Third Advisor Leaves Abercrombie Administration

Yesterday two of Governor Neil Abercrombie’s top advisors resigned from his administration only 10-months into his term. Now it appears that a third advisor is out the door. Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s communications director is leaving the administration, which will mark the third young advisor to leave the administration in two days.

Josh Levinson – Abercrombie’s communications director, told fellow staffers in an email Friday that he is leaving because of the resignations of his friends — chief of staff Amy Asselbaye and deputy chief of staff Andrew Aoki — the desire to spend more time with his wife and children, and an understanding that it was time to let others bring their ideas and expertise to the administration.

“The last 10 months have been a whirlwind,” Levinson wrote. “We’ve tried to do things differently, and it hasn’t been easy. I’m proud of how far we’ve come. There have been bumps in the road, but we have put a solid foundation in place.”

Whether you voted for Neil Abercrombie or not, you have to know that something is seriously wrong with this situation. You don’t lose three of your top advisors 10-months into your term for reasons of “wanting to spend more time with family” There is something more to this whole situation, all we can do is sit back and wait to see of more comes out.

Sources describe a sometimes-tense generational divide with Abercrombie’s older allies pitted against Asselbaye, Aoki and other young staffers in the administration. So why is this the setup in the first place? Why would Abercrombie have all these people in place that clash so bad after the fact?

Besides the breaking news the of Abercrombie’s top advisors leaving the last couple of days, several others have left over the last few months as well.

Sunshine Topping, the former director of the state Department of Human Resources Development, who left citing family reasons, and Neal Palafox, the former director of the state Department of Health, who was asked by the governor to resign for unexplained reasons.

This does not look good for Governor Abercrombie. Not only is he undisciplined and unstable, he is losing advisor after advisor. More importantly, he has done nothing to better our state since he took office.

Again, whether you voted for Abercrombie or not, you have to be wondering what is really going on within the walls of our state’s capitol. Abercrombie has some serious work to do, otherwise he will go down as one of the worst governors in Hawaii history.