With an appropriate apology to Shakespeare, I come to praise Harry Kim, not to bury him.
On Dec. 8, Kim will complete his 12th and final year of service as mayor. Before that, of course, he was our Civil Defense administrator for decades, and before that he was an Army medic, then public school teacher, and sports coach. In other words, a lifetime of service to county and country.
I have gotten to know and work with a lot of people in the past 50 years, but there were some very special things about Kim that set him apart. No one worked harder or longer. He was as honest as the day is long. And he always had only one goal in mind — to make Hawaii Island the best possible place to live.
He was the politician who prohibited politics from ever entering into the decision-making process. He studied every issue and made his call based on the merits as he saw them. As he often said, you might disagree with his conclusion, but he would be ready to explain and defend every decision to the Supreme Court if he had to, because there was never a hidden agenda and never an unworthy motive behind the stands he took. He believed, naively some might say, that the people he served understood and appreciated the sincerity and effort behind each and every action he took.
He never shied away from the hardest issues that were important to the Big Island, even those that were rightly the responsibility of others. TMT (the Thirty Meter Telescope) is a good example. A state, not county, responsibility, Kim gladly took it on and devoted endless hours to trying to find justice for the Hawaiian people, while allowing TMT to move forward for the betterment of Hawaii and, frankly, the world. Always a man of peace, he managed to keep channels of communication open with all sides and eventually got the road cleared for traffic without there being a shred of violence. His reward was criticism from everywhere, but no one ever said life was fair, and Kim didn’t care anyway; his primary goal — that no one gets hurt — was achieved. The ultimate issue of construction remains unresolved, but don’t doubt that Kim will be working toward a solution until the very end of his term.
Kim’s attitude about good government carried over to the outstanding people he hired along the way. All those years in office and not the hint of a scandal touching his administration. That, alone, is a wonderful legacy, not to be taken for granted.
No person is indispensable, and the county will carry on with new leadership after December. New blood will bring new ideas; new events, foreseen or unforeseen, will bring new challenges; life will go on with few looking back. But those of us who know Kim will retain our fond memories of when Hawaii had the privilege of being led by a non-politician who did everything he could to gain the people’s trust and make them proud of their government. Everything, that is, except toot his own horn.
Aloha, Harry. You have earned your retirement, though it comes a bit too soon for those of us who appreciate all that you have done for Hawaii.
Andy Levin served as county councilman, state representative, and state senator between 1974-2000. He was Harry Kim’s Executive Director from 2000-08, and worked as a part-time consultant on legislative issues between 2016-20.