 Hi, welcome to Seymour's World on Think Tech Hawaii. We have a fabulous show today. But I'm going to introduce it in a very different way. Who loves politicians? Who loves what they do? Who loves what they say? Do we believe them? Do we really think they're out for our best interests? Are they all just paid by the lobbyists and everything you're reading in national politics and our local politics here in Hawaii? Well, I have to tell you, I fell in love with one guy who I honestly believe is out to help his community, to help our state and to help our country. So I want to introduce you to a young man, Bob, if I may call you a young man, Mr. Bob McDermott, who is a state representative for EVA. Am I correct? You're very correct. You're very humbling. You've humbled me greatly. Seymour, I'm not so young. I'm 54. You're a baby. You could be my kid. What you folks don't know is we were just talking before we went on and we met each other very casually and informally in 1987 at the YMCA. You were talking to Mufi and I was a young college kid, but I was in the men's club because they had the steam room and everything else and I wanted to take advantage of that. Wait a second. You didn't have any money for the men's club. It was 30 bucks a month. 30 bucks a month, right? That's all I could afford and I remember you talking to Mufi and so I said, Seymour, I know Seymour and boom, just here must have been 30 years ago. Yeah. Yeah, 30 years ago. Yeah. And Mufi Hanuman is our ex-mayor and he is the one who propelled the rail into a reality here in the state and we're going to talk about that. But Bob, I want people to know a little bit about you. What Seymour's world is about is facilitating conversations and opening minds. And one thing I find in politics today, especially today, I mean, every single day we have the most negative, negative view of politicians, mainly because the press really wants to present a negative view. And we need to clean that up a little bit. And when I look at you and I think about what you've done and I read about all of the history that you have, not just in politics, but your personal history, I want people to see that. I want people to know the Bob McDermott who may be our next governor in this state. I sure hope so. But one of the, came to Hawaii in 1982 as a young marine a hundred pounds ago, I don't measure in years. When Matricula aided out of the Marine Corps to Shamanad, while I was there I met my wife who really changed my life, beautiful, Samoan girl. And they told me, if you look at me, I'm not the handsome guy, I'm no George Clooney. Let's just say that. And I got this beautiful Samoan girl and they said, you marry her, you marry the family. Oh, I don't care about that, I got a 10 here. And sure enough, you do marry the family. And what a blessing it's been because they've transformed me to be the qualities that the Polynesian people have, the best of their qualities, the sharing, the giving. You know, I was a little selfish when I was younger, kind of the way East Coast kids, maybe you raised, I don't know. But the spirit of Ohana and family, boy, you marry Samoan, you really live it. We have eight children, what people don't know, and I really don't like to talk about too much, but we adopted five of them. I know that. Three of them are ours. They're all ours. I love them all dearly. But it was a God thing how it unfolded, we didn't plan on it. One was her cousin who needed a home, so we honed him and adopted him, and then there was a sibling group, and the children were half Samoan, so we went and got them. Some children are never available because the Samoan families take them, for some reason these children were, and of course drugs were involved, and the two youngest ones had a speech impediment, severe speech impediments. The one didn't utter any words till they were two, and the other one, it was like talking to Alassi until she was about five or six. So that is the most important thing I've ever done, and the greatest blessing and the most joy I ever got, still to this day, is from those children. And Bob, those kids, you know, we have two adopted children as well. You didn't know that. Yeah, my son and my daughter. So you know. There's no difference. Yes, of course. It is a blessing. What you, in Jewish, we call it a mitzvah. A mitzvah is when you do something that you can't get paid for. It's something that is so God-like, so something that you get bad. Well, you're a mensch. Yes. Well, I think I'm a mensch. Dave Livingston called me a mensch, he was on the show just a couple of weeks ago. He is a mensch as well. And I think that's part of why I'm so impressed by your history and what your passions are and what you want to do. And I think it's important for people to understand that politicians have one side that they show to the public, one side that the press wants them to see, and the real side which is them. Yeah, it's, you know, all you get on the news is a soundbite, right? So you don't, and the only time you get on is in the heat of a very controversial issue, whether it's same-sex marriage, the train, et cetera, et cetera. You talk about the rail for a moment, there was a poll done recently, PRP did a poll, and they only showed it to Democrat leadership. It wasn't made public, but it shows that 60 percent of the people want the thing completed to Almona. About 60 percent, maybe more, are unhappy the way the project has been conducted, which is understandable with all the negative press. But you, out of that 60 percent, probably 95 percent of them are Republicans. So to be a Republican who supports the train, I get a lot of people calling me in my own party, a rhino, a traitor, this and that. It's the only tax I've ever voted for, and I came in after it was started. It's like, well, what are the options? But Bob, the issue behind being a Republican doesn't mean that you have to be totally in line with what the party is saying, because you lose your objectivity. Well, yeah. And I live in Evo Beach, which is ground zero. So I didn't make this decision in a vacuum. I walk every block of that neighborhood, and in every neighborhood, every street, there's a pickup truck with a set of tools, whether it's a carpenter, a glazer, a mason, whatever. These guys are construction workers. They live in Evo Beach. I'm convinced that when this thing is done, there'll be a blizzard of economic activity, construction, redevelopment along Kalihi, the Pupus. If you go in Waipahu, the train runs right past the city called the Pupus. It's like a ghetto. That will be raised, and they'll put new high rises up where young families can go and buy a condominium and build equity. So someday, if they want to move to a dream home, they can. But in the meantime, they can start with something small. You're right. Bob, you also were in Iraq. You served in Iraq, right? Actually, you were in Desert Storm. The Desert Storm. Yeah, this is the first Gulf War, which is more like Desert Roundup compared to it. What did you learn from that, Bob? Well, you know, it's interesting. The one memory that comes back to me is, and I don't know how relevant it is, is as they would maintain the guard post, you know, the Marines would be with the machine gun M-16, and the Saudi Arabia guys that we partnered with would literally be sitting on a blanket drinking tea. It wasn't serious for them. I didn't fire my weapon. I wasn't in any danger other than, you know, we had scuds coming in, but we had shelters. We'd run to the shelter. I still remember one of my typical lieutenants, scuds, scuds, so we're all running to the shelter. Sure. I run in, hit my head on the beam. My helmet flies off. A typical lieutenant, right? Yeah. You know? I didn't fire my weapon. I didn't have to. I didn't cross the line of departure, which they really, we just went into Kuwait from Saudi Arabia, basically, and they routed them, and within 24, 48 hours, everybody was back. So that was, but to be over there, the family separation was, so what you learn is you don't care what happens to you. You know, I'm fine. I'm going to go to heaven and meet my maker. But who's going to take care of my kids? Mm-hmm. Who's going to take care of my wife? I remember my wife driving me to the airport because we didn't know, Saddam Hussein, the fourth largest army in the world. She's driving me down with the rest of the Marines, and tears were just streaming down her face because it was very real. But we were okay. Oh, that's wonderful. Now, of course, you've been in the state house for several years now. I had spoken time, so 96 to 202, and at 202, I was a young buck, I said, I'm going to run for Congress, and I ran against Patsy Mink, and she passed away, and I lost to her. I was one of four people in U.S. history to lose to a deceased person. So I guess I got to get his book of old records. But everything happens for a reason, and if I didn't lose, I wouldn't have adopted those children. And I can tell you that those children have brought me more joy and fulfillment than anything else in the world could have. A career in Congress, whatever, it doesn't matter. The people are real, as opposed to temporal titles that we exchange. Bob, the state house has been your home, your work home. And what are you learning there now? I mean, you're fighting a battlefield battle, obviously. What have you learned that makes you say, I want to continue to do this? Because it's difficult. Well, I don't want to continue in the state house. And the reason is, it's funny, guys who were my adversary 20 years ago, Marcus Oshiro, Calvin Sey, the older fellows who were still there, Ken Ito, they're my friends now. We're all older. We all have a similar worldview. They can't articulate it because they're Democrats. I would suggest to you that a lot of their, maybe not Calvin, but a lot of the other guys that are old-timers, they're out of step with the young 30-year-old kids who believe in a lot of this social engineering. And I'm very conservative when it comes to morality. I was led to charge against same-sex marriage, a polo choice of social engineering, the undermining of parental rights. I'm very old-fashioned in that regard. And that has led people to call me names. That's okay. They get homophobe-hater. But what people don't know is, in the course of my career, I hired two guys to work for me who were both homosexuals, one was a closet, one was openly gay guy, who was my friend. And I hired him because he didn't have health insurance just before Obamacare. He came into work twice during the session. He was sick the rest of the time. He asked me to rehire him. I said, you know, I can't because I'm cheating the taxpayer. I got you six months of good insurance, but I'm sorry, I just can't bring you back. He passed away. My wife, when we first got married in 1987, we're sharing an apartment with her cousin. This is a funny story. George Hunklin. And I go out to the living room and I say, what the heck? Who's this chick out here? And I go to my wife. Did George bring home something to lose him? No. That's Leilani. Leilani. Tommy. George's brother. Tommy lived with us. Tommy was a falafelian, which is a Simone term for transgender. This is before it's cool 30 years ago. I'm living with a transgender because it's my wife's cousin. So that said, I'm very tolerant and open, but when you bring in public policy, we're going to make decisions on what's best for it. Because now, you have this moral chaos in the schools. Why do we tell this kid? We passed sex education, sexuality education. It's a board of education policy starting in kindergarten. Kindergarten. Give me a break. Why? Why? Because the social engineers, the left, want to get in there and teach your children, your great-grandchildren. Grandchildren. Just grandchildren. No great yet. Thank you. Well, I got grandchildren. I got grandchildren. They want to teach your grandchildren their views, not yours views. Because by the time they get to middle school, they have their parents' views. Right? And whatever your children's views are, the parents, you're the parents. You may disagree with me, that's okay, but you're the parents. You raise your children the way you want to raise them. It's not Bob McDermott's job to raise your kids or inculcate them with my values. But by the same token, don't force your values on my kids. Right? Bob, what you're doing right now is exactly what I want people to see about you, that you're very rational. You're not just a party politician. You're a person who believes you have your own values. Party hates me right now. You know something? That's okay, because people have to change, and I think parties have to change. We've seen changes in everything from computers and typewriters and phones to iPhones, and yet politics has stayed the same, extremely biased, instead of looking at what is the national good or, in our case, the state good. And what people are starting to realize about you just from this simple conversation is we're opening their, well, my show. We're opening their minds. You know? They live in a church, didn't they? What the heck's that about? You know, I can't say that I agree with you with everything that you're thinking, because I have my own views. Of course. We learn to respect those views and look at them as what is necessary for our children. Not for us so much, but for our children to make sure they have a better life. Before you speak, we're going to have to take a break, and we will be back in a minute with Bob McDermott, our state house representative for Eva. This is Seymour Kazimerski on Seymour's World. Which you can see live every Tuesday at thinktechhawaii.com and then later on YouTube. I am an energy attorney, clean energy advocate and community outreach specialist, and on Power Up Hawaii we come together to talk about how can Hawaii walk towards a clean, renewable, and just energy future. To do that, we talk to stakeholders all over the spectrum, from clean energy technology folks to community groups to politicians to regulators to the utility. So please join us Tuesdays at one o'clock for Power Up Hawaii. Welcome back to Seymour's World on Thinktech Hawaii. I'm here with Bob McDermott, our state house representative for Eva. And if you were here for the first part of our show, you're starting to meet a very, very interesting politician who really believes that he is not so much a party man, he is a people man. He is one who wants to make the leadership of our state responsible for our children, responsible for our grandchildren. The decisions we're making today are not necessary for what we have to look at for us. It's what we have to look at for our kids. So Bob, we're going to continue our conversation and we're going to talk a little bit more about you. But I want to show some photos. Okay. I want to show you and your family. I think we have a bunch that we can queue up. Oh my God. Oh, who's that handsome young man? That's Desert Storm. Forget the handsome. Forget the handsome. Just who is he? John Glass is not. I love that. I love it. I guess that's Desert Storm, Saudi Arabia, somewhere in the Netherlands. Wow. Let's see the next one. That's my family with my daughters-in-law. So the girl on the left is my Filipino daughter. You see she has her ultrasound photo. She's given birth to our son. He's one year old now. The holy girl in the middle is my other daughter-in-law. She's pregnant in that photo so she also gave birth. We have another son with her. Those are your boys in the back? Yeah. Those are my boys in the back and in the front. And then the big boy on the right is our son Joey and that's his wife Manu and their two children. They now have another child. Oh my God. So no wonder you have to keep working. You've got a lot of people there. And this is just the immediate family. So you can imagine on the weekends the extended family or for parties and such. So this is just the- Oh my gosh. Let's see the next one. Yeah. That's my lovely wife, Utu, 30 years. She's kept with you that long. Yes. She has. What a patient woman. Yeah. Still waiting. Still waiting. Yeah. Wow. That is terrific. I actually, she looks familiar to me. I don't know if I've seen her at a party somewhere or an event somewhere. Maybe. Yeah. Wow. Let's see the next one. That's just a photo from a piece of campaign stuff. You know what's so interesting? If you look at what we're both wearing, we're both wearing- Yeah, smile. Make them smile. Oh. Look at that. Right there. That's the next one. That's my wife again. Yeah. That's about four years ago. Six years ago. Yeah. That's Navy League. There's Dave Livingston, Blanchiarty, Tim Gard, and myself, a little portlier in those days, giving those two guys an award because those are two gentlemen, Gard and Blanchiarty who give tirelessly back to the community and they help sponsor the sale of the year luncheon for three years, four years straight, and that involves getting on the phone as you know and raising money. Yeah. They're great guys. Yeah, and Dave, of course, was on our show. Dave's, you can't keep up with it. Dave doesn't sleep. I don't know if you don't. He is- Four hours a day. I know. I know. When I'm up at 4 a.m., my first email or phone call is usually Dave, so we both share that 4 a.m. wake up. He was my boss at the Navy League for a couple years, and he was the hardest boss I ever had. No. Dave is demanding and driving for results. Dave, but at the same time, he's your biggest cheerleader. He loves you. He is one of the best friends I have. I don't have a lot of friends. When you get married, your wife becomes your friend. Oh, yes, absolutely. And you really- Your family, you're not hanging out a lot. He's probably one of my best friends. You know, I hired Dave. Did he ever tell you that? No. Oh, yeah, yeah. The wife said- He was one of the YMCA on Atkinson, and he applied for the position, and nobody wanted to hire him because he was a howly guy from the mainland. And I said, look at his qualifications. Look at what this guy has done. Not so much from who he is, but what he's done for the wives on the mainland. And I said, we've got to take him. So yeah, yeah, we take him on. He's been here ever since, and he's well-known. Well, for him to make that move, I would talk to him and say, you were like 40 years old and you decided- Yeah. In California, it was your whole life, and you came to Hawaii not knowing anybody. A pair of us says, well, you know, it's easy for Dave to make friends. That is absolutely- And I know his wife very well, too. Just great people. The Navy League. Yeah. I mean, that's something you spent 12 years with. He was a blessing. Tell us about it. The Navy League. So it's a 501C3. My wife would say, what do you do? You're always going to lunch with important people. It's like a booster club for the C-Services. Like Nicole is for the UH football team. They do things that the school can't do for the team. The Navy League does things for the Coast Guard, Marine Corps, Navy, and Merchant Marine that they can't do for themselves. For instance, awards banquets. They could give them an award, but it's much better in a venue with the Pacific Fleet commander, giving an E-Ford award. That E-Ford normally would never see or have any contact with the Pacific Fleet commander. Here he's being handed an award and shaking his hand. So that's one of many things that we did. What is this one? This is the Fleet Reserve Association. Yeah, because that's- It's some Coast Guard guys. Uh-huh. It's a Coastie on the left. That's JJ Wynne. He's no longer in Hawaii, but he was head of the Fleet Reserve. The fellow to the right is Joe from U.S.A.A., I forgot his last name. So U.S.A.A. and that we relied on our corporate partners, whether it's U.S.A.A. or Mattson or Bank of Hawaii, McCabe, Hamilton, and Rennie, I forget the shipyard Fred Anawati's group out. But you've been involved in so many other things besides politics. Yeah. And that was great. The Navy League was great because you got to meet heroes. So you get to meet POWs, like Jim Hickerson, and you get to know Jerry Coffee much better because they come to a lot of these events. And you get to become real friends with them. And you ask them, what was it like? Did you do this? Did you do that? Over the course of several years, and you gain a much better appreciation. Jim Hickerson was a POW for five and a half years. His wife now is Carol Hickerson. This is a Hollywood story. Her husband was a helicopter pilot and was shot down in 1965. So for seven years, and she was pregnant when he was shot down. So for seven years, he's listed as MIA. So she leads this campaign in Southern California with Sybil Stockdale. They start the National League of Families. She meets John Wayne. John Wayne wore her husband's bracelet. Every year, John Wayne sent her son a Christmas gift. Comes to the end of the war, they revise his status from MIA to KIA. She goes to the Cotton Bowl. Just to edify that MIA is missing in action, KIA is killed in action. So for seven and a half years, she was with Sybil Stockdale trying to raise awareness of the POWs. Ross Peril invited her to the Cotton Bowl where all the POWs, they do Welcome Home with Tony Orlando, Singin' Tile Yell, Ribberon, Yell O'Drape. Getting next to her, a guy she met casually before, was Jim Hickerson, whose wife had left him while he was in prison. She begins to cry. He kisses her on the cheek. The rest is history. Hollywood couldn't write a story like that. No kidding. Speaking of Hollywood, one of the kids who designed a poster for her when they were doing fundraising was a kid named James Cameron from high school down in the road, right? So James Cameron's now famous director. Of course. You meet these people and you have the photographs and then you get to honor them. And so for Carol and Jim, we honored them with Secretary of Navy's public service medals and things of that nature. She was never recognized. Just recently, the Vietnam celebration, they brought up on stage and Ann Margaret helped present the award. So that was the... Bob, I think what's important is making people realize that the side of Bob McDermott that's out there pushing for economic issues, pushing for educational issues, pushing for the things that are important for your community, this is the real you. This is not somebody that's just a politician. This is the Bob McDermott that has a family with eight children that lives in the area that's working very, very hard to make things happen. You know, you should be... I got to hire you to be my promoter, but you know... I just love that you know you're so real compared to a lot of the other guys that are out there. I go to Everdeach and Campbell High School and I look around and I say, holy smokes, I'm like... There's like three white people out here and I'm one of them. You know, all the kids look like my kids. And my wife will tell you this, but the family photo, all those kids, and that's a campaign photo and I'm like photo bombing at the white guy in the back. That tells local people, well, somebody can stand the son of a gun. He may not be us, but I think he gets it. I would like you to know that I find, when I do my Holocaust lectures around the state and when I go to the Everside and I lectured at Campbell and there was one of the best responses I've ever gotten. I had kids who wrote me back after the lecture telling me how wonderful it was and how much they learned about it. And I have to tell you, Bob, I do 50 or 60 of these a year and that school must have sent me 100 responses. So now let's go back to 1987, 88, we have another common friend that I just figured out. I guess he's passed away, obviously, Rabbi Julius Nodell. Of course. Of course. He taught me a couple of classes and I really enjoyed it. And I got to ask him some pointed spiritual questions and I appreciated his answers. He was a Holocaust survivor. Yes, he was. He and his wife. And he donated a whole, his whole library to Shamra. Yes, yes, correct. He was the biggest, he had the biggest reformed synagogue in St. Louis, right? And then he moved out here to, moved out here to, to Fort Temple Emanuel on the Polly Highway. Yeah, he was a, you could tell he was a holy man. Whatever your religion is, you could tell this guy's a holy man. I think it's, it's, it's important for us to realize that there are so many parts of the puzzle when we look at Bob McDermott and we're saying, wow, here he is. And I could see that that's part of you too. I'm a big BB fan. I don't know about you, but I'm a big BB Netanyahu fan. You know, that's not the only time to get into here. But I do want to say that it has been an absolute pleasure to, to have you tell our audience what the real Bob McDermott is about, because you don't have time in sound bites. Here, at least for a few minutes, we can chat, schmooze, we can, you know, just basically learn a little bit more about the individual who I think has a real chance of helping this state. Well, you know, the election is going to come down to leadership. And whatever the issue is, building a new stadium or bringing these parties together on the train is going to be solved. But why did we have to wait four or five months? You know, get these guys in a room, order pizza, get it done. We need a new stadium. I'd like to see Kahi Lagoon and Marina redeveloped and bring America's Cup here and on and on and on. Well, it is, if people want to reach you, Bob, can they, on your website? Representative McDermott at Gmail. All right. So that's representative McDermott at gmail.com. I wish we had more time, Bob. We can do it again. So much for coming. And I would like to do it again if you could stand me. Well, I enjoy it. We've got all these common friends now. I say thank you to Bob. And I say thank you to the staff at Think Tech Hawaii for making this production happen. Welcome. And say aloha from Seymour's World on Think Tech Hawaii.