 I'm Marcia Joyner and we are navigating the journey and today's journey of course because this is election season we are going to visit with another candidate and this one well okay he's been a part of the legislature in Hawaii for a very long time so most of you will know him and that is Chris Lee representative Chris Lee and now Chris has spent all those years as in the house he is now going to run from the senate for this strange configuration called district 25 so Chris uh loha loha thanks for having me oh i'm so glad to see you now Chris is how long were you in the house Chris since 2008 actually so it's that was uh president obama's first election election year oh been a while yeah great and so you were in the house that long uh and now you're going to run for the senate so tell us about this senate district 25 which is the craziest thing i've ever seen but tell us about district 25 yeah it's not actually that much different than the house district i mean the the area that i i grew up and represented here in east Honolulu has always been um kailua wamanalo and and the playground that really i grew up in going to sandies and and um hiking up in the hills up above hawaii kai has always been sort of the same it's felt like the same community but um the senate district um includes not only kailua and wamanalo but also hawaii kai proper um portlock in those communities and and what's fascinating about it is even though it's a demographically and geographically very diverse set of communities the i think the the general issues that we've been working on collectively um protecting our uh near shore uh marine resources and protecting our lands from over development and then ensuring that we have housing and all these things have been sort of the same throughout the communities though each community's approached it in a slightly different way so it's been very exciting to um step into this race because for the first time not only will be unofficially working these issues with our partner communities but now we can do it officially and with our current state senator laura felon stepping aside to to go on to greener pastures you know it it really opened up an opportunity that i've actually turned down before you know this has been an open senate seat a few times over the last decade or so and i was working on stuff in the house that i really want to accomplish and didn't want to walk away at that point but um here we are you know 2020 um craziest year of all years but having i feel like accomplished some of those big things that i really set out to do this was the time it felt that it would be okay to step up and do something a little bit differently working on these issues from a different perspective helping out in the senate well what issues were they what which issues that you wanted to accomplish and you feel like you did what what were those you know when i when i first ran um it was really uh for a handful of things i mean on our side it was definitely environment and dealing with climate change the state at the time hadn't really done much and on the other side of the island we are going to be more affected than just about any other place we have beaches to lose we have homes to protect we have all these different things and um been really fortunate that over the last you know 12 years or so i've been able to put into place our 100% renewable energy law for the state making way the first state to commit to that also carbon neutrality statewide which is exciting because now it's going to capitalize on carbon credits and investment from outside the state to bring money right here to plant trees to reduce our carbon emissions to really catalyze jobs and that's been something which has been really really exciting so having a lot of that stuff in place um there's been a few other big issues that we've started to work on and you know this this year i think really illustrates one of the big ones which is i wanted to do something to really fix Hawaii's just dismal record of voter participation in our elections going back over the last couple decades and serving as judiciary chair thanks to the support of my colleagues in the house i've been able to help put forward you know our new law this year which is voting by mail which at least in the primary election a few months ago has broken all state records going back to statehood we've seen more people come out and vote and participate than ever before and that's just so exciting because it means hopefully for this coming election in a couple weeks for the general election we're going to see that same kind of enthusiasm and get people engaged and as we all know once you start voting you just don't stop so this is really an opportunity to for the first time bring in a whole new generation of voters and get them involved well now speaking of since you're on the judiciary or you were Hawaii is one of the few states that prisoners people who have served the term can vote do we have a way of reaching out has there been a way to reach out to them as they come out of as they're released in their release packet is there voter registration is there a letter that tells them that now you are free to do this do we reach out at all i can't speak to the state side and how that process works it's been somewhat separate i think coming out of transitioning out into you know some sort of path to go back into the job market and reintegrate and all of that and then elections have been treated separately i know there are community groups that have been trying to help families who have been in you know rough spot and have family members family members coming back into the fold that help them with these things so i think on a case by case basis there has been a few good examples of people reintegrating and finding jobs and and being productive members of society and then participating not just in voting there's actually a couple really good examples of folks in the Waimanalo area who came out of prison in the past reintegrated found jobs had a family not only started voting but then created local nonprofits and organizations that have been providing resources to the community helping other folks get engaged helping our homeless situation helping do all kinds of really neat stuff so i think there is definitely an opportunity for folks but we haven't systemically i think prescribed it in hawaii the reason i say that is if you deny the person the right to vote that's a lifetime sentence as opposed to just 10 years or four years or whatever to deny them that right so my thought is that if in the discharge packet there's a letter that says that you can now register to vote it i think it would give them a sense of really being back into the community that's that's all i'm saying i don't know how you could make that happen but since you were on the judiciary um i just thought about that yeah well there's going to be a new judiciary chair next year so we'll see uh uh who that ends up being and you know on the senate side um hopefully i'll be playing a slightly different role uh but we'll be involved so um we can work with our colleagues uh in the senate judiciary committee to address these issues as well now what would you like to do in the on the senate side do you have an idea of what you would like well i think you know there's a there's a handful of issues like i said before you know i really felt like i had accomplished the handful of the bigger things that i really set out to in the house but the thing that i think transcends any of those individual issues has been actually helping to get other people engaged and that has been i think more of a a win a personal win for me than anything else i've had friends uh one guy who had never voted never really participated um who we were sitting on a couch one day just having drinks and he said you know what can i do um to change some of these issues that i care about because he surfed a lot and saw pollution and all sorts of stuff going on in the water and i said well you know we can help i'll help you write a bill and we can we can address this and it took two years but two years later here he is standing next to the governor's the governor signs a bill into law that prohibits the county's from just dumping sewage out into the ocean and sets a pathway to be able to manage that kind of situation island-wide and create a permanent infrastructure to better handle it so we don't have these kinds of um pollution events and this is a guy who not only um helped write that and author it and bring community members together but he got involved in um getting the community organized around this effort and he's one of a number of examples i think of folks that i feel just really really glad that i had an opportunity to at least open a door crack too and these are the folks who are going to replace all of us you know who are going to be around for a long time solving this problem so um i feel like coming out of the house you know that's that's been the biggest win so in the senate the question is not only how do we address these issues but how do we really get people engaged beyond just voting because that is like the baseline minimum that we have an obligation to do as citizens in this country but how do we get people involved in actually solving these issues in a concrete way getting involved with organizations that are helping out creating their own um really just getting people uh to laser focus their attention onto some of these things that people constantly drive by and say you know i wish somebody would do something and then actually step up and do something about it well now in eastern lulu of course is hanama bay and we have seen hanama bay come back beautifully without the tourists so and i know that you have been that's been one of your issues is hanama bay so how do we look at that going forward after seeing how beautiful it is without the tourists how do we move forward yeah it's it's um i was actually out there a couple weeks ago um helping a few of the scientists catalog uh different corals and their growth over time and it is remarkable if you were in the water in hanama bay right now uh you would not recognize it because what it was which i mean pre-covid you know as a tourist mecca um covered with a slick of sunscreen on the surface of the water it was just kind of gross but now it's it's it feels like a regular beach it feels pristine and when we're in the water there was a a monk seal that had come up and was swimming alongside us doing its thing there were turtles there fish all of it was really coming back and so the question is how do you take this kind of um regeneration and this sort of progress and ensure that we're not going to go right back to where we were before and um you know fill the thing with people in an unsustainable way and so you know the city has been working on this already we're working on the state side to do it as well to be able to capitalize on the the demand to visit this place this unique resource and create a revenue stream that can help perpetuate its its uh rehabilitation over time and so what that means is like in the large sense of trying to get wealthier um higher spending visitors to hawaii and fewer of them um we want to do the same thing for nama bay folks want to go they can pay a little bit more if they're tourists still free for kama aina um but that money would go back into its restoration and so we're working on that right now we have plans um uh we're working with a coral nursery um friends of nama bay and some of the other organizations that are doing work there to actually start not just better managing the place but now replanting coral and actually re-growing nama bay um through what it would have naturally been which many of us have never seen in our lifetimes well now as a child did you ever we used to do storytelling at the top of a nama bay before it became a tourist mecca uh did you ever go to the storytelling at an nama bay when you were a child i i recall going there you know in field trips and with friends and family and that sort of thing i don't remember um the the detail because that was just too young but you know i mean growing up here i you go sort of because it's there but it's not like one of the go-to beaches like you're gonna go to some other like bellows or uh makapu or one other beach uh in the area before you go down nama bay because it's just way less crowded and and you see a lot of the same species actually uh a little bit offshore but that's part of what we're trying to change too because you know the city and county has a contract with um uh sea grant uh through uh and i'm actually on their advisory board so we're going to try and i think change the way that the narrative is set up right now from defining this place as a tourist attraction to defining it as a culturally significant and environmentally significant um special place and then with that mindset um educate tourists appropriately on what it means to go there and how to um act respectfully and really help contribute to it rather than take now tell me about your district goes out into the ocean with all those northern Hawaiian islands as a part of the city and county of Honolulu and and the state so tell us about those islands yeah so um the way the constitution is set up all the um sort of unattached islands outside of the main Hawaiian islands fall into the last senate district and the last house district which have been um the district that i currently represented as well as the one that i'm running for and so that's the entire northwestern Hawaiian island chain from Hawaii all the way up to uh Guam or up to midway and you know there's there's not a lot of voters out there um i've never actually been out to most of the islands um it's just too remote and too difficult to get there and i have had opportunities to to go on like sort of scientific research missions but the catch is like there's one ship that goes out and will go out for a couple of weeks so once you once you commit you're there you're there so hopefully sometime soon i'll get to go but what's significant about this is you know this is really like one of the the um and Papahana Mokoakea which is the monument actually helped to run the local campaign organizing people to get involved to expand it when um senator Schatz actually proposed an expansion a number of years ago and we worked with the Obama administration and we were successful and uh you know we we stood there at UH the president flew in and signed the um proclamation uh expanding it and creating the world's largest uh protected area on the planet and this is you know thousands of miles across and hopefully um in spite of covid in spite of climate change in spite of all the things that we're worried about right now i mean this unique natural resource which is pristine um remains that way with the exception that most of these places are just covered in plastic which is a whole other issue of course that's a whole different yeah so we're working on that separately but um on a more global scale that was somehow and i don't don't know how but most people have no idea that the city and county reaches that far is there a way that we um can become familiar with these islands live you know there must be something that we get to know our neighbors and get to know these islands um just like me how seems like two thousand miles away and we never get to go there is there some way we can find out about them who are where they are who they are because it's all of the northwestern islands so yeah i mean um you know there there are resources available for the for the textbook sort of look at these things right i mean you can go to NOAA you can go to the some of the other government agencies that do a lot of the management work up there and they have a lot of good information um and videos and all kinds of stuff bishops museum has got um you know locally here has got a lot of um background on what's happening and what the the cultural history is because you know these places have been explored before um although we're never sort of like permanent settlements um but but to actually go out there and again i haven't done this but i'm told is is really a life-changing event because you are perhaps on one of the most remote spots on the planet you can possibly be there's no light pollution there's no big city there's there's nothing around you but the pacific ocean and a small breeze that's that's falling over you and you look up and you can see all the stars completely unobstructed and it's a unique experience that um i hope people are able to one day sharing but i think until we can better manage the resource and protect it um it will remain a little bit at a distance for most of us well it says all of the north north western islands how many islands are there between here and way um or midway or yeah i i couldn't tell you the number i mean it's if you count like every little small tiny islet and everything else it's probably hundreds but um but it is an archipelago that stretches you know it is it is what hawaii used to be it this is the old hawaii that is eroded away so it is part of our um identity i think here in hawaii whether we recognize it or not that's exciting that um that we have or you have this opportunity and to care for these islands that we all of us should be aware to care for these islands um and not let it just go to back and ruin or polluted or filled with plastic or whatever but let's come back to honolulu are there any special issues uh that we have not talked about that you would like to see absolutely coming up in the senate what tell us something special that you you want to do yeah the biggest thing um it sort of it touches on sort of the the unique moment we're in right now i mean for a long time we've talked about being more sustainable and diversifying our economy and growing local food and all these different things that um we're sort of no-brainers before and they're absolutely no-brainers now um seeing covid sort of decimate our our supply lines and everything else from time to time i mean i feel like this is the moment these next couple of years as we chart our way out of covid and rebuild our economy in a way that is going to be different than before whether we like it or not but this is that moment to decide what that's going to be and if we're going to do things truly differently and better prepare ourselves and become more resilient and build more of a circular economy that that eliminates the the billions of dollars that we're siphoning overseas to import food and fossil fuels and all these things we rely upon i mean that money can be given right back to our community can create local jobs and local products here that replace all that and i feel like now is the time to double down on all those commitments that we've made and that progress that we've charted the stuff that i've helped to work on already getting us off of imported energy and fuel helping to give grants to our local farms and clear up their ability to actually produce local food and then get it not just to the supermarket but get it right to our tables to get it to our schools and our students to do all these things that we for so long knew we had to do but have not made enough progress on like this is that moment where we can change it all we've never had a better i'm agreeing with you because people the tourists come from all over and they want hawaii food they don't want mcdonalds and all of the other things they want food that's indigenous to hawaii made cooked with the kinds of things that you can only get in hawaii and yet we don't you don't do that for ourselves we don't uh support the farms that that grow these special things so i'm glad here you say that that's a focus because i think that's really where we need to be yeah absolutely so i'm excited about it i mean i really think we have opportunity that is right around the corner and so it's up to all of us and it's up to our community to get involved to make sure this happens because as much as um you know this should be the priority these things should be the priority there's going to be competing stuff that we just can't prepare for who knows what's coming next you know i mean who could have predicted 2020 so we'll need our community support to not only help us figure out what these solutions look like but to hold our feet to the fire as elected leaders and as government in general to help compel that change well another thing is wellness tourism that is with our climate and the beauty it seems to me that we should have facilities where people can come to get well you know for instance if you have surgery at any hospital it's a ten thousand dollars a day where if you had the surgery and you checked in at the hilton that's five hundred dollars a day so uh no i don't i'm not saying that you should do that i'm just talking about the cost so if we had facilities on all of the islands especially some of those like molokai that are not visited by a whole bunch of tourists where people could come and and do the wellness just get well with the air the ocean of the things that that constitute wellness i don't know you know people now go to asia to thailand to do exactly that so that's one of my one of my biggest yeah i mean there there've been um i think certainly like placed in a cultural context right i mean the way that um our indigenous community connects people with the land and and does healing in a really unique way i think is something that we can um and really should make more of sort of a mainstream part of our our modern western medicine here but i mean just in general being able to fix our system as it is is going to be a priority because um i mean covet again is like a a health pandemic emergency situation and even though we are by far and away one of the better states um providing health care and insurance coverage for everybody we still can do better we still have portions of our population that don't have access i think um in our safety net itself is clearly outdated and and watching this unemployment situation unfold this year and realizing that not only is the system inadequate to handle the kinds of support people truly need but there's huge portions of people it just doesn't even cover in the first place all the folks who were registering for pua for the pandemic unemployment insurance for individual sole proprietors and you know uber drivers and all these folks who work in a modern-day gig economy which just didn't exist you know 20 30 years ago um that is a huge gap in our safety net and those people are hurting the most right now and we're definitely not providing the resources to them that someone who's worked at a law firm for 40 years and got laid off is going to get so we do have a lot of work to do and it overlaps with health care and overlaps with um government assistance programs and everything else and i'm really excited to see this opportunity again bring these things into focus you know i mean covid sucks but the truth is there is a silver lining and it forces us as a society to rethink the way we do things and change well i'm a caregiver and one day i was fine and out in the world and then the next day i'm a caregiver and i'm learning uh because nothing in my life prepared me for that uh and i'm sure i am sure with covid there are a lot of people like that that all of a sudden oh now what do i do so i'm sure that we need to look at like you said this whole system the way we take care of each other the whole medical system um and what we do or don't do but and and i think covid has taught us all open our eyes to a whole new world of how we care for each other yeah i'm excited to see what happens because i feel like i'm not the only one talking about these kinds of things there are definitely others and as long as we can keep that momentum going over the next um couple of years i think we'll come out of this better than we went in over the long term oh i'm sure we will i'm sure we're because we're all learning so much at right now as we move on with covid listen my dear um tell us now we only have a little bit of time left tell us exactly why we should vote for you this is your time so tell us um well you know i think the bottom line is i'm from here this has been home and everybody i think faces the same issues together i'm stepping up into uh this role to run for the senate because i feel like this is one opportunity to be able to change things and i feel like in the house i've definitely been able to help do that and i mean we've not only got homeless people back into homes and changed our trajectory on climate change and protected people's civil rights and reduced costs for energy and daily living i mean all these things have been fantastic but there's so much more to do and i just feel like there's so much left undone so many projects that are sort of midway right now that i'm committed to finishing them if people will give me the opportunity to help and it's not something i do by myself by any means we all play a role and most of these things that we've accomplished have been together with community groups and with local neighbors and with the support of um folks out in the district and around the islands and around the state so um i feel like this is that time for everybody to step up this isn't just about who we're electing it's about what we each are going to be doing to help support those people we elect and to help advance those issues and hold their feet to the fire to make sure that it gets done and this is something that i feel like um i've really come a long way on from naively thinking like oh we're going to change the world to actually know this is how we do it and it's not just me it's and it's not overnight it's incremental and it takes all of us and so this is that next step that we have and the next opportunity into covid i mean coming out of covid to really double down on these things and create that change so i just asked for people's consideration um i promise to keep doing what i'm doing um and what our community needs to see wow well you know it's been a pleasure talking with you and while i can't vote for you but i do hope and trust that everybody in 25 tell us exactly where district 25 is it's kailua it's waimanalo and it's hawaii kai okay and so that's quite a stretch there anyway and and hawaii kai used to be part of waimanalo anyway but that's a different story now thank you again and i do hope and trust that this election will work out just fine for you and we will have an event a zoom event on the night of the election so we will let you know so you can join us sounds good again good luck and we'll see you next time