New rules are being proposed by Hawaii County Democratic Party officials to select candidates to fill legislative vacancies after a text message between district officers showed the outcome prior to Saturday’s vote of candidates for the House seat vacated by
New rules are being proposed by Hawaii County Democratic Party officials to select candidates to fill legislative vacancies after a text message between district officers showed the outcome prior to Saturday’s vote of candidates for the House seat vacated by the death of Rep. Clift Tsuji.
The candidates list is sent to Gov. David Ige to pick a nominee to fill Tsuji’s two-year term. Tsuji, of Hilo, died of a heart attack Nov. 15, after his re-election to the seat he had since 2004.
Ige said Tuesday evening he won’t intervene in the local selection of the three candidates to fill the seat.
“It’s purely an internal process to the Democratic Party,” Ige, a Democrat, said during a telephone interview. “They can establish any procedure they want.”
Three rules are being proposed: forbidding candidates from voting for themselves, barring discussions by selectors about favored candidates prior to the public interviews and votes and making the district chairman a nonvoting member.
Hawaii County Democratic Party Chairman Phil Barnes said Wednesday he’ll introduce the first two changes to the rules for filling vacancies during a planned meeting of the county party committee in mid- to late January in Hilo. The rules then would have to be approved at a county convention, and then the state party convention.
A dustup in a West Hawaii district race resulted in the party changing its rules in 2014 to require the interview and vote process to be open to the public.
Barnes acknowledged enforcing the second proposed rule is “easier said than done,” but “nobody’s happy about the perception of what’s taken place, obviously.”
He reiterated that no rules were violated in the most recent selection process.
The third rule was proposed by District 2 Chairman Micah Alameda, whose text message exchange with Vice Chairman Derek Inaba sparked an outcry from losing candidates. Alameda said the district chairman is in charge of accepting candidates and organizing their information and coordinating the interviews and votes.
“I was wearing two hats,” Alameda said Wednesday. “So I asked, how can we make this process less political?”
The selection process was called into question after Alameda and Inaba exchanged text messages the night before the Saturday vote apparently confirming the winning candidates — Moana Kelii, Stacy Higa and Chris Todd — in the order they ultimately were selected after public interviews and votes of district party representatives.
Barnes said Wednesday that the process that was followed was within the rules, even if the appearance of a predetermined outcome was “unfortunate.”
“It’s clear no rules were broken,” Barnes said. “It looks terrible. … (but) I’m not seeing any kind of fixed outcome.”
Two candidates for the seat, former county councilmen Dennis “Fresh” Onishi and J Yoshimoto, didn’t attend the interviews after learning about the text exchange. Onishi asked state Democratic Party Chairman Tim Vandeveer to investigate, he said Wednesday.
“It’s going to be up to the state party, just to investigate and see if it was fair and transparent,” Onishi said.
Vandeveer has been traveling and was unavailable for comment Wednesday.
But Barnes said he ran the situation by several members of the state party rules committee, and they told him no rules were broken.
Kelii and Jonathan Wong are both precinct officers, so they participated as selectors and candidates. Candidates are allowed under the rules to vote for themselves, although in the past some recused themselves from the vote.
Neither Kelii nor Wong returned phone messages by press time Wednesday.
Kelii, who ran unsuccessfully this year for Onishi’s open council seat, was a clear favorite for the House seat, according to representatives for two factions involved in the vote. She took 12 votes.
After her, the two sides differed.
Higa, a former two-term County Council member who unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2008, had seven votes to Wong’s five. Wong, who lost in the Democratic primary to Tsuji, was the progressive faction’s favorite.
Todd, a political newcomer and son of longtime Democratic Party stalwart Bobby Jean Leithead Todd, eked out the third spot over Wong, 6-5. Laura Acasio, another progressive candidate, was the other losing candidate.
Meanwhile, Ige said he hasn’t received the list of candidates, but when he does, he’ll follow his regular procedure of interviewing and vetting each one before making his selection.
“My process will be like all others,” Ige said. “I will decide on the one who I think will best represent the district.”
Email Nancy Cook Lauer at ncook-lauer@westhawaiitoday.com.
