 Aloha and welcome to today's show the state of the state of Hawaii and we're on Think Tech Hawaii's live streaming network series. Think Tech Hawaii broadcasts from our studio at 1164 Bishop Street at the core of downtown Honolulu and as well it broadcasts through remote connections and we are on remote connections today but I'm your host Stephanie Stoll Dalton for this show. We know very well it's election season nationally and also it's election season in our state of Hawaii. Numerous office seekers are racing to replace the current Honolulu City and County County Mayor Caldwell whose term ends this year. One of the mayoral candidates is our guest today. Businesswoman Chun James is a real estate broker based in Lae on the North Shore. She has extensive civic involvement and is described as an activist and frequent city critic. So we hope to hear more about that. Welcome Mayoral candidate James. Thank you for joining us today. Great. Thank you for joining today and an interview conversation. May I call you Chun in this conversation? Yes please. Yes please. Well I noticed in looking at your work and your campaign that you material I noticed that you describe yourself as an underdog and also as an advocate for good government. So I wanted to ask you if you could talk a little bit about what those mean as branding for your campaign and how you came to decide to label yourself in that way and what does that mean? All right. Yes. Thank you for that question. I am the only candidate who is not accepting donations from lobbies and packs. And as we know through the years our democratic society have been hijacked by big money and big powerful entities and money really plays a big part in any campaign because money can buy you can money can buy you TV campaign money can buy you radio ads and money can buy you even dollar prices to give out. Right. And and certainly but we do understand that the ability to collect a lot of donations especially from lobbies is not a very good democratic process because having a lot of money does not mean that a candidate has a lot of ideas or a candidate has a lot of experience or a candidate has a long record of community environment. Right. So where I'm coming from is that I actually never aspired to be a mayor. I have never thought about it. I never planned for it. Nobody asked me to run for this position. So I am not running for this position to safeguard anybody's interest or position. The reason why I'm running is I feel that 2020 is the year to take the government back. I have been involved at City Hall for over 12 years personally and actively but I have been involved as a community advocate in a lot of issues since I was actually a teenager. So some of the issues that I have always been concerned about is its ability to keep Hawaii Hawaii and to recognize that we are a very small island in the middle of nowhere. And so certain issues has to become very top priorities like food sustainability. Right now as you know we're going through this horrible coronavirus episode and people are actually afraid. Yes and here we say the most remote archipelago in the world out here alone. So you were talking exactly about my next question which was how you came to be involved to decide to run for for mayor this year in this field of candidates. And you said that one of your supports was depending on grassroots goodness and that the grassroots goodness would help you to take the government back as you said. So what what is the grassroots goodness phrase how does what does that mean and and then you've alluded to taking the government back how do those two go together. Right I think the grassroots goodness is people like you and I we have so many people who are working to the tree jobs we have our elder who have to postpone their retirement just to survive and generally people in Hawaii are just really maxed out they max out on their quality of life they are maxed out on having to to again work to the tree jobs just to put food on the table and and we have had that 1% oligarchy in Hawaii control the money and the power and the opportunities for a very long time and people can see it people talk about it just to share with you some of my experiences when we are involved in community issues or or with big issues that concern us like the Honolulu real a lot of us can go to the public meetings and testify and write letters and we can protest and we can do everything that super citizens would do and yet at the very end those citizens concerns and citizens consultation are never taken into consideration in the decision making and that is exactly that that is an issue I'm I'm I was just excited about you're saying that because we've all experienced so much of that and the the frustration of that outcome so how how is your campaign forecasting this is the condition you would like to change but how we how is your campaign helping us understand how you will change it what what do you see as helpful to make that better for us right I think that people need to recognize that for all the candidates that are out there in the running I am a very clear alternative there's a very distinctive alternative that is that I am not a politician in the first place and I am not collecting any donations some packs and lobbies and also there are there are few issues that you and I and the grassroots people are concerned about and that is that includes the ethics commission that includes fiscal responsibility and fiscal prudence and it and it also it also includes taking care of issues like land use the department of planning and permitting and so if you go to my website at votetune.com CHON.com I just placed about eight of them on there and those those are issues that I did not have to hire a polling company or I did not have the hire consultant to tell me oh what are the issues that are affecting people we know because we are in the thick and thin of these issues and again if the public wants to have someone who is one of them and not someone from the one percent or someone with the status quo then I am the one and and we we will certainly represent the residents and I can represent the residents first which is I think residents first because I don't owe anybody anything you know hey well that's that's well stated I um I wonder how um you will respond to questions about the experience that you've already had in government so yes you're an activist an advocate and a civic critic the city's critic constructive criticism thoughtfulness on all those matters that you've fed back on so okay so you know how all of that works and what you can do there and what you have done and your reputation stands on that so now how do you see that lack of government experience actually in the in the elected office not not having so much of that and how can you say you will be able to manage to work through all of the labyrinths that's required to deal with in the government right right so let me let me just share with you a phrase that is going around it's kind of funny but it's kind of true it's that it's sometimes politicians forget to remember that they are the one that caused the problems that they're now trying to solve that they are trying to provide solutions for the problems that they created for us right um I well maybe that may be something like the coronavirus could you talk about how you might do things about that let's say you were in the mayoral ship now what what kinds of things would you do that would help us resolve this matter and keep us all safe yeah I also try to be very careful at this point in time because I am not an elected official and I think that in a time of crisis like this and I consider this a health crisis um I I'd like to really um keep quiet and support our elected leaders the best we can I think that is the the stance that I want to take because when we have too many voices and too many people try too many hands in the pot it gets really confusing but I I believe generally that we are now going the right direction and that we are trying to contain this virus contamination I don't know if you know but I'm from Singapore and so so Singapore actually did the right thing it it actually very quickly it took very quick actions to contain and having said that I'm also aware that the Asian countries like Japan and Korea and Singapore had more experience in this pandemic because they they had to deal with SARS and they had to deal with the swine flu so in a way they had a little more experience than us but but I basically support the current mayor I I support the governor in what they're trying to do and and I'm trying my best to to help especially encourage people to stay home and especially for us to to not go out there and overwhelm the medical facilities all our medical personnel's all our non all our essential workers because we could if we're not careful we could become like New York and that's not a good place to be I happen to have family in New York as well and I and we also have a family member who is just about to go to John Hopkins for his residency so this issue is very close to home for me but I think basically the best thing that we can do as individuals and as families as and communities is to stay home understand that this virus can be contained on our part by washing hands doing personal hygiene as well and just stay home stay home let's let's break the chain of the virus I was going to go back to your question just a little bit earlier question about how how to manage the city I you know actually at one point I honestly thought that we really don't need a mayor we just need to appoint a CEO to manage the city like a business corporation because so much of the issues that our city has now is the fiscal prudence that I see lacking and I have been a real estate broker for 30 years and our profession helps us to to be able to work with so many people hey I don't have to be the smartest person in the group but I've got to have the people who can help me and who can provide a direction and so in that way I and also we actually have about 10 000 very able and capable city workers and what they need is leadership sometimes when I go visit the city hall the the workers will say oh the mayor wanted this or the mayor wanted that and I'm saying no this is not how it should work it's not what the mayor wants and what the mayor doesn't want it is what the public good is and where the public interest is and that's where I'm coming from I I don't know I also read that you do have a secret weapon and I thought to ask you about your secret weapon which was described as the another metaphor of that that that works two different ways and here it's using an uku comb to go through the budget your secret weapon is an uku comb so that you can go through the budget every budget decision to go through it as we say ordinarily with with a fine tooth comb so maybe you could talk about how that works given that your you mentioned the fiscal issues and how important it is to be economical and efficient with the budget even though it's a large budget but there are large demands on it too so how do you use your uku comb to do that I should have brought the uku comb as an object lesson so basically what we're saying is that every major decisions I'm not saying that we're going to be nitpicky and we're going to micromanage everything but I'm saying that for the major decisions we really need to comb through all the expenses with a fine tooth comb and as you say in Hawaii we call that a uku comb it's just it's just to really be careful and to be cognizant and and to just ask a lot of questions for example you know I honestly still cannot get an answer the city spends millions and millions dollars on fixing the road right we repave the road and and I don't understand why when we throw in good money that we cannot receive good product in return in my opinion if the city is going to spend millions and millions of dollars for repaving then it seems to me that our contractors and our vendors should feel so good of their product and that they will give us a warranty right it shouldn't be that when we spend millions and millions on road paving and our roads are just filled with hotholes there's so many but what is do you have what what plans do you have to to address those issues that all of us suffer from and are have daily annoyance with and I'll ask those questions why is it like this so as mayor you have a chance to go in there and try some other approaches what would you do I I don't think it is a secret that everybody doesn't know about and that is that there are a lot of park projects there are a lot of projects that have been wasted and and for example with the Alamoana regional park the mayor spent 1.2 million for a consultant from New York and all it did was this 1.2 million consultant from New York did was just irritate the heck of out of our local residents because obviously he doesn't know the the lifestyle of the local people so it's things like that you know a million here a million there it adds up let me just give you another quick example the Blaisdell center I am someone who thinks that every city should have wonderful and great facilities we need to have great facilities so that it can be a thriving and a successful city but in this case here with the Blaisdell center the mayor has actually spent about 17 million on the Blaisdell center planning designing designing planning designing right and then recently he said that well we're more bored because we don't have the funds well there goes the 17 million and then a few days later he came back I said well I'm not saying that we're going to stop the project then he in turn I think put in about a 45 million budget request for the Blaisdell center so thanks thanks like that and this this type of a scenario is multiplied over and over again so what we're saying is that we need to know what we want we need to be careful we need to look at the budget through a Bukuk home and generally I have found through my years of observation and analyzing city halls a lot of the decisions is not made for the public interest or for the public a lot of decisions seems to be made because a lobbyist is breathing down the truth of the mayor and and that I think that is a problem right there yes a mayor you have got independent of any lobbyist any big interest any any big powerful entity you you have got to be so independent that you're saying yes I will work with everybody and I will listen to everybody but when push come to shove we have got to put our residents first we've got to put the fiscal health of our island first yes yes well that leads into another question I wanted to ask you which was with all of with the portfolio of that's full of goals for the city you know including as you've said you know homeless issues affordable housing the whole Honolulu living wage the independent ethics commission which you've talked to mentioned and providing a capuna cap on property tax all that's a very interesting one and so and your interest in city safety and the social welfare of residents and then of course assisting as you yourself are a small business owner or assisting a small business owners so I wanted to ask you to talk about what are your strategies for managing that huge portfolio you have your who come for the budget and then you've talked about what the issues are and how they ought to be filtered by those that are in power positions to make decisions so with this giant portfolio of critical issues for the city and county and state for that matter what kinds of strategies do you bring to that task that would be presented to you upon your win right I think that's I have actually a man tell me that why do you want to run it is so complicated it's so scary my response to them is it's better ask the public take care of it than we have some special interest and one percent take care of it right it's just it's just as simple as that well that's a model that obviously has developed over time I mean it is a model whether it is ethical or or a copacetic for the people that it's supposedly serving is another question but it is a model so what's a better model for a mayor to work within or create as you might want to do in the office and what what would be some features of that that would be interesting to think about right um let me you know let me just say that a mayor can actually go on a trip for a very long time and the whole city machine was still operate very well so basically a mayor is there to set the direction and I think the culture the culture that a mayor was set as city hall is important so in my estimation we have very capable personnel and work for infrastructure already in place and let me also share with you one of the very kept secret in the city city charter and is that it's the duty of the mayor to promote and to protect the happiness and the welfare and the prosperity of his people in a sustainable way so in that nutshell again there are a few basic parameters that we have to work within and I feel that if we no matter what the issues is no matter what the challenges may be if we work within those parameters we are better off protecting and helping the public good and those are we have got to have a mayor who is not beholden to any special interests we've got to have a mayor who will put the residents first and who is not pressured who is not pressured to siphon projects here siphon funds there siphon consultation job over there it's not that we don't need them we will still need the people who are involved it's just that it will be a different way we are expecting that the money that the city spends the money will produce good results it will not be park projects it will not be just wasteful projects or wasteful fees here and wasteful contract for consultants here it will be very tight you'll be very tight and so so taking care of that fiscal spending part of it and again we are not saying that we will micromanage it manage it we're just saying that the major major spending we will be very careful and then we we we operate in a context of ethic of good ethics and i believe i might have shared with you you know earlier before the phone that we need to have an ethical environment so that it will operate well for everyone for example we are saying that we need a ethical hotline where people can call like in the case of chief k aloha and kathleen k aloha this couple is going to cost the city so much money they have already cost the city a lot of money and and we have to accept that throughout this long journey there were many people who knew what was going on but somehow were afraid you know because maybe they're afraid of retaliation whatever it is they did not say or tell anybody but i believe that a man should be such a person that someone could say that hey hey mayor i think this is not right this is going to cost the city a lot of money in settlements or legal fees and we would certainly provide that kind of a good ethical culture for people to work in i think that that idea of trying to change the culture that but that that's a pretty heavy lift but those are the kinds of things that you can forecast out of your campaign so in your campaign what are the kinds of things that you've you've established there that are are making this point that you are determined to change the culture and have these things work differently and i know you're making the the statement about no um lobbyist contributions and um trying to establish ethics commission i mean there's something these are pieces of that of or these are levers that you can use to move the culture into the place you prefer it to be what what how how are you showing in your campaign that you can do that that you can do that without that government experience going into that the experience you do have and the success you've had with um your work as an advocate that you can make this happen maybe better than somebody out of a big government background so that's right that's that's a good question yeah that's a good question so well actually actually a good friend of mine told me you have got to promote yourself more you got to promote yourself you have so much experience and so much exposure so basically let me say very quickly that that i am a small business woman for over 30 years and and anybody who is involved in small business knows that we do everything and also i have also of course involved in civic affairs for free for all these decades and some of the um experiences i have also include serving on hospital boards and i have been president of a worldwide alumni association where i actually helped set up regional international chapters all over the world and i i'm also involved in business groups and i've also worked with youth and women and children i'm a mother of four eager scouts and so all these life experiences even though it is not structured as a government worker or a politician i believe that now it's time for us to get someone who is not a status quo uh or even a wall street main street type of a person in there i i think there's a big difference living in a one percent atmosphere and living in a 99 percent atmosphere and but obviously you're saying how much you can influence and change and develop outside of bureaucratic structures completely in the the other world of that so those are the kinds of things that are are helpful to understand what the value you bring is to based on these experiences what they mean for your success as a mayor because there's plenty of yeah let me go back to to my profession as a real estate broker again and and and also as a as a free counselor to to people which we do not talk about because a lot of the issues are private but as a real estate broker we consist consistently have to work with people from all levels i actually have clients who travel in private jet planes and i also have clients who struggle to to even qualify for a home and when we have a problem when there's a problem we have to get everyone together to solve that problem and and you know we learn we have learned that we never discriminate and we've learned that we really don't get personal in in problem solving you know we don't have a big egos our main solution is always to just decide okay what are the problems what are the obstacles we have and then step by step we all work together to to offer solutions and then come to a conclusion which is the best solution and and take care of it quickly take care of it quickly because that is how we have been trained and that is how we have been done and and i feel that in in the city sometimes there are just too much politics involved there's just too much politics involved and so i i feel that i am able to work with anybody if you if you see my facebook page someone actually told me that and i have not thought of it that way but someone told me that ho chun james your facebook page you have people from all spectrums and some of them are on the extreme end of each other how do you become friends with so many people and so so my my take is that i was born in singapore i came from a very cosmopolitan background and that my best some of my best childhood friends are muslim hindus termos malay chinese erasians or howlies and and we just play with each other we love each other but we never set up little boxes and terms and profiles and and that is how i have been brought up and so it is always what the issues are and what what we need to attack not like oh you know i i feel i'm a victim in here or that i'm a victim there that that is not of our our style what are some examples from your your your criticisms or your your your advocacy for city government changes or what it is that current uh uh people in off current office holders are doing what are some examples of using all of that capacity that you have that multicultural understanding and participation how how do you how do you use that in the in the work that you do uh with the city now and that you're wanting to transfer over into the more formal role of the executive for honolulu city and council city and county right right i i think the most important thing is that i don't have an ego i don't have a lust for power and i am not looking for money or i'm not looking to exploit that that the office for more money i i can i can assure you that i will not get a second job as a as a bank director for 20 uh 250 000 a year i mean it's not bad i mean you know but i can assure you that that i have an open mind i in fact i actually love to listen to different views because when we listen to diversified views it helps our decision making um just your question um there's one example i could share with you a lot of times the city council will budget certain projects to be done in their districts okay and let me just use our district too because that's where i live i remember our district councilman Ernie Martin he would allocate funds for the district or he would allocate funds for other districts and those funds would be just kept and not be given out because there was something personal going on between those two and it is it is frustrating to us because i think there's pettiness and i don't think that kind of a pettiness shows any good leadership in my opinion my job as a mayor if a certain city council district allocate certain budget for certain project that they need i will be so happy to release the budget as soon as they need it because my job is to help our residents and the city council's residents are also my residents and that is the kind of um paradigm shift that i want to see and that and that this is a public office this is a public office hell so that we can promote the public good and so that we can we can help our residents be a little bit happier to be a little bit more comfortable and a little bit more prosperous incredible intentions and um and and goals to set for your your mayorship and i think uh people can relate to those kinds of examples so that that's very helpful and the more specific they are i think the more helpful they are but your role as one who influences and changes and and that is a very uh um uh daunting task to take that on so i mean i'm just hoping that during your campaigning that you're you're uh forecasting for people to see that you will do that and how you make that transition from the world of your success so far to applying it into the may the mayor's role and uh and having to deal with the bureaucracy and i and um bringing as we say as you talked about before getting that cultural change to occur in a bureaucracy is quite daunting and the kinds of things that you're saying intend you know look that way and could move that way and i think the more information more information on how that would actually work is is helpful great great actually through my years i have had very good relationships with the city workers and some of them have told me information that i shouldn't share uh but basically the way i look at it most of our city workers our personnel they apply for those jobs because they want to be of service to the people and they're very uncomfortable when they're forced to do things that they know shouldn't be done or that they're forced to do things that they know are not in the best interest of the people so i can assure the public and the city workers that i will never force any city worker to do some things that they feel is unethical or is not right for the public interest because that is the reason why i'm running like i've said i i i don't need this job i don't need the salary i don't need the power i don't need the the office to exploit for personal gain the reason why i'm running is because through my years of civic participation outside of city hall and also elsewhere that we see the lack of leadership in the sense that the leadership of the city in in the leadership of the office of the mayor should really be focused on what the city charter says and the city's charter says that that it is a responsibility of the mayor to promote and to protect the welfare and the happiness and the prosperity of its inhabitants it's an inhabitants but i think residence is a better word and to to do in such a manner that it's sustainable and it protect our resources because we have not talked about promoting farmlands and saving our agricultural lands and not cementing the whole oahu into a parking lot because again it goes back to the premise that we are a very little island in the middle of nowhere and that food sustainability is important and that we must also give option to people who cannot compete in this very very high highly cash economy and that is part of the reason why we we have so many homeless people more than ever it's because this is a group besides the mental issues there are people who just cannot compete they cannot make enough money to even pay rent and so yes with this being the opportunity for you to talk to to make this case about your being mayor i think you know citing the issues and the problems is really helpful to acknowledge that they're there and they need address but how exactly then can you make a change of this group of office seekers why is it that you are the candidate who is the best one and ready to make the mayor's role the best it it can be right for the problem we have to solve right right i think the people who who who want to do more research on me will recognize that i actually am the only candidate who has a long solid consistent record of being involved in civics affair or fighting for the public good or fighting for the public interest and being bold enough to speak up i i know that that it is not always a politically corrected speaker but we have spoken up about the need to control the runaway cost for the for the rail and and we have speaker for ethics change we have you know we have spoken up for DPP to improve so that we do not have problems with the monster homes and the inconsistent issuing of permits and and and so on and on so i i'm of course also the only candidate who does not owe anybody anything because i have not received hundreds and thousands of donations i i don't think that that people give money for free even though i have to say that i respect a person who gives the money is that money they can do anything they want to do they can give it to mickey mouse they can give it to anybody they want but i'm saying that it is very logical to say that candidates who have received hundreds of thousands of funds is not free and that i don't owe anybody anything and so that gives me that gives me the independence and the power to be able to do the right things and again i am not the only one it has to be a group effort and there are a lot of people who are just like me just waiting to get in to city hall and change and again we're not slash and burn people we just want to go in there and change and improve so that every one of us you and you and we can all breathe a little bit easier that we will not be like a kupuna who is now worried that they may be priced out of the house and home let me very quickly touch on that before i forget okay i i really want to work towards a property tax cap for our kupuna who have lived in their homes for more than 20 years and and this is not something that i have just come up with today or yesterday i've been talking about it for very long time and of course the response i get is oh we don't have money but yet when i go to those budget meetings or see how the mayor spent i know they have the money it is a matter of priority and values and the reason why i think that this issue is so important is that this group of people is what makes hawaii if we have this group of middle class people force out a price out of paradise then goes hawaii you will have the very very rich and you will have those who are struggling on middle age on middle income uh not middle income uh minimum wage and so so it is so important that we protect this group because this is the group that actually is a glue that holds the community together this is a group that provides the institutional knowledge and and history and that if this group goes there goes hawaii so it's so well i think that is very well stated i know that we're out of time now and we'll have to wrap it up and so well i just wanted to remind everybody i'm stephanie stole dalton and this is the state of the state of hawaii on the think tech live streaming network series we've been talking remotely with with mayor mayor wall candidate june james and she is making her case for being the honolulu city and county county mayor this year i'll see you again in two weeks on the next state of the state of hawaii mahalo for your attention and aloha everybody