My mom raised three kids on her own and worked two full time jobs to do it. That was my normal growing up. By the time I got to college, I was working two jobs myself just to pay my own way through. Most of the people I grew up with are still living that exact life right now, holding down two jobs so they can keep renting, knowing they will probably never own a home in the place their families have lived for generations. They spend their whole lives paying someone else’s mortgage and build nothing for their own kids. That is the reality across West Maui, and it was already crushing us before August 2023 took our town. Today I am rebuilding my grandmother’s house on the Lahaina shoreline while so many of my neighbors are still scattered across the island and beyond. I have seen families sleeping in their cars a mile from vacation rentals that sit empty most of the year. I have watched friends I love pack up for Las Vegas because a paycheck actually goes somewhere over there. Every one of those goodbyes is why I am running.
Nobody I know left Hawaiʻi because they wanted to. They left because outside money bought up everything around them and priced them out of their own future. Speculators purchase our land, our housing, and our storefronts, pull the profit out of these islands, and send it somewhere else, while the families who make Hawaiʻi what it is get squeezed until moving becomes the only option left. If we want our people to believe in a future here, we have to put them at the center of the economy instead of on the edges of it. The State should be subsidizing small local businesses the same way it has always found money for outside developers. We should be building grant programs and startup funding for residents with regenerative tourism ideas, farming ventures, and businesses rooted in this place. And we should require every hotel in Hawaiʻi to bring real community and cultural input into how they operate, because our culture and our connection to this ʻāina is exactly what visitors come here for, and only our people can offer it authentically. Billions get extracted from Hawaiʻi every year. Optimism comes back when our own people finally benefit from it.
Our economy pays too little because we built it around a single industry that runs on low wages by design. Fixing that means changing what Hawaiʻi produces and who owns it. A few years back, while I was camped on the beach for Fishing for Housing, I wrote a regenerative tourism policy and worked with Representative McKelvey to turn it into a bill he carried. The whole point is to turn the tourism economy into something that heals our land instead of destroying it. We take the visitor numbers we already have and put that workforce to work restoring the environment, guided by local residents. Ownership stays on the island and in local hands, not outside investors and not outside businesses, so the money flows and stays in Hawaiʻi. Visitors get the authentic Hawaiian experience they actually came for and leave more educated about this place, and our people get real jobs while we revitalize the ʻāina that tourism has spent decades wearing down. It counters exactly what mass tourism destroys. Beyond that model, I would invest in agriculture, renewable energy, and the skilled trades, and I would tie every public subsidy and tax credit to wage standards and local hiring so state dollars buy good jobs instead of cheap ones. Unions lift wages across a whole economy, and I carry the endorsements of ILWU Local 142, HGEA, and UPW because working people know where I stand.
Seventy thousand of our keiki are on track to enter a workforce with no living wage job waiting for them, and I refuse to accept that as a forecast. Rebuilding Lahaina alone will take thousands of skilled workers over the next decade, and every single one of those jobs should belong to somebody raised here. I would expand registered apprenticeships in construction, electrical, plumbing, healthcare, agriculture, and renewable energy, built in partnership with our unions so the training leads somewhere real. Those apprenticeships need to pay, because our families cannot afford years of free labor while rent comes due every month. Career pathways should start in middle school, and UH and our community colleges should be funded based on whether graduates land real careers, not on how many seats they fill. Every large project spending state money should carry local hire and apprenticeship requirements. I worked two jobs to put myself through college, and I want the next generation to have what I never did: one good job that pays enough to build a life here.
Housing costs keep climbing because we let a roof over your head turn into a speculative asset. Too many people treat Hawaiʻi real estate as their business model, and every time a home becomes somebody’s investment instead of somebody’s shelter, our own people get priced further out. Yes, water, infrastructure, and permitting all matter, and I will work on them. But the core problem is that we let outside money compete against local families for a basic human need, and our families lose that fight every time.
We have to prioritize local people in our own housing market. I want to make it far harder and far more expensive for nonresidents to buy homes here, through steep conveyance taxes on nonresident and investment purchases, an empty homes tax on units held vacant while our people sleep in cars, owner occupancy requirements on new development, and first refusal windows that let local buyers bid before a property ever hits the open market. People will call any of this discrimination against the wealthy. I call letting the rich outbid working families for shelter the real injustice. Protecting a local family’s shot at a home in their own homeland is not discrimination. It is survival, and government exists to make it possible
A home in Hawaiʻi should belong to somebody who lives in it. Every unit we build for local families needs a mechanism that keeps it local, because without one, speculation swallows it within a decade and we start over from nothing. I support owner occupancy requirements on new development, long duration deed restrictions, and first refusal for Hawaiʻi residents. I support steep conveyance taxes on nonresident and investment purchases with the revenue going straight into affordable housing, and an empty homes tax that makes hoarding vacant units unprofitable. Community land trusts should hold land permanently so a home stays affordable through every resale, not just the first. Off island buyers treat our neighborhoods like a stock portfolio while three generations of a local family crowd under one roof a block away. I watched it my whole life in Lahaina, and I watched it get worse after the fire. Anyone who wants to buy here as an investment can pay for the privilege, and they should never stand ahead of a local family in line.
We cannot build the housing our people need until we heal the land that is supposed to support it. The reason projects stall on water and infrastructure is that we spent a century diverting streams, paving watersheds, and letting plantations and developers degrade the systems that once held water for all of us. Fallow former plantation land now grows invasive grasses that dry out, burn, and strip the soil, which is exactly what fed the fire that took Lahaina. So building faster starts with restoring streams to healthy instream flows, replanting native forest in our watersheds so the aquifers actually recharge, and returning fallow land to living, water holding use. Once we stop starving our own water sources, the infrastructure math changes. From there I would push enforceable permitting deadlines, third party plan review to clear backlogs, and state support for county permitting staff, because a home delayed three years costs a family three years of rent they never get back. The State should also build directly on land it already owns through HHFDC and DHHL, and fund DHHL until the waitlist actually shrinks. In Lahaina I am living this, rebuilding my grandmother’s home while my neighbors wait scattered across the island. We rebuild by healing the ʻāina and housing our people in the same motion.
We live on some of the most fertile land on earth and import almost everything we eat, and every food dollar we ship off island inflates our prices and drains our economy. The deeper problem is environmental. We let plantations strip the soil, divert the water, and leave the land degraded and dry, so now growing food here is harder than it should be. I want Hawaiʻi feeding Hawaiʻi again, and that starts with the land itself. Protect ag land from speculative conversion, restore water to our streams and small farmers through honest instream flow standards, rebuild soil health, and fund the processing and distribution that lets a Maui farmer reach a Maui kitchen. Healthy land holds water, grows food, and resists fire, so this work feeds our people and protects them at the same time. My regenerative tourism model puts visitors to work planting food crops and restoring the environment while that harvest comes back to residents. Near term, I would expand DA BUX so SNAP dollars stretch twice as far on local produce and strengthen farm to school so our keiki eat what our ʻāina grows. Every acre we bring back to life lowers a grocery bill and cools a fire risk.
Twenty four thousand dollars a year for infant care costs more than tuition at UH, and it quietly forces parents, usually mothers, out of the workforce. My mom raised three of us alone on two jobs, so I know what families give up when care costs more than a paycheck. Hawaiʻi should treat childcare like the essential infrastructure it is. I support expanding public preschool toward universal access with real facility funding so classrooms exist where families actually live, because West Maui families often have no licensed option within a reasonable drive. The subsidy cliff punishes parents for earning slightly more, so I would raise eligibility until working families genuinely qualify. And we have to fix the other side: childcare workers earn poverty wages, which drives the turnover and closures that strand parents, so I support wage supplements and training pathways for early educators. I would streamline licensing and offer startup grants for family childcare homes and ʻohana based care, which fits how our communities have always raised children. When parents can afford to work, families rise.
I would take the general excise tax off food and medicine. Hawaiʻi runs one of the most regressive tax structures in the country, taxing a struggling family’s groceries and a kupuna’s prescriptions with the same hand that goes easy on speculation. Exempting food and medical care puts money back in every local family’s pocket immediately, at the register, with no application and no waitlist. I would replace that revenue by taxing what actually harms us: higher conveyance taxes on nonresident and investment property purchases, an empty homes tax on units held vacant while our people sleep in cars, and progressive rates at the very top. A mother buying rice and a speculator buying his fourth condo should never feel the tax code the same way, yet today ours asks proportionally more from her than from him. I would also make the refundable food excise and earned income credits permanent and larger so relief reaches renters and low wage workers directly. Our tax system takes the most from the people holding the least, and reversing that is the fastest relief the Legislature can deliver.
I ran our family business here, so I know firsthand how hard Hawaiʻi makes it on a small local operator. Permits drag on, the rules pile up, and the costs hit the little guy hardest while big outside firms with lawyers and lobbyists absorb it all and win anyway. I do not pretend to have every fix worked out, and I would rather be honest about that than hand you a list of buzzwords. What I know for certain is the direction. Government should make it easier and cheaper to start and run a business that is owned by and rooted in Hawaiʻi, and harder for outside money to come in, extract, and leave. That means cutting the delays and duplication that punish small operators, steering state contracts toward local firms instead of the biggest mainland bidder, and getting real capital into the hands of local, Native Hawaiian, and immigrant entrepreneurs who never get a fair look. I would work closely with our local business owners to learn exactly where the system fails them, because they know better than any consultant. One thing I will not do is trade away worker protections or our environment to call it progress, because our ʻāina is the foundation everything else stands on.
When only one in five residents trusts government, the problem sits with government, not the people. Trust breaks down because government makes itself unapproachable. It sits above the community instead of inside it, behind procedures built for insiders, not regular families. The other half is money. Outside interests come in, and the few with the most of it make the big decisions while thousands of community members say something completely different. I have watched it happen on Maui more than once, people pack the room and testify, and get overruled anyway. Hawaiʻi took a real stand in 2026 with the first law in the country built to get around Citizens United, stripping corporations of the power to spend on our elections. That is a strong first step, and we have to keep going. The deeper fix is for government to come down to face level and be part of the community. I would hold regular neighborhood meetings, show up when no cameras are around, publish every vote with my reasoning, and create real civic education so people understand how their own government works. I also support finishing the ethics reforms our Legislature started after two lawmakers went to prison for bribery, ending the gut and replace trick, and opening the Legislature to real sunshine and recorded votes. Our people deserve leaders who answer to them between elections, not just during them.
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