Off the News: How many gubernatorial candidates?

There’s no fee to pull papers to run for an elective office, so perhaps this is cheap entertainment. A total of 37 people had gubernatorial nomination papers issued.

It’s nothing new, but this is quite a crowd, a few of them with an odd name or party affiliation (download the list at elections.hawaii.gov/candidates/candidate-reports). Twenty were serious enough to pay the $750 filing fee that says, “I’m running for governor,” but as for the rest, would they really want the state’s hardest job? They have to be joking.