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By the time he announced for the first post-statehood gubernatorial election. Bill Quinn was perhaps the most widely known territorial Governor in the island's history. Flanked by an eager organization, he redoubled his trips into the island precincts, remembered names, always had plenty to talk about in his chats with the voters. Nonetheless, in the June primaries Democrat Burns outpolled Republican Quinn by a fateful 3-2. This was just the kind of odds that suited Quinn bes't. He cultivated the independents, pounded hard at the news that Burns's powerful backer, the I.L.W.U., was flirting with the idea of an alliance with Jimmy Hoffa's highly unpopular Teamsters. In the election, Quinn not only carried populous Oahu but captured thousands of votes that the I.L.W.U. was supposed to deliver from the outlying islands.
Land Reform. One reason Quinn ran so well in the outlying islands is that he managed to make a popular campaign issue out of a problem that of all others is peculiarly and basically Hawaiian: the land shortage.
Much of Hawaii's richest acreage has for decades belonged to a few families and trusts, and most homes and office buildings are built on leaseholds. Quinn came up with a plan that he called the "Second Mahele,"*an imaginative land-reform scheme (denounced by his oppo. nents as "fanciful") that 'would permit Hawaiians to buy, "for as little as $50 an acre," a total of 144,480 state-owned acres on four of the islands. "Hoax!" cried the Democrats, and even many a top Republican admitted that much of this land was either worthless or else so encumbered by long-term leaseholds that the plan would never work. Bill Quinn firmly denied that his scheme was just so much poi-in-the-sky, still promises to deliver.
Slums & Culture. As they move into statehood, Hawaiians have their share of juvenile delinquency, traffic snarls, slums and crime, but they also have an extraordinarily high literacy rate (more than 98%), a topflight university (coming soon: a $200,000 East-West Cultural Exchange Center), a fine art academy and a symphony orchestra; and bustling new suburban complexes, studded with ranch houses. They appreciate some of the typical social aspects of U.S. mainland life as well: they love baseball, guzzle more soda pop and eat more hot dogs than the people of any other state.
Governor Quinn's promise of land reform—workable or not—points up the fact that Hawaii's special problems lie in its great distance from the mainland and in its own peculiar island geography. Tiny (604 sq. mi.) Oahu is already hopelessly overcrowded (pop. 449,910), not only by the native population, mainlanders and tourists, but by Hawaiians from the other islands, who head for the city as agricultural mechanization cuts down the labor force (e.g., the sugar industry now employs 17,000 workers as compared with 55,000 in 1932). A system of state parks and development of small industry on the outer islands will help promote new tourism and new residents, with enough money to pay the tariff.