The Pacific Resource Partnership is pushing the “pay-to-play” button once again, this time with a petition.

PRP just circulated an email to its followers asking them to sign up to stop the pay-to-play culture in Hawaii.

There’s no real plan outlined in the request. It just sends people interested in signing the petition to Read Ben’s Record, a PRP website designed to discredit former Hawaii Gov. Ben Cayetano who is running for mayor on an anti-rail platform.

Here’s a link to the petition.

PRP, of course, wants the $5.26 billion steel-on-steel rail project to move forward. The group is a partnership between the Hawaii Carpenters Union and local contractors.

The petition request comes from Tad Ono, who calls himself a retired engineer who contends he saw the “abuse of pay-to-play under Gov. Cayetano.” Ono recently wrote an op-ed for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. (Subscription required.)

Cayetano has decried the attacks on him by PRP, and has even begun running his own ads to combat the knocks against his character.

Pay-to-play has become a central theme in the 2012 primary. The idea behind pay-to-play — which is illegal — is that individuals who give to a candidate’s campaign are then awarded with lucrative government contracts.

—Nick Grube