Annesley revealed that she had been away ill herself for the past two weeks, so she gets a pass for her paper under-reporting the significance of the visit and what might have been accomplished—especially with the Obama conservation zone expansion. Perhaps she will make up for that in the week to come.  Be that as it may, however, if Faleomavaega’s condition has proven one thing, it is that we need more than him in Washington to look after our interests.

Local Democrats Bypass Delegate on Conservation Zone Issue

Indeed, the delegate’s political weakness in Washington was further demonstrated by a Saturday story in Samoa News about the local Democratic Party writing a letter to President Obama to appeal for a reversal of his decision to expand the Pacific conservation zone.   A letter from a political party to a President is unusual and such a letter written while one of its members is a sitting member of Congress is even more unusual if not unprecedented.  Clearly, even though his party has endorsed him for reelection, they clearly have lost confidence that Faleomavaega on his own--whether because of physical weakness of political weakness--can get Obama to turn around on a major decision threatening to negatively impact the territory. 

It was perhaps sensing just how uninfluential Faleomavaega is in Washington that prompted the local Democrats to weigh in with a letter bypassing him and instead going directly to Obama.  Protocol in the past has been to write to Faleomavaega and ask him to convey concerns to Executive Branch.  But there is so much at stake and clearly Faleomavaega is not firing on all cylinders that a typical approach through his office is too much of a risk.

The story of the letter, written by party chairman Ali’imau JR Scanlan, inexplicably appears buried in the paper’s sports section rather than somewhere in the “A” (news) section, if not on page one, where all previous stories related to this issue appeared this week.  Possibly the editors were embarrassed to be publishing an article written by Faleomavaega’s sister-in-law, who is not only an editor and writer for the paper but the territory’s Democratic National Committeewoman.  Of course, the paper carried no disclaimer of those facts.  Perhaps the editor, if not the writer, was aware that such an article would embarrass the delegate by telegraphing that the party was working around him, not following standard protocol of going through him.  It looks like the writer put party over family ties on this one.

Fono, Tuna Community, Chamber Also Bypassing Faleomavaega 

It is not lost on the American Samoa Democrats and other groups who are appealing directly to the White House, including the Fono, the American Tunaboat Association and the American Samoa Chamber of Commerce that compounding the problem of Faleomavaega’s continuing incapacitation, his usual allies in Congress are gone or going.  Sen. Danny Akaka (D-HI) has retired, former Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) was defeated, Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the closest member to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) are retiring after November and Sen. Dan Inouye (D-HI), who years ago was bestowed with an honorary matai title for his help on our issues, has passed away.

Speaking of Inouye, the primary defeat on Saturday of Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D-HI), an Inouye protégé, to fill Inouye’s unexpired term, has thrown the Hawaii Democratic Party into disarray, which also further weakens Faleomavaega politically because he has fewer and fewer long term allies in that state on whom he can depend to move his issues.  Moreover, there is not a single impartial national political analyst who believes the Democrats have any chance of regaining control of the House this year and many believe the way current district lines are drawn, Democrats probably cannot return to power until 2022 following the redrawing of lines after the next census.  If he were still alive and in office, Faleomavaega would be almost 80 years old.

Faleomavaega and Sablan

Contrast Faleomavaega, if you will, with his colleague from the Northern Marianas, Gregorio “Kilili” Sablan (I-MP).  Sablan is on the trip and, as we speculated in an earlier post, the Northern Marianas are getting more than refueling stop treatment.  They have not even arrived yet but already there is one newspaper story about the dinner the governor is hosting for the group on Sunday evening.  Then on Monday morning, the delegation will be special guests at the opening of the permanent Garapan public market.

Had he been given the opportunity, Governor Lolo certainly would have done the same and no doubt a ribbon cutting or other special event could have been whipped up as well.  The Northern Mariana Islands are almost a twin to American Samoa:

• both attained self-government through an elected governor the same year (1977);
• both territories are similar in population size;
• both have a substantial foreign-born population;
• both are still very dependent on federal assistance;
• both also have non-voting delegates in the U.S. House of Representatives who are members of the Democratic caucus;
• both delegates are members of the House Natural Resources Committee. 

The differences?  CNMI’s delegate is healthy and on the job full time.  Moreover, he concentrates on issues of direct relevance to CNMI and as his second committee serves on Education and the Workforce, not foreign affairs.  His travel has been limited largely to returning to his islands, which he does frequently according to his website; he is not distracted from his focus by adventures into such things as Asian politics, Hawaiian sovereignty or the nickname of Washington, D.C.’s National Football League team.  Only in his third term, Sablan already has substantive legislative achievements (Faleomavaega has none) and is the Ranking Member of the Natural Resources Insular subcommittee, which means he would be in line to become chairman if the Democrats took back control of the House.

So, as the CODEL works its way through its visit to CNMI, gently guided by Delegate Sablan, we shall see what our leaders, our media and the candidates for Faleomavaega’s job have to say.  Frankly, our politicians should be enraged and offended that our territory has gotten such short shrift by such an important and influential group of House members.  There are ways to express this without blaming the delegation.  It is the fault of our delegate. If he is not up to the job and his staff cannot get his job done for him, he needs to quit hanging on.

Faleomavaega and Gabbard

Finally, if you want further contrast in Washington, compare Faleomavaega to U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI):

• both have Samoan and palagi (Hunkin; Gabbard) blood;
• both were born in American Samoa;
• both were raised and spent their formative years in Hawaii;
• neither has built a personal famly home here;
• neither has spent substantial time here over the years;
• both have served in the U.S. Army in combat zones (Faleomavaega-Vietnam; Gabbard-Iraq);
• both are Democrats and are members of the House Democratic caucus;
• both are on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and its subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific (AP);
• Faleomavaega is Ranking Member of the AP subcommittee and, while he was incapacitated, Gabbard (despite serving 12 fewer terms than Faleomavaega) was next in line and in his absence did fill that role at hearings;
• both have interest in issues involving India and serve on the Congressional India caucus; when the new prime minister was elected, Faleomavaega sent a congratulatory message; Gabbard got him on the telephone;
• both are members of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC).

Unlike Faleomavaega, who remains largely unknown in Washington after almost 13 terms, Gabbard, who is almost 40 years younger, has taken the town by storm.  Before even being sworn in, she was appointed as a vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee; Faleomavaega once ran for a seat on the DNC from American Samoa but was defeated; if Faleomavaega wanted to take some solace from Gabbard’s achievement, it came at the expense of  U.S. Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA).  Honda, who was dumped in facor of Gabbard for the DNC’s A-P vice chairmanship, was behind elevating then-freshman U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) to succeed him as CAPAC chairman over Faleomavaega, who had loyally served as vice chairman to Honda for seven years. 

The selection of Chu also broke with past precedent of alternating the chairmanship between Mainland members and island members.  When Faleomavaega left the vice chairmanship after this humiliation, CAPAC gave the number two slot to Guam Del. Madeleine Bordallo (D).  Bordallo's predecessor in the House, then-Rep. Robert Underwood (D-GU), served as CAPAC chairman in only his third term; Faleomavaega never has.

Gabbard, who also serves on the Armed Services Committee (a natural choice, given the huge military presence in Hawaii) also has been in high demand by the national media, particularly on military and veterans’ issues.  When the VA health scandal broke recently, Gabbard was on numerous national news shows.  As Iraq comes back into the news, Gabbard—who is on of only two Members of Congress with combat service in Iraq—also can be seen frequently on numerous national talk shows.  She even has been on in connection with the two hurricanes that recently passed through Hawaii.   As far as we can tell from our research, Faleomavaega never has been on a national news show--not even during his four years as AP subcommittee chairman--except for the Comedy Channel's Colbert Report.  [With apologies to Rhonda Annesley--GONG].

So, while Eni limps around, if he is moving much at all, Tulsi Gabbard has more than taken up the slack and lack of Samoan visibility in Washington while the American Samoa Democratic Party, the Foono, ATA and the Chamber all have gotten into the act, this time bypassing the delegate rather than shoring him up.

So, yes, he can run again even if he does not come home before the election.  But why would he want to?  And why would we re-elect him? 

Faleomavaega Video Raises More Questions than Answers

Mark Twain once said “Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.”  Faleomavaega apparently forgot that old adage about avoiding an argument with the press when he issued a news release Monday to accompany a copy of a 30-second video Christmas greeting he provided KVZK-TV during the holidays.  In his statement he blasted Samoa News for not publishing earlier releases reporting on the progress in Congress of several pieces of legislation of importance to the territory.

For its part, Samoa News responded that the paper had covered those issues but did not use his releases because, among other things “there was still no reply from the Congressman’s office on previous Samoa News questions on the status of his health, why was he hospitalized in the first place, and how he is staying in contact with his office if he is in rehab.”  The bylined story goes on to say “[t]hese are the same questions many residents, including voters, are raising with Samoa News and these questions have yet to be answered,” firing back: “Having his office issue a news release quoting the Congressman still does not provide answers to lingering questions on his health.”

At the same time, Radio 93KHJ-FM news director Monica Miller aired the audio of Faleomavaega’s Christmas greeting saying “The 30-second clip shows the congressman from the chest up and he looked like he lost weight.  In his Samoan greeting one can detect a slight slur in Faleomavaega's speech.  The brevity of his greeting is also unusual.“  In her commentary that also ran in talanei.com, Miller also noted that Faleomavaega’s “Washington D.C. office has not answered any questions about the congressman’s health and whether he is in hospital or at home.”

We long have urged both Samoa News and Radio KHJ to withhold disseminating Faleomavaega’s news releases as a means of forcing his office to be forthcoming on his health issue, which is what he clearly has tried to do with the release of his Christmas video.   Originally sent down here to be aired on television, the Delegate apparently was frustrated that it only played once and was seen only by a small number of people, so he decided to send it to Samoa News and KHJ in hopes of getting wider distribution. But sending it with a combative news release, rather than complaining in a private communication with Samoa News, probably did him more harm than good.

Wrote Samoa News reporter Joyetter Feagaimaali’i-Luamanu: “The video, with the message in Samoan, was released by the Congressman’s Washington D.C. office and was received by Samoa News, but didn’t provide any other details such as where the video was recorded and when; and did not address the health condition of the Congressman.”  She went on to disclose that “Samoa News has sent questions to [his chief of staff] Faiivae, with a copy of the email questions to the Washington D.C. office for more details but as of yesterday [Tuesday] afternoon, there has been no reply.  Faleomavaega made no mention of his health on the 30-second video,” which the paper posted at its website.

Because Faleomavaega has received such uncritical attention by the local media over his long career and has a reputation for being vindictive, we have suspected that if the media were not participating in a cover up of his health condition they were being intimidated into silence.  This is clearly not the case, as we now realize the News and the radio station were withholding dissemination of most of his releases, just not telling their readers and listeners.   We were misled by looking for his news releases on his website, on which he has not published any since early October nor is any information available in the "In the News" section.  It also appears that he only sporadically posts on his Facebook page and does not tweet from his Twitter account at all.

Obviously his releases were being targeted just to the local media directly and we now understand that rather than participating in a conspiracy of silence, they were giving him every courtesy due him as a measure of respect for his position as is customary in our Samoan culture.

But it looks as if his response has backfired and an irritated media looks to be ready now to start to hold his feet to the fire publicly.  Indeed, there already have been comments on-line to the effect that while people respect Faleomavaega for his years of service, he has disrespected the people by the way he has handled questions over his health.

In recent days there has been a spate of announcements of senior Members of Congress retiring, including Rep. George Miller (D-CA), who, like Faleomavaega, is a protégé of the late U.S. Rep. Phil Burton (D-CA).  Burton in the 1970s rammed through the House legislation creating congressional seats for Guam, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa (the last seat in a bill drafted by his young staffer--Eni Hunkin).  Miller, as chairman of the House committee with jurisdiction over wages, is the person most responsible for making the most recent minimum wage hike applicable to American Samoa the first time. The wage hike led to the closure of one of the two tuna canneries, throwing thousands of people out of work.

Faleomavaega, of course, can stay in office as long as the voters keep electing him.  Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) was elected to a new term after suffering a serious stroke that left him permanently impaired and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) remains in office while continuing to rehabilitate.  Nevertheless, it is difficult to comprehend why he would want to keep going.   He reminds us of the character in the Terminator movie that just keeps going despite being shot up, blown to pieces and even thrown into a vat of molten metal.

This is obviously a good time for Faleomavaega to call it a day.  He is 70 years old and has had a long enough government career, including his years as a Capitol Hill staff member and military service, to have a very handsome pension.  His congressional health plan, which is the best in the country, would go with him into retirement and he has gone as far as he can on the House leadership ladder: in the last two years he was passed over by a freshman Chinese-American for the chairmanship of the Congressional Asia Pacific Caucus despite having served loyally for seven years as vice chairman and was passed over for the senior position on House full Committee on Foreign Affairs despite having highest seniority in his party on the committee. 

Moreover, it is unlikely Democrats will regain control of the House this fall and most independent analysts believe Republicans will be able to maintain their majority until the next redistricting and reapportionment after the 2020 elections.  At that time a chronically ill (by his own admission) Faleomavaega would be approaching age 80.  All the while, American Samoa is losing the opportunity to let someone else build up seniority in the House and will end up even worse off than Hawaii, where every member of the delegation is new following the retirement last year of long-serving Sen. Dan Akaka (D) and the death of the Senate's most senior member: Sen. Dan Inouye (D).  Too, when legislators like Johnson and Kirk are incapacitated, there are others in their delegations to pick up the slack.  Faleomavaega is all we have in Congress and he does not enjoy long-standing friendships the way he did with Akaka, Inouye and the soon departing Miller to help advance his issues.

Finally, it is unlikely his doctors will permit him to resume his passion for extensive foreign travel and, since he has no real legislative record, it is difficult to understand why he would want to hang on.  Had he been honest with the people from the beginning, there no doubt would have been an outpouring of sympathy for him.  But by choosing to deceive everyone on the state of his health, he has lost credibility with the media and increasingly the respect of the voters.

Aside from demonstrating he is not comatose or near death, the only question Faleomavaega’s video has answered is that he is well enough to direct his staff, meaning we now know they have not been freelancing.  The tactics are his, not theirs.

Watch Kaptur Struggle for Clues on Faleomavaega

It does not take a rocket scientist or a Capitol Hill insider to get a feel for the internal politics of Congress. You can be thousands of miles away from Washington and all you need is a Google news alert for the right subjects and publications and contact numbers for or e-mail addresses of a few staffers in the House to get a sense of what is happening. Rep. Marci Kaptur (D-OH), fresh off her primary victory over Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), may have an even tougher battle ahead to ascend to the top Democratic slot on the House Appropriations Committee. As this story points out (http://thehill.com/homenews/house/216873-pelosi-looms-over-contest-for-top-slot-on-approps),
Despite Kaptur’s seniority Nita Lowey (D-NY) will challenge her and Nancy Pelosi will have a lot to say about who gets the position. If Democrats retake the House, the winner of this caucus battle will become the chair of the very powerful Appropriations Committee.

In a previous post, we made the same point about Faleomavaega, who will be in line to take the top Democratic seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee if the current Ranking Democrat, Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), loses his primary to Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) in June. Both the Berman-Sherman and Kaptur-Kucinich primaries are a result of census-mandated redistricting in their states.

There are several signs that Faleomavaega would not have an easy path to the chairmanship, starting with precedent that would be set in giving a full committee chairmanship to a non-voting delegate. This situation has not arisen in the past because the other delegates all have departed Congress before the question arose. By contrast, Faleomavaega keeps hanging on.

The question may not arise this year, either, because Berman very well could hold on to his seat and there is no guarantee Democrats will regain control of the House. Still, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi might not want to let Faleomavaega have the ranking position because it would be more awkward to dislodge him if her party regains control in two or four years’ time.

Of course, Faleomavaega has to win reelection, too, but that seems likely. If Pelosi is forced into having to make a choice, there are some signs that point to trouble for the delegate. First, when he was chairman of the House foreign affairs subcommittee on Asia, Pacific and Global Environment [emphasis added], he was not included in a 20+ member House delegation led by Pelosi to an international global warming conference in Denmark a couple of years ago. This is viewed by some as a sign of her low regard for Faleomavaega. Some believe global environment was added to his portfolio primarily as a way to keep him away from Washington by letting him justify his world-wide travels as being environmentally related and give him access to a congressional budget to fund his wanderings.

Second, after years of loyal service as Rep. Mike Honda’s (D-CA) vice chairman of the Asia Pacific Congressional Caucus, when Honda stepped down he stabbed Faleomavaega in the back by endorsing a freshman California House member to succeed him. Rather than face embarrassing defeat, Faleomavaega stepped aside in his quest for the chairmanship and his vice chair slot went to another junior territorial delegate, Madeleine Bordallo (D-GU), leaving him out in the cold altogether.

Third, there is pressure on all Democratic House members to pay dues (make contributions) to the House Democratic Campaign Committee to help elect more Democrats to the House as this story points out: http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/217495-dccc-has-no-room-for-deadbeats. Faleomavaega typically has relied on a handful of big contributions from Asia-American donors on the West Coast to win re-election and likely does not have additional resources to make any large contribution to the campaign committee.

Finally, there is another House member available who could take the Foreign Affairs position without it appearing someone junior was jumping over the delegate. Rep. Elliot Engel (D-NY) is behind Faleomavaega in committee seniority because he joined the panel later than the delegate did but actually is just ahead of him in overall seniority in the Democratic Caucus.

Nancy Pelosi won’t be paying much attention to all of this until after June 5 and then only if Howard Berman loses. And even then there won’t be much press attention, given the lack of importance of the committee. So, people looking to see what Pelosi might do should watch what happens with the Kaptur-Lowey battle. Because there is so much at stake in appropriations, that one will get much more press attention.

Weiner Resignation Could Thwart Faleomavaega Ambitions

As unimaginable as it may sound, the resignation of disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY), may have thwarted Faleomavaega's ambitions to rise to the chairmanship of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a prospect that undoubtedly sends chills up the spine of House Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi and other senior leaders in her party.

All the stars would have had to line up right next year for it to happen but it is quite possible that Democrats could retake the House while Reps. Howard Berman (D-CA), the full committee chairman, and Gary Ackerman (D-NY), the second ranking Democrat on the committee, were losing re-election battles.  That scenario would put third ranking Faleomavaega in line to become chairman.

As unlikely as it would seem for Berman and Ackerman to be be in trouble in their safe seats, they will be running in newly configured districts, thanks to redistricting resulting out of the 2010 census.   If Democrats were to catch a wave, normally the two veterans would be among the least likely to be in trouble.  However, a new non-partisan redistricting commission has thrown Berman into the same district with another senior Democrat, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA).  There is said to be no love lost between the two men and, if they should decide to square off against each other, there is no certainty in the outcome.

Meanwhile, in New York, the state legislature must redraw the district lines in a way to adjust for the loss of two seats as a result of decennial reapportionment.  There has been a gentleman's agreement that one seat would be eliminated in the Republican leaning upstate area and the second seat would be taken from the New York City area, where Ackerman's constituency is.

Now that Weiner has resigned, it makes the job easier for the legislature, which simply can eliminate his seat and make all the other incumbents, including Ackerman, safe for re-election.  So, if Berman were to lose next year, the Democrats still should have Ackerman in place to block Faleomavaega's rise.  Of course, Democrats still would have to win back the majority and it is much to early to tell if that could happen.

But more than likely, everyone can breathe a sigh of relief.  American foreign policy should be safe for another two years.  Nonetheless, all three men are getting up there in years (Berman is 70; Ackerman is 68; and Faleomavaega is 67) and Faleomavaega has been in poor health for a number of years.  The retirement of death of any of them would change the equation.  Stay tuned.

Faleomavaega Embarrassed on Census

This is the year once every decade the U.S. counts all of its people. Historically, minorities have been undercounted, a lot of times because they come from countries where government is oppressive and they want to keep their heads ducked. But in the U.S., the statistics gained from the census, help determine the share of federal resources each state gets in program money, including programs that are aimed at helping minorities.

So minority organizations are working hard to make sure their constituencies are aware of the census and to make sure everyone is counted when the census taker comes knocking at the door. Some of the west coast group enlisted Faleomavaega to speak at their Census kick-off events last week in northern and southern California.

Faleomavaega likes to tell groups they need to be more visible. He would do well to take his own advice. As we have said so many times in the past, he travels so much that he is not really very well known in Washington and is not very influential. In fact he has done so little to get American Samoa noticed that if go to the internet and click on the Census Bureau’s website, http://www.census.gov/, and click on the menu of states on the right, you will find the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, but not American Samoa.

Also try entering American Samoa’s zip code, 96799. The site does not recognize it as a valid zip code. Fortunately, the Postal Service does although considering the lack of speed of service, sometimes that is debatable as well.

Fortunately for Faleomavaega, there was no Q&A session for someone to ask him why his own territory is forgotten. What an embarrassment. Anyone who is a regular reader of this blog knows the answer. This is just yet more proof.

If you are reading this blog later than March 8, 2010, then you know that even if Faleomavaega gets no attention in Washington, someone reading this blog has reported the omission to Census and they have addressed the matter. If so, we will take credit.