hunterbishop.com

I hesitate to weigh in on things like the Stacy Higa dustup with Matthew Binder, a Brenda Ford supporter, at the Virginia Isbell fundraiser for earthquake-damaged Kona Community Hospital last Sunday. Charges fly back and forth and I wasn't there. I don't know what happened. The apparent lack of witnesses in published reports is puzzling, however. Where were Isbell's people? Did she in fact see what happened or not? The story was not clear. Yet whether she did or not, her casual indictment of Matthew Binder --  "he deserved it " -- must rank among the stupidest remarks a politician has made this year.

The Puna connection to all this of course is that it was an aide to Fifth District Councilman Gary Safarik who filed a harassment complaint against Higa in March for allegedly berating her to tears in an office incident for which Higa was exonerated later by the County Clerk. The Higa-Binder incident also just once again illustrates the highly charged atmosphere that Higa brings to the County Council, which Puna's 5th District candidate will have to deal with. Unfortunately it also puts the police in the middle of this childishness with harassment charges from both Binder and Higa to investigate.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin added some intriguing details, like Binder's allegation that Higa is illegally helping the Isbell campaign. A Brenda Ford win certainly could endanger Higa's hold on the Council.  Binder, who wrote the Sierra Club's Big Island endorsements in September, said keeping pro-environment candidates Angel Pilago, Pete Hoffmann, and Bob Jacobson on the Council (already accomplished), while knocking off pro-development candidates Holschuh (also accomplished) and Virginia Isbell (now in a Nov. 7 runoff with Ford), would create "an environmentalist majority on the island’s most powerful governing body."

Maybe Higa's beginning to feel some of that heat.