Lingle’s Showman

January 18, 2006
By Dan Boylan

As Sky Masterson in the Army Community Theatre's recent production of Guys and Dolls, Lenny Klompus received mixed reviews. But in his role as Gov. Linda Lingle's senior adviser in charge communications, Klompus has been a smash hit. "He's a marketing genius," says Mayor Mufi Hannemann. "He brings a flair to the office. He dresses it up. There's never a dull moment, and you see Lenny's touch in all of it." "Lenny's a showman," says Marcia Klompus, his wife of 22 years. "A P.T. Barnum." For the first 25 years of his professional career, the shows Klompus put on involved balls, bats, hockey pucks, goal posts, backboards and baskets. As president of Metro Sports, he and wife Marcia sold radio and television rights to professional sports franchises from coast-to-coast. "Lenny," says Marcia, "was ESPN before there was ESPN." By 2002, Klompus was on Maui running the Hula Bowl, a Christmas Day post-season football game for all-star seniors. In the gubernatorial election that fall, Klompus threw in his lot with Lingle. Lingle had been sold on Klompus from the day he brought the Hula Bowl to Maui in 1997. Three years into her first administration, she still is. "Lenny sees possibilities where others say it can't be done," says Lingle. "He's not knowledgeable in state government, and that's an advantage. He's not limited in his thinking. He has the ability to see ahead. "Lenny brings tremendous enthusiasm to his job. He's very hard-working; he lives his job. He doesn't like to leave the office until everything's done." Not everyone is as fulsome in their praise of Klompus's role in Lingle's administration, particularly among Democrats. Congressman Neil Abercrombie is typical; he's called the Lingle administration "government by photo op." The chair of Hawaii's Democrats, Brickwood Galeturia, offers back-handed praise. "Lenny is an incredible marketer, a real professional. He controls the message and packages the product," says Galuteria. "The spin is there and the rhythm. If Gov. Lingle were cereal, all the kids would be eating it." Those of voting age seem to be buying the Lingle brand as well - by the shopping cart full: so much so that 11 months before the 2006 general election only one Democrat, former State Sen. Randy Iwase, has indicated an interest in running against her. Lingle, however, bridles at the suggestion that photo opportunities are what her administration is all about. "Those criticisms simply show how hugely successful we've been," she says. "Those critics resort to personal attacks rather than deal with the issues. We've turned the economy around, achieved the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, lowered fees for doing business in the state, produced more housing for people. The public sees that." Their vision is certainly helped by Lenny Klompus. Seventy-seven-year-old Francis Lum has worked as the state's protocol officer for every governor since John A. Burns. "Lenny plans events that are compatible with Gov. Lingle's position on the issues," says Lum. "He doesn't send her out on any old thing. He doesn't waste her time. "And wherever she goes to speak, he sees to it that everything's prepared - that the press is there, the right guests, her speech. He's a great planner. A great organizer." Says Jen Rulon, one of the eight members of Klompus's staff: "He sets the stage, plans the backdrop. He finds the personal story to make the point. He's theatrical. "Lenny gets excited about planning media events. I remember last summer during the Nanakuli brush fires, he arranged for a helicopter to get the governor from the airport out to the Leeward Coast. She was in Hilo, so he had to get her back - all in time for the 5 o'clock news." "It's all about leadership," says Klompus. "And I've known a lot of great leaders, like UCLA basketball coach John Wooden and North Carolina's Dean Smith. But I've never seen a better leader than Linda Lingle. "You can't package anything that has no substance, and the governor is all substance. It's our job to explain it." But it's no longer games that Klompus is packaging, and he admits that prior to his involvement with Lingle, he knew little about state government: "I couldn't understand what was going on in this big square building." Now he takes part in policy discussions with the governor, departmental staff, and Lingle's senior policy adviser, Linda Smith. "I have to understand the issues because it's my job to communicate them," says Klompus. It's also Klompus's job to communicate Hawaii nationally and internationally. During Lingle's first administration he's made frequent trips to Washington with the governor to lobby for the Akaka bill. He's also traveled with her to China, Korea, Israel and - most recently - to the Philippines. Klompus enjoys being involved with issues. "I love it that everything's not in a neat little box," he says. "Gov. Lingle encourages everbody's input." Klompus defends his elaborate staging of gubernatorial events with the backdrops on which a key phrase from the governor's speech is repeated: "Let's face it, we live in a fast food world. The whole story on the 5 o'clock news may get only 45 seconds. With the backdrops we're able to communicate the essence of her message while the governor's explaining it. You have to reinforce the message." Working for Lingle can be trying. "The best thing about working for the governor," says Klompus, "is that she's a journalist, a terrific writer. The bad thing is she's a journalist, and an even better editor. Whatever she gets from us, she edits. No press release goes out of here that she doesn't edit." Lenny Klompus was born in Baltimore in 1949, the only child of Herman and Rosalie Klompus. His father started out in the wallpaper business, then he and his brother started a grocery store. "I was baggin' groceries at the age of 7," Klompus remembers. His parents' ambitions were modest. The Klompuses never owned their own home. "We always lived in rented apartments," says Lenny. "And in 1972 when I applied for my first job, my father said: 'Ask for $12,000 a year. That'll take care of everything.'" The Klompus boy was, by his own estimate, "an OK student, good at times. I applied myself more to extracurricular activities, particularly the theater." Lenny first took to the stage as therapy. "As a kid, I had a terrible stutter. It was so bad, I wouldn't even answer the telephone for fear I would start stuttering," he remembers. "In the sixth grade I had a teacher - I'll never forget him, Jose Hernandez Garcia - and he asked me to play the lead role in Santa Claus for President. I hesitated, but he made me do it, and little by little as I started performing the stuttering stopped." And Klompus liked the stage. In high school, he played in The Admirable Chrichton, Dickens's A Christmas Carol ("I was brought up Jewish. Don't ask me how I kept playing in these Christmas things."), Bells Are Ringing and Guys and Dolls. Klompus also tried football in high school, "for six weeks," he says. "I broke my finger, and Jewish mothers don't like their kids playing football." Klompus entered the University of Maryland with theatre on his mind. He met disappointment. "As a freshman, I went down to the school theater to audition for the first show," Klompus says, "with 2,000 others. The guy I was standing behind in line told me the play was largely pre-cast with upper classman. He asked me if I was interested in radio, so I went down to the campus station - WMUC - where I read news, sports, whatever for the next four years." His college radio work led to Klompus's first job after graduation, selling advertising for a Washington radio station. It only lasted a year and a half. Klompus quit ("to my father's disdain") to form Metro Communications, a public relations firm that he ran for the next 10 years. He also got married right out of college. "It was a big mistake," Klompus admits. The marriage lasted five years. His first wife introduced him to second wife Marcia, a divorcee with three children who was looking for work with Metro Communications. "She was a great worker," says Klompus, "but then she said she was going to leave. I told her I needed her full time. She opened our office in Los Angeles." By 1984 Metro Communications had become Metro Sports, doing promotional work for the Pac-10 Conference, for UCLA, for the Atlantic Coast Conference, and eventually for both the Los Angeles Lakers and the Kings. "My dad was watching the money for us," says Klompus. "I mean, who can you trust? He was my dad and my best friend." Klompus began coming to Hawaii in the mid-1970s, doing the radio hookups for Mackay Yanagisawa's Hula Bowl. Yanagisawa wanted an NCAA post-season bowl in Hawaii, and Klompus knew many of the contacts needed to get one. In 1979 he began working with Yanigasawa on the first Aloha Bowl. In 1984 Klompus and new wife Marcia sold Metro Sports and moved to Hawaii to devote full time to the bowl. "It was $800,000 in debt when we got here," says Klompus. "It almost closed before we came, but we were able to get it turned around." Lenny and Marcia Klompus found it easy to reconcile their working and married lives. "We complement each other," says Lenny. "Marcia's good at things that I'm not very good at." Says Marcia Klompus: "Our working relationship has always been very equal. I'm good at the day-to-day operations of a business. Lenny is the big picture person. It's not that he can't or won't get down into the trenches, but he's usually onto other ideas - whereas I'm good at detail." The Klompuses are proud of what they were able to do with the Aloha Bowl. "We had a long-term contract with the Chrysler Corporation, and we owned Christmas Day," says Lenny. "Folks across the country would open their presents, pick the turkey off the carcass, and watch the game. We filled at least half the stadium every game, except 1991, when it rained." With the University of Hawaii Foundation about to give up on the Hula Bowl, the Klompuses stepped in. "It was 15 minutes from being closed," says Lenny. "It didn't look promising to many, but something in my gut told me it could be successful." The Klompuses put 20,000 in the stands their first year in charge of the game - and every year thereafter. Mufi Hannemann served as director of the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism from 1992 to 1994. "We were just beginning to promote sports as a major economic activity in Hawaii," says Hannemann, "so we turned to Lenny. He impressed me as very quick, very creative, entrepreneurial. We gave him a modest amount of money for the Aloha Bowl, the Hula Bowl and the Aloha State Games, and he stretched that money a long way. "Somehow Lenny could recruit hundreds of volunteers to help put together an event. And he's always very positive, very optimistic about everything." By the mid-1990s, Klompus was watching the Hula Bowl drawing the same 20,000 fans and the all-star seniors playing on Aloha Stadium's artificial turf. Klompus wanted a grass surface, and Maui had one. So Klompus pitched the game to Maui Mayor Linda Lingle. Lingle invited Klompus to a meeting with all of her department heads. Klompus had prepared a 20-page proposal detailing what the Hula Bowl would do for Maui and what he expected Maui County government to do for the Hula Bowl. "Three pages into my report, Mayor Lingle said 'I got it. I got it. I got it.'" Lingle thanked Klompus and promised to discuss his proposal with her department heads and get back to him. "I called some people in Honolulu," Lingle remembers, "and everyone told me Lenny was a person who could deliver on what he promised. So we agreed." Lenny and Marcia Klompus and the Hula Bowl moved to Maui in 1997. "It turned out to be a wonderful public-private partnership," says Klompus. Lingle agrees, but adds "My only complaint was that Lenny tended to overestimate revenues and underestimate expenses." In 1998, Republican Mayor Lingle attempted to become Gov. Lingle, challenging incumbent Ben Cayetano and the Democrats'nearly four-decade hold on the governorship. Klompus volunteered some time and expertise to her campaign. Lingle lost, but four years later she was back on the gubernatorial campaign trail with Klompus and wife Marcia working full time in her effort. "Lenny made a huge difference in that 2002 win," says Lingle. "We went from no paid media help in 1998 to someone working night and day to communicate what I stood for to the public." When Lenny Klompus leaves for work each day, he doesn't have to say goodbye to his wife. Marcia Klompus will be in the Capitol as well in her capacity as Gov. Linda Lingle's scheduler. Says Marcia: "I told him that I'd work with him as long as he didn't work in my area." She admits that occasionally there's tension around the office, "but we never carry it home with us." It helps that Marcia Klompus is unabashedly a fan of her husband. "He's just wonderful to work with," she says. "You have to admire him. He always does things in a first-class way." And she thinks he's a first-class husband as well. "The day he left for the Philippines with the governor, I received a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a note saying that he was going to miss me," she says. "That was on a Wednesday. On Friday, I received more flowers from him. He's a very carrying and giving person. He lives to make me happy. He's an excellent person to love." He is certainly "very emotional. I cry at commercials and movies," Klompus admits. If that's his softer side, Klompus acknowledges a harder edge: "I lack patience. I live by the idea that it takes as much time to do it right as it does to do it wrong, so do it right the first time. I get upset when it's done wrong. "I'm also very competitive. I love a challenge. I always contend that I'm not an optimist, I'm a possibilist." Thanks in no small part to Lenny Klompus, the possibility is great that - come November - Linda Lingle will win a second term as governor.