It’s 11 a.m. on a Monday and that means Mayor Mufi Hannemann is in Kapolei Hale, the city building in Leeward Oahu’s long-talked-about-but-slow-to-develop second city. Soon after his election, Hannemann promised to spend one day a week here, emphasizing the importance of developing the area and dispersing Oahu’s population.

The mayor is talking with Ray Rawson, the point man for the development of a dental school in Kapolei. They’re talking sites and permits, and Hannemann is suggesting the names of others with whom Rawson should talk. Hannemann also suggests that “Kapolei” be in the name of the new school.

“I’m putting a special emphasis on this side of the Island,” he tells Rawson. “We’ve got to create more jobs out here, anything to move the traffic flow this way.”

Hannemann listens intently and asks an occasional question. Rawson’s presentation over, the two talk about people they know in common from the Las Vegas area, about women’s basketball and UH football.

The mayor looks terrific, wearing a gorgeous aloha shirt of orange and tan hues and dark slacks. The clothes hang well on the former basketball star’s 6-foot-7-inch frame. Hannemann appears alert, showing no indication that he’s been on the move since 6:30 in the morning.

“I’ve been going around to the city’s baseyards,” he says, “thanking these guys for the hard work they do patching up potholes in the roads. This morning it was Kaneohe and Laie.”

Hannemann’s second appointment is with Hersh Singer of the Hawaii Community Development Authority and his own economic development director, Jeanne Schultz. The talk is about the long-stalled development of Kalaeloa, site of the former Barbers Point Naval Air Station. HCDA plans town meetings, personal interviews and the development of two plans for the area — one if the Navy stations an aircraft carrier in Hawaii, one if it doesn’t.

Hannemann talks about the advantages of the Leeward area for the development of mass transit; it has room for a workyard and a right of way. The mayor uses his hands when he talks: palms out, circling the air with his index finger pointing upward. “I want to look at everything for the area,” he says. “Put it all on the table.”

With Singer’s departure, Hannemann gathers an entourage — an aide, his press secretary and a photographer — and walks down the hall for a “Spring Cleaning Walk” through the offices of the Department of Parks and Recreation. Hannemann’s called on all of the city departments to throw away the non-essentials, and he’s touring them all to see how they’ve done.

“The Corporation Counsel’s office threw away 300 cartons of paper,” he says.

The DPR offices look clean and tidy, but at the door sits a long table weighted down with sushi, salads, desserts — a feast for a mayor, all apparently potluck. Hannemann does his inspection first, walking from cubicle to cubicle, greeting every worker with a question, a joke, some attempt at conversation.

He shakes hands and hugs several workers. After 20 years of running for public office, Hannemann knows a lot of people — and their aunties, cousins, brothers and sisters. He exudes genuine warmth — call it aloha. The Samoan Hannemann is, after all, the first non-Caucasian, locally born-and-reared mayor since Neal Blaisdell left the office in 1968.

Hannemann finally makes it back to the potluck. The mayor, a self-described “person of faith,” says grace — and the eating begins.

Later, Hannemann returns to his corner office to meet with former City Councilman John DeSoto. DeSoto briefs the mayor on a variety of topics: Hawaiian Electric’s new power plant in Campbell Industrial Park, the visual impact of HECO’s proposed windmills, the status of the Waimanalo Gulch landfill.

The discussion turns to the problem of the Waianae Coast homeless. DeSoto talks about the high percentage among them who are addicted to drugs and steal to pay for their habit.

“How many homeless are there on the Coast?” says Hannemann.

“Two thousand,” says DeSoto.

“Wow!” says Hannemann, striking his forehead with the flat of his hand.

They talk about establishing a task force to look at what can be done.

With DeSoto’s departure, Hannemann, accompanied by longtime aide and supporter Trudi Saito, walks to the mauka side of the building to meet with the Department of Environmental Services. There director Eric Takamura and deputy Ken Shimizu have yet another lunch waiting for their boss.

Hannemann doesn’t eat, but he works through a list of questions he’s prepared for the two. Curbside recycling, now stalled by a challenge to the recycling contract, is on the mayor’s mind.

“What are we going to do with the recycling bins?”

“How many of them are out there?”

“How much did the city pay for each one of them?”

Hannemann takes calls on his cellphone, including one telling him that he has an appointment with a magazine photographer in Kapolei Hale’s parking lot.

And so it goes — day after day for the past six months. Mufi Hannemann has been on the road, in meetings, at events — getting a sense of the city he will govern until at least 2008.

Hannemann insists it’s not about him. “It’s a team of good people who work for the city,” he says. “I appointed some of them, but I don’t hover over them. I hold them accountable, but they make the city run.”

But of course it is about him.

So how’s he doing? The mayor himself thinks he’s doing … well, a near perfect job. Asked to grade his first six months, Hannemann says: “I’d give us an ‘A’ for effort. All I said during the campaign we’d do, we’ve set out to do.

“I’d give us an ‘A-’ for performance. We haven’t gotten all we wanted. We’re still unclear about what the obligations incurred by the previous administration are going to cost. It’s hard to put the numbers together, and I like to be definitive about these things.”

Hannemann insists that he’s not whining about the administration of Mayor Jeremy Harris: “I’m just being factual.” He points to Brunch on the Beach and the Sunset on the Beach as two Harris programs he intends to continue.

“They both have good, wholesome benefits to the community.” Hannemann cites specifically the recent salute to the military at Wahiawa’s Sunset in the Park.

But Hannemann believes that private companies and organizations rather than the city should pay for them. He admits that finding those sponsors constitutes “a major sales job.”

He also mentions the trees planted by the Harris administration on Kuhio Avenue as an example of a program he just wants to make better. “Too many were planted, and I don’t want to compromise public safety,” he says. “The Outdoor Circle agreed with me.”

That said, the Hannemann-appointed city auditor came out with two reports last week, one of which blamed the Harris administration for redirecting city transportation workers to assist with the Sunset in the Park events, taking them away from the more important task of filling potholes on city streets.

In his 2004 campaign for mayor, Hannemann emphasized the need to forego new park construction, movies in the parks and tree-planting for pothole filling and sewer repair. To fill the potholes and repair the sewers, Hannemann sold the City Council on raising the vehicle weight tax and doubling sewer fees.

He dismisses the suggestion that he should be known as “taxes and fees Hannemann.”

“Call me ‘pragmatic Hannemann.’ The people want the basic services done, and the bills have to be paid. I remain a fiscal conservative. But the era of robbing Peter to pay Paul is over around here. Taxes and fees raised for specific purposes will be spent for those specific purposes. The Council understands that. I went to them, explained what we’re doing, and they approved.”

Hannemann did not initially enter politics ambitious to fill potholes and repair sewers. He began as a prestigious White House Fellow, working for a year as an intern to then Vice President George H. W. Bush. There he caught a bad case of Potomac fever.

The disease led to his first run for political office in 1986. Hannemann wanted Washington, so he bypassed the normal entry-level political offices — the state Legislature and the City Council — and ran for the first district congressional seat vacated by Cec Heftel’s run for governor in 1986. Hannemann won the Democratic primary election but lost the general to Republican Pat Saiki.

Four years later, after a stint working for C. Brewer and Company on the Island of Hawaii, Hannemann ran for Congress again, this time for the second district seat vacated by Dan Akaka’s run for the United States Senate. He lost a close Democratic primary to Patsy Mink.

Hannemann finally found electoral success on the city level. In 1994 he won a City Council seat from the Eighth District which includes Aiea and Pearl City. He easily won re-election in 1998, but in 2000 he chose to challenge incumbent Mayor Jeremy Harris.

Harris beat him handily.

As Harris prepared for a gubernatorial race in 2002, Hannemann did the same for the special Honolulu mayoral race to fill the rest of Harris’s term. Scandal forced Harris to withdraw from the gubernatorial contest and serve out the rest of his term. Hannemann, in turn, had to sit out the 2002 electoral season.

Today Hannemann contends that his early interest in Washington, national affairs and Hawaii’s place in the world serves him well in Honolulu Hale. “I’m a mayor who understands Hawaii’s role in the global context,” he says. “I can help the state achieve its international objectives.

“Honolulu is the 12th largest city in the country. We represent 75 percent of the state’s tax base, 75 percent of its population. To use a basketball analogy, Honolulu’s the Shaquille O’Neal of Hawaii. If we play well, the state does well. I intend to make good use of my Washington and business connections.”

Hannemann acknowledges that his first six months in office have been comparatively quiet ones. “There’s not been a lot of ground-breaking, not a lot of ribbon-cutting as with the previous administration,” he says. “But I’m taking care of business.We’re doing the repair and maintenance; we’re doing what needs to be done. And I don’t think voters have ever seen a governor and Honolulu mayor working together better that Gov. Lingle and myself.”

Certainly one reason for the quiet at Honolulu Hale is the good relationship Hannemann has established between himself and members of the City Council.

“He’s doing well,” says Council Finance Chair Ann Kobayashi. “He laid everything on the table, showed us that the city was in trouble financially and that we would have to raise sewer fees.

“That was refreshing. The whole budget cycle this year was so much easier. We’d ask Hannemann’s directors questions, and we’d get answers back in a week. With the previous administration it would take weeks, months, years.”

Last fall, Gary Okino, the former city planner who succeeded Hannemann as Eighth District councilman, worked hard for Hannemann’s opponent, Duke Bainum. But now he’s a convert.

“I’m pleasantly surprised,” says Okino. “Mayor Hannemann’s doing very well. I supported Duke because I thought he would do the right thing as mayor, without consideration for his personal ambitions or someone else’s agenda.

“And Hannemann is trying to do the right things. Instead of hiding the city’s problems, he looking at issues objectively and doing what must be done.

“I’m impressed by a number of things. His appointees, for example. They’re well-qualified for the jobs they have. The mayor himself is willing to look at things objectively and make hard decisions about raising taxes and fees. I liked the way he looked at the sewer situation, acknowledged that we had to fix them, and proposed the fee increases to do it. We had deferred that sewer work for years.”

Okino credits Hannemann for a lean capital improvement budget: “It was really prudent. Unglamorous, but we have to be. Harris incurred a lot of debt on glamorous things, and a lot of necessary things were deferred. Sewer and roadways were deferred for new parks and beautifying roadways. We’ve got a bigger bill now just to catch up.”

Even Fourth District Councilman Charles Djou, the lone Republican on the nonpartisan Council and the only member to vote against the mayor’s budget, thinks highly of Hannemann. “By and large, I think he’s doing a good job. It’s much easier to talk to Hannemann and his staff than it was to his predecessor, and I’m very happy about that. In my mind, he hasn’t made any missteps thus far.”

Djou acknowledges that Hannemann’s administration hasn’t put forth any “bold policy initiatives, but it’s tough to be a bold mayor when you don’t have any money.” As a believer in small government, Djou admits a certain fear that Hannemann may just be “riding out the storm until there’s enough money” to initiate some big spending projects.

“I also disagree with his decision to immediately reach for the lever of increasing taxes and fees,”adds Djou. But in the next breath he calls Hannemann’s cabinet appointments “exceptional, capable people.”

To what does Hannemann attribute his good relations with the City Council?

“I was there once,” he says. “And I’m just treating the members of the Council the way I wanted to be treated when I was there. I regard them as co-leaders of the city, and I want to run a very open, transparent administration.

“If there are disagreements between us, I’m going to give them advance notice of where I disagree. We’re not going to fight it out in the press. The public’s tired of that.”

If Hannemann faces a problem with the Council, it’s that “some of them still think we’re acting the way the previous mayor did, that we’re not sharing information — that the same thing is happening. No, it’s not. And it won’t.”

Hannemann seems determined to succeed. “I’ve wanted this job for a long time,” he admits. “And I’m finally in a position where I can make things happen. As a councilmember you have to wait. But as mayor, I’m able to make important decisions.”

The job has its downside. Hannemann and his wife, Gail, endured a spate of publicity when Gail received a speeding ticket and Hannemann called Chief of Police Boisse Correa to talk about the incident.

“Gail’s very akamai politically,” says Hannemann. “She knows we live our lives in a fishbowl, that everything we do is magnified. And she’s very career-oriented herself. She’s the CEO of the Girl Scout Council of Hawaii and active in the Hawaii Alliance of Arts Organizations.”

Certainly the most difficult issue currently facing the city is traffic, and Hannemann has come out strongly in support of raising the excise tax a half-percent to fund mass transit. “I put in a lot of work to position that bill to get it through the Legislature,” he says. “And I’ve listened to the critics of a rail system, but I’m not convinced that there’s an alternative to rail. I favor a multi-modal approach: bus, rail, a ferry system, reversing the traffic flow. There’s got to be choices. I’ve never argued everyone would get out of their cars and get into a train.”

It remains unclear whether Gov. Linda Lingle will sign the excise tax increase. Says Hannemann: “No one wants to raise taxes, but I think it would be a huge mistake if she vetoes it.”

At six months, Mufi Hannemann himself hasn’t made any huge mistakes — not even any little ones of note. If there’s a criticism of his performance out there, it’s that — in the words of one Honolulu Hale observer — “he dumps every ounce of blame on somebody else, usually former Mayor Jeremy Harris.”

But the same critic notes that Hannemann’s “politically adroit. He’s really, really good at the politics of words — right up there with Frank Fasi. He hasn’t done much yet, but there is a sense that he’s grabbed the reins of government and that he’s doing fine.”

Honolulu’s press, at this point, certainly likes Hannemann. In part, he owes his success with them to his predecessor — and to the present governor. Jeremy Harris attempted to manage the press as closely as he did every other aspect of life at Honolulu Hale. Access to the mayor and department heads was often difficult — and Harris was loath ever to admit an error.

Over at the state Capitol, Gov. Lingle relies heavily on communications director Lenny Klompus. Working reporters in both the print and electronic media frequently complain of the state administration’s attempts to spin every story to its own advantage.

Hannemann exercises no such control over press access. Want to talk to a department head? Call him, her — them. The mayor may grumble at what his subordinate says on the nightly news, but — to at least this point — he’s not restraining members of his administration.

And Hannemann himself?

At six months, he’s a hugger — not a spinner.