CHECK HIS MICROCHIP

CHECK HIS MICROCHIP: Wasn’t that Republican Mayor Bryan Baptiste’s heir apparent Bernard Carvalho in a picture on the front page of The Garden Island newspaper receiving instructions on how to join the Hawai`i Democratic Party in order to vote in their Tuesday caucuses?

The picture- not apparently available on TGI’s web site but published above the fold in Wednesday’s print edition- shows the Director of the newly created Parks and Recreation Department and former Kapa`a High School, UH and NFL star awaiting HDP caucus voting instructions from long-time Kaua`i DP honcho Betty Matsumura, standing among blue card holding sign-ups although it doesn’t identify him by name or affiliation.

Carvalho has or had been a Republican crony of Baptiste’s in search of an important title despite his well-known Baptize-like dullness-in-the-knife-drawer department. This year the new P&R Department was created via a Charter amendment just for him after he spent four years as the head of the unofficial-official “Community Relations” anti-Departmental concoction Baptiste created for him shortly after taking office.

Carvalho has been widely rumored among Kaua`i political observers to be preparing to run, if not for Council this year, for Mayor in 2010 when Baptiste term-limits out, much as Baptiste did in 2002 after valiantly taking bullets for the scandal-plagued Marianne Kusaka administration while serving on the Council and before that, like Carvalho, as a political appointee in the administration.

Both started their government career as the head of the “Ho`olokahi” community volunteer program designed to supposedly save taxpayer money on visitor industry beautification programs, the program being an outgrowth of the do-noting, political-plum job of Convention Hall Director.

Is Carvalho joining Jimmy Tokioka and Jay Furfaro (or Mike Gabbard and even Bev Hardin for that matter) in an attempt to play hide the Republican electoral-salami, either nine months or 2 ¾ years hence?

No “papers pulled” yet for Carvalho but it’s early.