 Aloha and welcome to Ehana Kako. We're here every week on the Think Tech Hawai'i Broadcast Network. I'm Kili Akeena, President of the Grassroot Institute. Well, we've just finished the 2016 political season and there were some upsets and surprises, but certainly a lot of excitement and one man who knows that fully is Colin Moore, Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii and also Director of the Public Policy Center at UH. Perhaps you've seen Colin Moore giving his late night punditry commenting on what's going on in the elections. We're going to chat a bit about those elections and what they portend for Hawai'i's political scene. Aloha, Colin. Aloha. Welcome to the program. Thank you. Always good talking with you. Of course, good to be here. And I've always wondered, do children, when they're young, imagine that they're going to grow up and become political pundits? Well, I hope not. And we certainly don't have a very good track record recently. Well, yes, how did the pundits do this season? I think fairly poorly. Well, I mean, here in Hawaii, where, yes, like fortune teller or snake oil salesman, we don't have a lot to be proud of, particularly in Colley and the presidential races when we came in very confident. Yes, absolutely. Well, in the midst of my busy day, I've been looking forward just to sitting down and chatting with you because it's a fun topic. Let's do this. Let's talk a bit about the local races. And then when we come back from a break, we'll talk about the national races. That's the cliffhanger, everybody. Then we can talk about Trump and Clinton. So let's start with the mayoral race. Was it a referendum on rail as some of the candidates might have thought at the beginning of the primary? It didn't turn out to be. I mean, Charles, did you more or less gave up rail as the central part of his campaign after the federal government announced that they weren't going to renegotiate and Honolulu stood to lose billions of dollars? And he backed off on that claim, and he really tried to change his campaign to more of a referendum on Caldwell's ethics, his effectiveness on other parts of being mayor, his ability to manage, for example, the police and Chief Kailoha. But at the end, it didn't really end up with he didn't really have a very clear message in the way that being the anti-rail candidate was very clear. Well, did you and some of the candidates in the primary really wanted to focus on rail because rail had been so heavily criticized justifiably or not in the media? The term boondoggle had been attached to the rail. So some candidates had wanted to ride the rail to their victory. Why wasn't that possible? Why with all of the difficulties that the rail has had, as we've seen portrayed in the media, did the chief proponent of rail, Caldwell, manage to win? Well, first, I think it's that, did you backed off from that claim? I mean, it was a central part of his primary campaign, but later he said, well, we need to finish the rail. The second thing is... Well, let me just back up on that point then. So was that because did that result in the public deciding that he didn't have something new to stand for? Was it the case that he no longer differentiated himself? Well, I think he did no longer differentiate himself on that key issue. But the other thing was Charles Dijoux had to walk a fine line because the truth is that the public supports finishing the rail all the way to Alamoana. So you can get a healthy minority of the vote by being the anti-rail candidate, but it's not enough to win. And what he had to do was get these voters who voted for Peter Carlisle, who clearly didn't like Dijoux, I mean, who clearly didn't like Caldwell, but were probably pro-rail voters. I mean, this, the campaign dynamics had shifted a little bit since the Caldwell-Kayatano race because the rail was already being built. I mean, poll after poll showed that everyone thought that it should simply be finished because we'd already sunk so much money into it. And so I think Dijoux found that that was not going to be enough to win him that election. So he had to offer some other things, which maybe was, you know, a pivoting a little bit to use rail to talk about Caldwell's ability to manage the city. Some of his ethical challenges, particularly the point that he received the salary of a quarter of a million dollars for being on the board of territorial savings. But it wasn't quite enough. Now that was an ad hominem, clearly, but did the attack upon the mayor Caldwell's extra-creek their employment make any real difference? I don't think so. I mean, I think that this is something that probably only the most engaged voters even knew or paid attention to, and they probably weren't Caldwell supporters to begin with. I mean, what Caldwell managed to do is what we expected him to do, which was, I mean, although this is a nonpartisan race to rally the unions, to rally all the Democrats, and they turn out and support him, and that's what we saw in election day. So fundamentally, what we see is the power structure exerting its power, basically the Democratic Party, the unions. Is that what accounted for the Caldwell victory? Absolutely. So from the beginning, the challenger, did you, may not have been able to find the resources to mount a sizable campaign? I think that's true. I mean, he had some financial support. He did raise a fair bit of money, but it wasn't enough to go against the power structure of Hawaii, which is heavily tilted towards the Democrats and to public sector unions and to construction unions, all the people who came out in support of Caldwell. That's always the case. It's very, very difficult to fight that. I mean, he's one chance, I think actually, is to have won outright during the primary when you had Peter Carlyle stealing votes from Kirk Caldwell. But again, it wasn't quite enough. I don't think he had. There never were a majority of voters who supported Charles Dejeu. What role did Peter Carlyle play in the political, in the outcome of the the renayers' race ultimately? Well, he could. I mean, he could have been the one that, I mean, Dejeu had some very early momentum, particularly when Caldwell announced that maybe we'd stop at Middle Street and seem to go back and forth about his positions on the rail. And he represented people's, I think, genuine frustrations with Caldwell. But in the end of the day, he didn't really play that much of a role. He only got a relatively small percentage of the vote. And I think most of those votes ended up going to Caldwell in the general. Now, we've talked about the overwhelming support of the Democratic Party and the unions, but the mayoral race is technically nonpartisan. And so Charles Dejeu didn't run as a Republican per se, but did that label and his identification with the party hurt him? Oh, absolutely. I mean, you saw it. This is what everyone knew was going to happen in the race, which was that Caldwell and the PAC supporting him would remind everyone that Charles Dejeu was a Republican. And what's the power of that when commercials run and say, he's really a Republican? He votes with Republicans? What does that do to the general public? Because, I mean, because this is how people make decisions about politics. I mean, low information voters who are a lot of voters, they see that R next to your name. And Hawaii, that's poisonous. They look for a brand label like I'm Catholic or I'm Buddhist or I'm Republican or I'm Democrat and they vote on that level. Absolutely, absolutely. And so that's what they wanted to do with Dejeu. And if he hadn't been a political figure in the past, it would have been much more difficult to label him that way. But he's probably the best known Republican on the island. And so he couldn't really run away from that label. Well, the other local race that had a lot of competition was the Office of Hawaiian Affairs race. That's right. And I'm very pleased to call you as I make it. You know something about that race. As I make it disclosure to the audience that I'm very grateful to have been victorious thanks to the many, many supporters who voted for me in the Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustee and large race. But tell me a little bit about what your impressions are of the OHA race this year as distinct from previous years. Well, first, I mean, so OHA generally is an incredibly stable institution and that incumbents usually win their seats because very few people, even Hawaiians, I think, really understand much about OHA or what the trustees are doing. And it pretty much is based on name recognition. And so it's always difficult for challengers to get their name out there because everyone knows they just check the box. It says Bob Lindsay and they move on. The other thing is that very few, I mean only about half of the people who walk into the polling place vote for the OHA candidates. Right. That's typically been the case. That's right. In the past, that's been the case. And that's because there are people who feel like they shouldn't participate or they simply don't know enough about the candidates to participate. But, I mean, your campaign primarily made an effort, and I don't believe it's ever really been done before, to try to tell non-Hawaiian voters or people who don't traditionally participate in the OHA race that they should, that they should vote. And I think your campaign did really a tremendous job with getting your name out there and with having a clear message. I mean, something that Charles Dejeu in a lot of ways didn't have, you did. But what do you make of the fact that this year, 73.1% of the people who cast ballots participated in the OHA at large race? I think it's remarkable. I mean, I think it shows that encouraging people from the candidates themselves, encouraging people who wouldn't otherwise participate, makes a big difference. But of course, the incumbents in the past have had no reason to do that because in many ways it helps them that so few people participate in OHA elections because it's their base that is re-electing them. But I think the only way a challenge or ever would have won was to recruit people who don't otherwise participate. Now, we've had some other races that took place that shifted, well, that maintained the balance of power, not balance of power, but the balance of dominant Democrat control over the House and the Senate, and the Republican Party lost two seats. Let's talk a little bit about that. One was a House seat, Fekifuha, and the other one was Sam Sloan's seat. And Sam Sloan had been known as the loneliest senator in America. That's right. The only Republican in an all Democrat Senate. So that North Shore seat that Sean Quinlan won, I mean, a young, progressive, Bernie Sanders type, I don't think we, I mean, that was an interesting race because it wasn't being followed all that closely. But it just goes to show how Republicans are really aren't any safe seats here for Republicans for the most part. The Sloan race, I don't think anyone knew how that was going to turn out. I mean, Sam Sloan is really kind of a beloved older legislator. He's never really recently had to fight that hard for that seat. Stanley Chang campaigned very vigorously. And Stanley Chang is one of the best campaigners. I think he said he knocked on 15,000 doors and he runs a very sophisticated campaign that combines old fashioned shoe leather politics with apps and statistics that show which voters he still needs to contact. And I think he just really campaigned his heart out. And as Sloan hasn't been able to do that, he's been ill. And so I think in the end that that really made a difference. Probably some shifting demographics in Hawaii Kai, a more liberal group of younger people have moved in there. So they might have been willing to give Stanley Chang a chance. Well, now what's the implication of the loss of the only Senate or minority seat in the Senate? Are there some constitutional issues here? Well, I mean, we're the first state in the nation since 1980 when that happened. We're the first again in something. Yes, we're the first again. So the first, the only state right now that has a single- The first in one party government. The first in one party government. I mean, what it's going to do is that it's going to make the factions that already exist. And I think people are familiar with some of those names, like the Chess Club and others, all that more important and powerful. But it is dangerous. In other words, let me just back up. In other words, because there's only one party in control in the Senate, you're saying that the factions within it represent whatever diversity may exist. That's right. I mean, we're a tribal species. So no matter what, there are going to be these factions. Well, Sam Sloan had some colleagues who frequently voted with him. He did. He did, absolutely. But there was at least this institutional Republican party that could be represented there that was useful. I mean, I think it was it was valuable for our local democracy because the thing about factions is that it becomes very difficult for outside observers to tell what's really going on. Because basically everything important happens behind closed doors. If you have an opposition party, they have every incentive to publicize this and make the process a bit more transparent. Well, Colin, I want to come back to that later on. When we come back from a break, we'll talk about national elections for president. But then we'll circle back and talk about the implications for Hawaii of a Republican president of the United States and the implications for the Republican Party. My guest today, Colin Moore of the University of Hawaii Center for Public Policy and a political scientist on the faculty there. I'm Keely Akina with the Grassroot Institute. We'll be right back. I'm Think Tech Hawaii's Ehana Kako. Don't go away. Hello. I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii, where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law, where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Aloha. I'm Carl Campania, host of Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. I hope you join us over the next several weeks as we take a deep dive into biofuels in Hawaii and explore the alternative fuels supply chain necessary for the local and global transition towards transportation fuel sustainability. Join us as we have good conversations with our farmers, our producers, our conversion technologies, our investors, and our legislators as we try to achieve our transportation sustainability goals. See you soon. Well, we're back again on Ehana Kako. Every week here on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network, and I want to commend the folks at Think Tech Hawaii under J. Fidel's leadership, they produce about 30 to 35 hours of original content emanating from downtown Honolulu and going across the world, dealing with all kinds of issues from the economy, government, society, to the arts and technology. Certainly they are to be commended, and you can see their work at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Now, back to our program today with Colin Moore, political scientist, who has a good grasp of what's gone on in the elections and what the implications are. Well, the fun part, Trump versus Clinton. Trump versus Hillary, yes. First, before we even get into the actual results, what are some of your observations about what took place in America during this political contest? Well, I think this is the most extraordinary political campaign that's ever happened, certainly in my lifetime. I mean, Trump is more of an outsider than anybody who's ever run for president. He ran in a way that nobody really thought would work. I mean, even he basically relied on earned or free media from networks and gained a tremendous amount of attention through tweeting. And the other thing he did was he was able to articulate a vision that the establishment Republicans have not. I mean, for the first time in my memory, I mean, he's someone who's really opposed trade deals, something that's really had a lot of bipartisan consensus since the Clinton era. And he said some things that a lot of people found, frankly, bigoted or racist, but that did seem to resonate, which a large section of the voters. Now, there's certainly no denying that he is a master campaigner. Yes. He's a master publicist. He knows how to create news. He knows how to be the news. That's right. But what were you able to detect that he ultimately stands for on a policy level? It's difficult to tell. I mean, he has a few ideas that he's laid out, things like infrastructure. I mean, look, Trump is a big government populist, but he's not an ideologue. And so I think it's going to be very difficult for the Republicans to work with him. I mean, he's about Donald Trump. And people saw in his ability to attack a Washington establishment elite, a coastal elite, someone who spoke for them. But I think when you talk to voters, they all see in Donald Trump something different. And a lot of them don't really think he's serious about some of the things he said. But certainly a great swath of voters see Donald Trump as representing some very foundational American values. Well, potentially. I mean, values in terms of the dignity of work. Sure. I think protecting borders, that resonant America, strong America. Exactly. Strong defense. But a lot of this, I think, we're people voting out of sheer frustration. I mean, especially the white working class. It feels like they have more or less been abandoned by the Democratic Party that really has embraced more well-heeled suburban voters and minority voters and left out white working class voters who really have seen some of the worst effects of the economy recently. Now, at least from the electoral college perspective, President-elect Trump had an astounding victory on November the 8th. Why did the pundits get that wrong? Why were the polls off on that? Well, so the polls, the national polls weren't actually off by that much because they pretty much got the popular vote right. But of course that doesn't matter. We're talking about the electoral college. And it's that they built into their models some assumptions that a certain number of white working class voters would turn out at lower rates that African Americans would turn out at higher rates. I mean, they're always trying to predict voter likelihood. And so the polls made their biggest errors in the states that ended up being the most surprising. Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. Is there actual data that people voted along ethnic lines? Yes, there definitely is. African Americans, for example, supported Hillary Clinton at very high rates. Although not, they didn't turn out in the way they did for President Obama. White voters of all backgrounds supported Donald Trump, except for educated white voters. But even educated white men did support Donald Trump. So that did happen. But I think that the most surprising thing was that white working class voters broke for Trump in a way that we haven't seen before. I mean, a lot of people who were traditional blue collar union voters who tended to vote for Democrats at this time voted for Donald Trump. And that's why you saw those extraordinary and unexpected losses in the upper Midwest. Well, what's the fallout here in Hawaii? What is the Democratic Party feeling here? I know that there's a lot of question about what may happen to federal entitlements, what may happen to various policies that affect the Hawaiian Islands and so forth, and what may happen to our congressional delegation in Congress now and under a Republican president. What are some of the ramifications for Democrats in Hawaii of a Trump presidency? And then I'll ask you what they are for the Republicans. Sure. So, I mean, our congressional delegation really won't have a great deal of power. I mean, we have a Republican-controlled Congress and presidency and a relatively junior delegation. Hawaii is not going to be getting any favors from the federal government anytime soon. At the same time, there's ways they can work with President-elect Trump on infrastructure projects. He wants to expand the military. Hawaii, because of its geography, will obviously be an important player in any of those conversations. But we're not going to have the kind of poll we had during the Obama administration for sure. How might that weigh into some of the Hawaiian issues, such as the quest for federal recognition administered through the Department of Interior? Well, there was always a claim during the last round of this that people should act quickly because they were unlikely to see as favorable a presidency as Barack Obama's for federal recognition. So, I mean, this is not something Donald Trump has ever talked about. I have no idea how he feels about indigenous issues, but my guess would be that they'll look less favorably on it than the Department of Interior under Obama. So there could be implications, and it may be that Oha backs off from some of those and focuses more on social welfare issues that they can manage without the support of the federal government. A good deal of what takes place in terms of administering government for Native Hawaiians in Hawaii is tied into the federal government, particularly issues regarding the Hawaiian homelands. That's true. And potential federal recognition of a government of Native Hawaiians. So I think that people are watching very carefully. Now, with respect to the impact of the Trump presidency and the Republican Congress on Republicanism in Hawaii, well, first, what's your impression of where the Republican Party is? Here, it's practically dead. I mean, it's been on life support for some time. It just lost two seats in what was otherwise a fairly successful election for Republicans. And one of the most significant leaders of the Republican Party, Sam Sloan. That's right. But I think this is something you see in the United States overall. In other words, we don't see this kind of even wave that in some cases, blue states are actually becoming bluer, even as the swing states move to the Republican side this time around. So I don't expect a resurgence for the Republican Party here, which actually is problematic for Hawaii because now that we have an exclusively Republican administration and Congress in Washington, there's not a lot of people here left to work with them. That's right. We are somewhat at a loss for the most part in terms of public officials who can make a connection to the federal government. We are. This was, I mean, the last time, Charles, as you ran for Congress, this was one of his claims that elect me and then Hawaii will always have representation no matter who controls Congress. But we didn't. We're a very democratic state. And so one thing I think you can expect from Hawaii and the other blue states, actually, is to take a page out of the strategy that states in the South have used for years, which is maybe some sort of blue state federalism, a more resistance from federal control, probably a bit of a talk about states' rights from states that really have never embraced that rhetoric in the past. Well, our founding fathers were very keen on the idea of the competitive balance of powers, keeping checks on departments of government, as well as a rather free system of political competition. So what are the implications now for Hawaii in terms of being all the more a one-party state? Well, it's the problem with that. I mean, my central problem with Hawaii's one-party state is that it becomes, there's very little transparency because those sorts of debates are the things that appear in public because the opposition party has every reason to make them public. Right now, there's factions in the state Senate, for example, but it's, I mean, some people don't even openly admit that they're part of any of these factions. And so you end up kind of reading tea leaves to figure out or watching shadows on the wall to figure out what's really going on. And that's troubling for democracy. I mean, it also is troubling because it's very difficult for young upstarts to try to disrupt the system because here in Hawaii, there's really only one party you can be a member of if you want to gain elected office. And that means you basically need to sit down and keep your mouth shut. And that's not good for democracy either. What would a second party have to do in order to mount candidates that could win? Well, what I think is likely to happen is that you'll see challenges from the left. It may not be a new party, although potentially it could be some sort of, I mean, a green party could potentially have some success here at the state level. But I think you're likely to see an open split in the Democratic Party between the progressives and the traditional Hawaii Democrats. Do you think that might lead to a revival of the Republican Party? Do you think that there could be an exodus of a small number of Democrats coming over to a party where they could have greater power and authority and have the ability to shape the platform? I think potentially. I mean, you could see that as a result of a Democratic Party moving to the left, then the Republican Party might be a more comfortable place for some of our more conservative Hawaii Democrats. But I think always the problem here is the party brand, which is deeply conservative on the mainland, which people feel doesn't really respect local values and has just had a very difficult time except for moments like Linda Lingle, where they run mainly in opposition to what people think of as a corrupt, entrenched Democratic establishment, but not even so much as ideological Republicans, more as presenting an alternative option. Well, what do you see looking forward as we start to look into the elections in the 2018 cycle, particularly because that will be the end of the term for Governor Ege, and it's a midterm for him. That's right. So David Ege will have to run again. Certainly right now, no one has announced their plans to run against him. There's been talk that maybe Shansetsui would run. I think that's who a number of Democrats would like to have run, but from what I understand, he's a bit reluctant to do so. For the most part, I imagine that David Ege will have a reasonably easy time winning reelection if he doesn't get into big fights with the unions for the upcoming contract negotiations. I mean, Hawaii politics is in some ways very old-fashioned. I mean, it seems very 1970s in a lot of ways. Unions still have power here. We have basically a one-party, new-deal Democratic party, and there's no real obvious disruptive force on the horizon, but that also means there's a lot of problems we don't deal with, like our massive unfunded liability problem, and in part because it's just easier for politicians to, for example, give the public sector employees unions exactly what they want. So really, there's no cause for triumphalism on the part of the dominant party because that dominance has its problems. That dominance definitely has its problems. It has its problems for transparency. I mean, it has its problems for making difficult policy decisions. Well, Colin, thank you for joining us today. Always good to have you. My pleasure. My guest today has been Colin Moore, Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii, director of the Public Policy Center there, and you've been watching Ehana Kako here every week on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. I'm King Leigh Akina, signing off until next time and saying aloha.