 I'm Rusty Kamori and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Putahoe Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. This show is based on my books Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game, which many people find inspiring and motivating, and helps you keep the right mindset in dealing with life's challenges. My special guest today is a first-time candidate for Senate in District 25. She is Christina Kim-Marshall, and today we are going Beyond Politics. Hey, Christina, welcome to Beyond the Lines. Welcome, Aloha. Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor and a pleasure to be on your show this morning. Christina, tell me a bit about your background growing up. Yeah, sure. My family's been in Hawaii since the 1960s. My grandmother on my mom's side is from South Korea, and my grandfather was a contractor in Korea during the Korean War, and he met her there, and he was also a pilot. So growing up, my mom would go to Japan on an airplane to get a doll, and even when they moved to Hawaii when she was about six years old, he used to fly out of islands, and that was really fun for my mom. And my dad, he grew up in Northern California, and he moved here when he was a teenager, but his grandfather was a big contractor in San Francisco and built homes for celebrities and laid some of the original sidewalks down in San Francisco. And my grandfather's sister, my great aunt, was friends with Walt Disney. So sometimes we would go to her house in Newport Beach during Christmas and just watch the boats, and family was always a big thing for me growing up. And in Hawaii, I went to Kameke and Kaiser High School, so I'm a public school graduate. I also went to the Scheidler College of Business and studied economics and international business. I was also recruited by the CIA in college, but I chose to stay at home and serve my community here. Wow. And Christina, Walt Disney, that's a great friend to have. Yeah. Well, you know, as a kid, you don't know any different, but you know, if you have, you know, certain connections, you know, you just, you know, love your family and have fun. But my dad, he used to be able to go to Disneyland whenever he wanted because of his aunt was friends with him. So Christina, you have a beautiful family, you know, and you have a sister. And tell me about how your parents met. Oh, sure. Thank you. Well, it's interesting. They met when they were around 20, they were disco dancing with their friends at the Sheraton Waikiki. Apparently, my dad says that my mom was quite a disco dancer, which really surprised me. But, you know, they had a lot of fun, you know, when they were dating before they had me and my sisters. Oh, that's interesting to hear. I like hearing that. And Christina, I know that you participated in a pageant before. Tell me about what pageant it was and what did you learn from that experience? Yes. Thank you. Well, when I came back from Japan where I studied abroad, I was introduced to some pageant directors and I never thought I would compete in a pageant. I was pretty shy. But I competed in the Miss Universe system and the Miss America system. Oh, there I'm pictured as Miss Oahu. And I had the platform of, because community and public service is very important to the pageant systems and, you know, it gives depth to the candidates and, you know, it shows that we care about our community. And my platform was helping homeless families with children. And I would volunteer at the homeless shelters and in the tent communities, bring food and clothes and, you know, I would go in groups and we would, you know, play with the kids, talk with the families. And I've spent Christmases at the Next Step homeless shelter making dinner for the homeless families, bringing wrapped toys for the children. And it's always been a passion for me to serve others. I know that you do a ton of volunteer work and that's very impressive, Christina. And I want to ask you, you know, you're a first time candidate for Senate District 25. Yes. What's the reasons? What compelled you to want to run for office? Yes. Thank you. I have a question that I get asked quite frequently because it is, it's like jumping off a cliff going after an elected office, especially if you've never run before. It's a big task and I feel so honored to have this opportunity because I'm learning and growing so much. But I really decided to take this leap of faith and jump off the cliff to run for office because I saw a need. I've been seeing that all of the major issues in our community, the homelessness, the cost of living, the public schools, lack of affordable housing, they've all been getting greater and not worse. And in fact, before COVID, we had the second highest homeless rate per capita in the nation after New York. Our public school system gets the top third funding in the nation, but we have the bottom test scores and quality as far as the rankings. We're ranked about 45th in the nation and our cost of living is extremely high. Our cost of goods is about 30% higher than the national average. Our electricity is about 300% higher than the national average. And there's just a big lack of affordable housing as well. And there's so many promises of these new projects, like condos in town that promised affordable housing. But when we look at the details, it's not really affordable housing. It's more of a facade. So I really think we need to be responsible with the issues that hand and tackle those and not be distracted. Like I feel that our government has been very distracted by side projects and not focused on the main issues that our community is concerned about. Well, Christina, you know, a lot of people tend to, you know, talk and complain about problems and stuff. And you're trying to create action. I mean, I like that. It's very impressive that you want to do something about it. You want to try to improve Hawaii. Yes. Tell me, and I know you have a lot of supporters and tell me about how the campaign experience is going for you so far. Yes. Thank you, Rusty. I'm so grateful for each and every one of my supporters and every hour and minute they give me of their time and encouragement. Because campaigning is a 24-7 task. Ever since I filed my papers in A, that's been my life. I think live and breathe campaign life and my supporters have been kind of like the lifeblood of my campaign. They're what keeps me going and they inspire me and they help me so much. And yeah, they give me whatever extra time they can and their skills. Every individual has unique skills and abilities. And you really learn to value everybody for their strengths when you're running a campaign because that's where you get the most help when people can offer what their strengths are. Well, Christina, that's very impressive. I mean, campaigning is tough work. And I know that there was a parade for you. Can you tell me about that? Oh, yes. So one of my campaign members, she's a retired teacher and she's been a campaign manager in the past about 10 years ago. But she told me a couple of weeks ago, Christina, you see all these conways and parades around the island for different causes. You need to have one for your campaign. I was like, okay, that sounds like a lot of work to coordinate. But I think that would be a great idea. So I was calling and texting and finding people. There's me in the convertible. People that'd be interested in helping with this. I thought it'd be so fun and a great way to be in front of the voters and the residents in my community because we can't really go door to door right now because of COVID, unfortunately. So campaigning this year is unprecedented because we can't meet everybody face to face. But yeah, during that parade, I wanted one convertible to sit in the back. So it'd be easy for people on the side of the road or in their cars to see me and I'd be able to connect and wave with them. And then I ended up getting three convertibles. So that was really nice that I got what I wanted. And it was a lot of fun. So we drove, we started in Enchanted Lakes and then we drove all around Kaila Loop. Then we drove in Kailua around Lanikai down to Kalaheo High School and through Kailua Town. We drove through Mauna Wale. Then we drove all the way through Waimanalo. Then we drove to Hawaii Kai. And then we drove through the shopping areas in Hawaii Kai as well. And then we came back to Waimanalo, but we drove through Sandy Beach first. And there was a lot of really encouraging, happy, energetic people along the way. And we were out for I think two and a half hours in the midday sun. So it was great. I enjoyed it so much. Nothing wrong with having three convertibles. That's for sure. And Christina, you definitely go beyond the lines. In my books, I talk about making an impact, you know, having the power of choice, but also leadership. What do you, what do you feel the best leaders do, Christina? I feel, yeah, I just want to mention, I think that's so amazing that you're author of multiple books and that you're so inspirational and you're a great leader. I think that a great leader shows respect to others, treats everyone equally and listens to people. I think a good leader is a good team player and they make everyone feel valuable and special. And the first of all, a good leader needs to be able to lead themselves. So if they can, you know, take care of theirself and handle theirself in a respectable manner, you know, that will, you know, go down to the rest of the team. But a good leader, I believe, is a good team player. I like hearing those answers there, Christina. And let's get into some of the issues that's important to you and our community. What are your thoughts about rail? Sure. Well, I've spoken to someone who knows a lot about engineering and the rail. He's a professor at UH, he's an engineer originally from Athens and he has shared to extent that rail is not a good idea for Hawaii and I feel the same way. We've already spent $9.6 billion on the rail. It was supposed to be $1 billion, then I think it was $3 billion, then it was $4 billion. Now we're at $9.6 billion, they want more and more money to go to Alamoana, but I don't think it's really going to bring the solution that people want, which is to reduce traffic. Because people think, well maybe other people will ride it, but no one I know are saying they're going to ride it, plus the rail needs 100,000 riders per day to break even an operating cost, otherwise they're going to have to subsidize the operating cost with taxpayer money. So also to maximize the ridership in the rail, they decided to take out all the seats. So there's no seats in the rail, which wouldn't make sense for Alamoana children or elderly to ride. As far as I know, they still have no plans of installing restrooms at the rail stations, which doesn't make sense either. And I believe that if anything, we need to stop it at Middle Street because at least there we have the main bus station, the bus depot. So people can get to Alamoana or to Waikiki on these express buses from Middle Street because we have the big transit system there. But if we go to Alamoana, it's really going to be a nightmare for so many reasons. And if the rail went double over budget through the cornfields on the west side, it's going to be three or four times over budget through the urban core of Honolulu because we're going to be messing with and having to dig up the lava rock foundations of all these high rises, the electrical lines, sewer lines, all of that. Plus we saw what happened when the rail was doing construction through the Pearl City, Pearl Ridge area. All of these businesses were really suffering, losing business left and right. And they were going after the state to get more money, their lost income. So I don't think that that is a good solution. I like hearing your insights and I was thinking about it too and I was just thinking that maybe the rail should end at Aalapark because at least you get to the edge of downtown and then from there you can take the bus or whatever. But man, the increase in cost is crazy and I want to ask you this, Christina, what are your ideas to revive our economy? Yeah, thank you. Well, I think that first and foremost, we need to be responsible with the funds that we have. We need accountability and we need to sit down and look at the budget and we also need to find all of the missing monies in slush funds that are kind of like black holes because there's a lot of special funds people don't know at the Capitol where exactly the money is. Plus, I feel like our politicians have just been spending money left and right like it grows on trees and I don't want to say, well, they may maybe think that because a lot of our politicians have gone to private school and Ivy League colleges and nothing wrong with that, but I think that someone made this analogy like if we have the money to only go to McDonald's or make spaghetti for dinner, but we're going to Ruth's crisp for dinner because that's what we want. That's not being responsible or frugal with our money or living within our means and then it also goes to investing in the rail $9.6 billion already when we're short on licensed mental health professionals so my opponent's solution to that is, oh, we're short on licensed mental health professionals, so we should just release these criminals that have committed the felonies onto the street because we don't have enough mental health professionals to take care of them, things like that, and with the public schools and the homeless issues, I mean, it's insurmountable. We need to focus, laser focus on what's important and also I think that we have a lot of room to grow for technology. I was speaking with one of my economics professors who's been teaching economics in Hawaii since 1975 and he was talking about how Hawaii has tried to diversify through economy through agriculture, but because of economies of scale and how much it costs to export, we've had limited success with macadamia nuts, cocoa, cacao, chocolate, and coffee. I think it's great and important for us to increase our food security through agriculture because we import 90% of our food and at one point the Hawaiian islands was self-sustaining in their food and they had just about as many residents as we do now but we need to think outside of the box. We need to be innovative and I love your show's name, think tekawaii. We need to keep our talent here and we also need to create more talent. And I feel like where I know knowledge is power and knowing that our public school system is ranked 45th in the nation in terms of test scores and quality and UH Canada shows that about 70% of the public school graduates in Hawaii need remediation in math, English, science when they go into the University of Hawaii schools that shows me that we're not preparing our local kids for college, not even the local university let alone trying to go to a mainland university that most of them are harder to get in. So we need to encourage creativity and innovation in our local people and give them the freedom to create and to grow our economy because that's what it takes. It takes smart, intelligent, brave, creative people to grow our economy and I think that's what we need. And I'm like Rick Bland, you already have said and I admire him on his interview that it's not all about me. Like I have a team of people that are very intelligent and creative and innovative around me to help me create ideas and brainstorm and support me while I'm in office. And I have good friends who are doctors, nurses, very successful business owners in Hawaii, economists, just all kinds of people who are just wonderful and of course family people and people that help the homeless too. So it's just a wide variety of people that I have as well pouring into me that I know that we can work together as a team to make Hawaii and our community a better, healthier, thriving place. Christine, I like hearing those ideas from you and I want to ask you this. What's a big adversity that you dealt with in your life that you had to overcome? Sure. Definitely my parents' divorce was a big adversity that I had to overcome as it probably is with most young children, but the family is a place where a child gets their identity, feels stable and secure and is able to grow and thrive. And when that foundation, I want to say, is disrupted, then a child's internal kind of radar and identity are thrown off kilter and just having to find out who I am and be stable and secure and confident in who I am as an individual was definitely a struggle after the divorce because you question what's true, who can you trust, what's right and wrong, am I safe, what could happen next? So you get anxiety from that too. And so I can't emphasize how important I think the family unit is and it's like a team and just encouraging each other. And I know some people, maybe they don't have strong families, but they find like Hanai families, Hanai sisters, Hanai aunts, Hanai moms, and they get that support system and they have that security to be themselves and thrive. So Christina, looking back on your short life so far, what's a valuable lesson you learned? Well, I think that's a great question. I think that over and over I see and as I mentioned before, what I think is important to be a good leader is to be a good team player. And I think that a valuable lesson that keeps coming up for me is teamwork and community and how important it is to not only surround yourself with the right people who believe in you and build you up, but to also be able to pour into others and to be a part of the community and care about your whole community and the issues in your community. And I mean, the homeless, the kids that are coming from broken families that go to boys and girls club, big brothers, big sisters, there's so many needs, but just being a part of the community and just understanding people and accepting them where they're at is huge because we don't know what other people have been through and we need to able to lift each other up and not take things personally. Some people will that have been through a lot of pain, lash out at you, but getting defensive and attacking them is not going to be the solution. We need to care for each other and find the solutions to the problems. Yeah, attacking and complaining and gossiping and being negative, that might feel a little relief for the moment to vent, but that's not solution-based, that's not going to change the problem, it's just going to make you more upset. So I think a positive attitude and just being part of the solution as you said is really, really important because yeah, I hear so many people's frustrations about the community, about the politicians, but who's really willing to step up and do something, invest time and put the walk to their talk, it's a much smaller percentage than I would have thought originally. No, and Christina, you know what I always say is decisions must be based on reason, not emotion, just to kind of follow up on what you were talking about there. I want to ask you, Christina, who's the leader that you admire? Yes, thank you. My grandmother on my dad's side, I would say she was a very strong woman. She passed away at 93 in 2017. She grew up in South Dakota, where they have the famous Corn Palace, and the palace is actually made out of corn, they have Mount Rushmore, but when she turned 18, she moved to Washington DC to meet her older sister who was already there. They ran an office there during World War II, and apparently her and her sister knew the ins and outs of running that office, and they did a really, really amazing job. And then she moved to Northern California, where she met my grandfather, and she worked really hard being a homemaker, and she was always a strong woman who didn't complain about anything, but she just did it. And even when my grandfather passed away, she helped with me and my sisters, and she was a leader, not only in our family, but in the community. People talk about how they looked up to her like a second mother after their mother's passed away, and she would even take me to local political rallies when I was in college and my early career years, and I'd have fun with her and her friends, but I think she is some of the inspiration why I slowly got into politics. Well, that's good to hear, Christina. I always say that parents are leaders, and I like that you mentioned your grandmother. I want to thank you, Christina, for taking time to be on the show today so people can get to know you. I mean, you have a lot of great, fresh ideas, and I wish you the best on your Senate run very shortly. Thank you. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. For more information, please visit RustyKamori.com, and my books are available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I hope that Christina and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha.