Oahu will continue to hold all the at-large seats on the Board of Trustees for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, according to final returns Tuesday that showed the sole neighbor island candidate running fourth.
The Oahu dominance continued despite changes made by the 2013 Legislature. For the first time, the at-large and Oahu fields were winnowed down in the primary election, with the top six at-large and the top two on Oahu moving on to the General Election.
The top three winners in a field of six are elected in this race.
Coming in first was incumbent OHA Trustee John D. Waihee, with 128,055 votes, second was incumbent Rowena M.N. Akana, with 114,929 votes and third was Lei Ahu Isa, with 103,671 votes, with all precincts reporting.
The only neighbor island candidate, Mililani Trask of Kurtistown on Hawaii Island, was heading for defeat after coming in fourth with 95,730 votes.
Trustees are elected to their seats for four-year terms, and there is no limit on the number of terms a trustee may serve.
In addition to choosing three candidates for the at-large seat, Hawaii County voters also picked which of two candidates they wanted for the Maui seat.
While there are residency requirements for candidates seeking the district seats, all voters statewide are permitted to vote in each of the OHA races. All Hawaii voters, Hawaiian or not, can vote for candidates and run for the board.
Incumbent Carmen Lindsey was easily winning the Maui seat, garnering 119,101 votes to challenger Mahealani Wendt’s 80,667. Lindsey, the owner of Lindsey Realty and Kahulu Productions and a Maui entertainer, has been on the OHA board since 2012. Wendt is a former executive director of Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation, where she worked from 1978 to 2009.
Trask, who served one term on the OHA board in the late 1990s, is the only neighbor island candidate who has ever won an at-large seat.
“On OHA , there’s a strong, strong bias on Oahu,” Trask said earlier this year.
Waihee, the son of former Gov. John D. Waihee III, has been on the OHA board since 2000. Akana, past president of the Culture and Arts program for Bishop Museum, has been on the OHA board since 1990. Isa is a former state representative and Board of Education member. Akina is president and CEO of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. McInerny is a trustee with Lunalilo Trust and president and CEO of McInerny Financial Group.
OHA’s nine-member board is charged with setting OHA policy and managing the semi-autonomous state agency’s substantial trust for the benefit of OHA beneficiaries. The trust includes more than 28,000 acres of land and $600 million in financial and land assets, according to OHA’s 2013 annual report.
