 Rick Bissen is running for Mayor of Maui and he's with us today. And we're talking here in Community Matters. I'm Jay Fidel on Sync Tech. Now we're going to explore his background and his platform and so forth. Welcome to the show, Rick Bissen. Thank you very much, Jay. I appreciate you having me. I'm excited to answer your questions and maybe inform your viewers about what's happening here in Maui. Yeah, it's great to have you and I'm excited to talk to you. So tell us about your background that makes you feel you're qualified to be Mayor of Maui. Okay, I'm going to go back a bit. I graduated from St. Anthony High School in Maui where I was the student body president for the college in California, Santa Clara University with a degree in political science. I was also the president there of our Hawaiian club. Went on to the University of Hawaii where I got my law degree and also president of the Hawaiian club there at the university. I became a law clerk here at Maui for a judge. I returned home, I should say, to Maui. I also worked as a prosecutor for 15 years. For eight of those years, I was the county prosecutor under then Mayor Lingo and then Mayor Kimo Apana. So two terms as a county administration, the prosecutor. I then came to Oahu where I moved my family. I was the first deputy attorney general for the state of Hawaii managing 21 divisions that reported to me about 175 lawyers, the largest law firm in the state working under Mark Bennett, the attorney general. I then became the acting director of the Department of Public Safety, the prisons. I had around 2,400 employees, a budget of $200 million, eight facilities, 4,000 inmates, employees on all the major islands. I had almost twice as many employees as the Mayor of the county had in 2004, which is when I ran that department. Then in 2005, I was appointed as a circuit court judge. I returned home to Maui where I served for about the last 17 years. I was the domestic violence judge, the criminal judge. My entire time I started a mental health court in 2013. I was a drug court judge. I became the chief judge in 2019. Just a couple more points here. In 1999, I won the distinguished citizen of the state award from the men's march against violence for the work we did on domestic violence while I was prosecuted on Maui. I started the Maui drug court with Judge Roberto and the public defenders representative in 2000. 2001, I was selected attorney of the year by the Maui county bar association. I was also inducted into my high school's hall of fame for community service. In 2013, I was the first neighbor island graduate of the law school to receive the distinguished alumnus award for community service. And last October, I received the jurors of the year award for the state of Hawaii for the work we did during the pandemic. We were the first circuit of the four circuits to restart in-person jury trials because of the collaboration we had with the public defenders, prosecutors, the bar association on Maui, the department of health, the judiciary. And we were able to bring jurors safely into our courtroom and conduct in-person jury trials, which allowed defendants to have their cases heard, victims to seek their justice, attorneys to have their cases not be backlogged. And it became the model that the rest of the state also used to restart their trials. Wow, I'm glad I asked. That was really helpful for you to go through that. Everybody can do that. So, you know, man, how do you define yourself? What kind of a person are you? What kind of a candidate are you? You know, what kind of a public servant are you? Well, first of all, I'm a proud son of Maui. My cultural values were instilled in me in my home by my native Hawaiian parents. And again, my formal education I received from California and from Honolulu. You know, I think I'm a collaborative candidate. I'm somebody who is used to working with others. I'm a problem solver. You know, I'm used to listening to both sides before making an informed decision. I'm not somebody who rushes to judgment. You know, I don't believe in listening. I believe in accepting the strongest argument, not the loudest voices. And that's just been my training. You know, I feel to mention one more thing that I think is of note. While it took me four years to get my political science degree and three years to get my law degree, this past July, after five and a half years, I received my certification as a whole Pono Pono practitioner, which I thought I was going to do in my retirement. When I signed up in 2016 for this training, I thought it was going to take two years. There were 12 of us, five and a half years later, seven of us were certified. I thought I could combine my Western training with my native Hawaiian healing, you know, training and going in your families. Now that I decided to run for mayor, I think that whole Pono Pono will come into play even more so as executive for the county. But, you know, I think I'm a leader, which is why I described my background. None of those awards I received that I applied for, or did I even know I was nominated for until after I received word that I'd received them. And that's starting back in 1999, right up until this past year. Actually, two weeks ago, I received notice on the White State Bar Association that they awarded me the Golden Gavel Award, which they're going to present to me next month at their annual convention for leadership in our community. But I would just say that I have a history of working well with others, especially within my own community, Maui. And, you know, I rather than retire and put my skills and my experience on a shelf, I decided to offer myself as one of the candidates. And, you know, I think what it really comes down to is that I'm a hard worker. I'm willing to work harder harder than the next person and give my maximum effort. And that's why I've been successful so far. Congratulations on the Golden Gavel. That is very nice. Yeah, I was very surprised. I just learned of it in a letter about two weeks ago. So the whole Pono Pono award really, or the training rather, really interests me. You know, where do you see that fitting in in an administration as mayor of Maui? What needs to be healed? Well, the community needs to come together. You know, what has been accepted in the last, I would say four years, five years now, is it's okay to be openly hostile and it's okay to be rude and it's okay to be disrespectful because your point is important. And the other guy's point is not only not important, it's wrong. Pick the topic, whatever you want it to be. And, you know, I think we start with a place of respect with whole Pono Pono, which is to restore relationships. Now, of course, it's designed for families or people with frequent contact like neighbors, coworkers. It's really it's sort of an intimate process. But the way it can be used in the broader community is the approach. And the approach is one of respect. You know, you respect the other person, you respect their views, even if you disagree with them. You know, I run a pretty tight courtroom for 17 years. You know, I don't allow people to be disrespectful. I have a level that I expect from folks that they expect from me. So this isn't a hypothetical question for me. And it's the way I operate. And it's the way I have operated. And again, everybody can draw the end conclusions from my educational background, the positions I've held, the awards I've received. Again, I never ever applied for any of those other people dominating thinking, you know, this is something that I would be worthy of. So, you know, I'm grateful. But I just use that as an example of I think how I'm viewed in my community. Now, you've been a judge, a criminal judge, including and you've been a prosecutor, you've been in the Attorney General's office, you've been in large part of law enforcer, I would say. And the question is, you know, in your judicial chapter, would people consider you a tough judge, you know, control the courtroom and all that? How tough were you? I think the word most people would use to describe me would be fair. You know, like I said, I think I've considered all the factors. I'll give you a real quick example. If somebody comes to me and says, this person is guilty of shoplifting or just stealing from a store. And, you know, I can issue a sentence for somebody who steals from a store. Let's say the value is, you know, $250 or whatever it was. But, you know, I'm the person who's going to say, well, what did they steal? If you're a single mom who stole diapers and formula, you're going to get a certain sentence. If you're somebody who stole a bottle of vodka or a case of beer and tried to run out of the store, you're going to get a different sentence. So to me, being precise or being mindful is important. I don't think we can just paint everyone with the same brush. That's the lazy way. That's the easy way to do things. You just want to clear a case off the calendar. But it's, I think, I think, you know, 99% of people who have come in front of me will tell you that I'm someone who pays attention to detail and that I'm someone who's mindful of the impact that my decision is going to have on that person in our community. You know, sometimes as judges, we send messages. Sometimes we, you know, we want to deter conduct. It's not all about punishment. A lot of it has to do with deterrence. Of course, the number one is protection of our community. And I think public safety is the number one issue. I think that's the number one issue. The mayor's number one job. And I have 35 years to back up my commitment to that. Is there a problem with public safety in Maui? I wouldn't call it a problem. We have a shortage of police officers. We're about 100 police short. So our recruitment, our retention, our ability to attract officers is something that I'd want to go and get in there and help either the union or the chief or the personnel folks with getting. I think we have ongoing recruitment, you know, back in the day when I was a young prosecutor, we just hold, you know, police recruit, you know, so many, you know, once a year, twice a year, whatever the cycle was. I think these days, we know we got to change that a little bit. So I don't know all the reasons why we're having this issue. We have a brand new police chief. He's not quite one year on the job. I think it'll be a year in December, January. And so a lot of people left and some people are still leaving. And so we're losing them faster than we're bringing them in. So you have any ideas on how to fill that gap? Sure. I mean, I'm sure this has been tried already. I mean, can't think that I have the best ideas or no one's thought of, but I think we got to figure out ways to bring back retirees, which means we got to visit, you know, some of the revisit, some of our laws or ordinances, because, you know, of course, there's a police union and then there's the state legislature that probably has to allow, you know, retirees, if they come back into work, they, they could forfeit or lose their retirement and those kinds of benefits. And that's not what we'd want to do. So we'd have to make some kind of an exemption for an emergency. I guess I would say like bringing in the National Guard, if you will, where you basically, you know, assure them that they're not going to lose their retirement, but that they're actually doing the service for us. So I think bringing retirees out of retirement, asking if they would be willing to put in, you know, so many hours a month, but, you know, they'd be paid. We can afford to pay them because we've budgeted the money for our positions. We just haven't built the positions. And then, you know, whenever an emergency, so having kind of be like a set group and, you know, give them certain kind of jobs depending on their age, you know, you don't have to put them out on the front lines or in the field, you can sort of move folks around, send your, send your younger folks out on the street and your more experienced guys have them be admin or something, but just fill the positions. And, you know, I know there's recruitment out of state, but, you know, generally speaking, our wages aren't as competitive as maybe the West Coast is, you know, people can get better benefits and, you know, buy a house and afford stuff. You know, there's ways. Like I said, we got to either recruit the new folks, retain the guys in there or bring the retirees back to work. Those are just some ideas off the top of my head. Yeah. Okay. Appreciate that. Other problems in Maui that you feel need to be fixed? You know, we could talk about housing and jobs and diversifying and tourism and homeless because those are all the things that people talk about every two and four years in this, what I call the political cycle. But I think to be, you know, totally blunt, what we lack the most on Maui right now is leadership. I think we need leadership from the top. I think we need leadership in management or middle management. I think we can't lead from a position of fear. You know, a lot of times what happens in government, Jay, is that, and I say this as an attorney and as someone who has led both county and state departments. I mean, I was the head of the department. So I was part of these mayor's teams, governance cabinets. So I'm familiar with the back of the house, so to speak. And sometimes we lead because we're risk averse, if that makes sense. The easy thing to do is keep doing it the way you've been doing it because we haven't got sued. And it's sort of a safe bet when sometimes that prevents us from advancing. And sometimes you don't want to change. You don't want to innovate because something might happen. But I think, you know, we shouldn't take unnecessary risks. But I think calculated decisions with the chance of improving and doing so much better is a healthy way to improve our community. And so I think that's sometimes the reason people are afraid to make a mistake. And so they don't want to be bold or think outside of, you know, that proverbial box. I think people want to kind of play it safe. Sometimes you just get by the cycle, get by the two-year, the four-year cycle, get to the next election. And, you know, I think, you asked me this earlier, and I guess I didn't really answer your question about what kind of candidate I am. My way of thinking is two generations ahead. I mean, I think the reason we are where we are now is because we don't think in those ways. You know, 40 years, I'll give you a real quick example. If we were to put our water in the dual water system here on Maui, where we had one water that came into your home just for your sanitation, picked up your toilet water, you picked up your drain from your top, and it was treated and recycled back to your house, only to be used for that purpose. And then you had another water line that all it did was pick up your drinking water. I think we saved half the water we used is my guess. But we don't do it now because it's hard and it's new and we got enough water or I want to hassle. You know, think of the fire suppression requirement that we have in commercial buildings now. You know, you and I both remember a time where that wasn't required and you just have a building and then we learned lessons like man, if we had fire suppression sprinklers, we could save lives. We could start the suppression before the fire department got there, those kinds of things. So it was a hassle. It was expensive, but it's common now. It's done. You know, there's things we do because it's the right thing to do. We shouldn't wait until we're on our last gallon of water and say, okay, well maybe now we should run wastewater different. Well, because you know, we're one of the few states, few countries, we flush drinking water down the toilet every day. We flush drinking water down the toilet, not R1 water and not treated water drinking water. Other countries turn their wastewater into drinking water. Now psychologically, we're not there yet. We're not a state or country because they won't drink wastewater, treated water. No, no, no. We want fresh water right from the mountain, right from the spring. Well, we should treat our water as if we live on an island. That's how we should treat our water. And I think that's a number one issue for lots of people here on Maui, Maui County, including Molokai and Lanai. And I think we'd be bold to try to put in some proposals that I'm suggesting, because again, it's a hassle to be expensive. But I think our generations, our grandkids and our great-grandchildren will thank us and we'll be happy that we thought of them and not just of ourselves. And I think if we can get out of that cycle of two and four-year thinking and go two and four generations thinking, because even stuff we're looking at now, we probably say, man, I wish 40 years ago or 50 years ago they would have done this and we wouldn't have had that. But we're not there yet. We're not there yet. And I want us to get there. I want our administration to get there. Can you talk about money for a minute? Can we talk about fiscal policy? Can we talk about changes in the tax law? Can we talk about poverty and how the government can or should help people who are disadvantaged? What are your thoughts about that? And what are your action plans about that? Do you want to pick one of those? Let's talk about fiscal policy. Does Matt have a problem in fiscal policy? Does Matt have enough money? How would you propose to raise the money necessary for the initiatives you have in mind? Well, you can draw your conclusion. We went four years ago from an $800 million budget, which is incredible. That's quite a budget, to a $1.2 billion budget in four years. I wasn't part of the discussion, so I didn't look at the numbers. I didn't track everything. I have a chance to look at the budget that was signed, that was proposed and signed and put in. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that we got federal monies that are plus funds. We got other federal monies dumped into Hawaii, into Maui. I think that was part of it. But a huge part is that our home prices jumped up. Again, four years ago, they were in the 700,000s. Now, it's $1.1 million. It's an average cost of a house in Maui. So that's over $400,000 in four years. It has increased. So of course, when home prices go up, tax rates might stay the same or even lower, but the amount of taxes that are collected are the same. I think we made a large part of our income. I think over 50% of our taxes we collect are from real property taxes that come from hotels and short-term vacation rentals. So I think the chatter around the state, when you talk to the other three counties, is, oh, Maui has all this money. I guess that's good that we have the ability, how we spend it, how we prioritize it. Obviously, that's something I would want a hand in with trained experts and professionals who do this kind of work. I don't claim to be that guy. My degree was in political science, not economics or accounting or finance. But I think that, of course, I was kind of told you before we got off the air, the definition of that political science is who gets what, when, where, and how. So that's how policies are made. And that's what I want to hand in. So it's not so much how we make our money. It's how we spend our money, how we save it for the rainy day, funds, how we not raid our funds. Maui's had to resort to a 3% TAT tax since the state decided to keep the entire, whatever, 10%, 10.25% tax, the TAT tax that they keep now, they don't distribute to the rest of the counties that stays with the state. So each of us counties basically added another 3% to that. So I mean, I think I have, I think my way of, I think fristfully speaking, I would be very, very careful in how we spend our money. And if you can tell, you know, for me, it's all about the future. It's all about the next generations. And we shouldn't have them, we shouldn't write the checks today that they got to pay later. Let me ask you about, you know, an issue that's probably statewide is certainly Oahu centric. And that is the diversification of the economy. Can you help us understand the economy in Maui? Is it in balance? Are there entrepreneurs coming into, you know, into the economy? Are they making money? Are they staying? You have a brain drain. How do you deal with that? And as I mentioned before, what about people who are disadvantaged? Are they able to get jobs? So I'm asking in general about the economy. And Rick, I'm asking what you would do, if anything, to tune the economy up in Maui. Great, great. I know I'll do my best. So our vast, our dependence is very heavy on tourism. And I guess I can explain it this way. We like tourism. We don't like tourists, because that's the impact. And that's the, that's where the rubber has met the road where too many tourists impact the infrastructure, the locations that locals go, whether it's blocking the side of the road to Hanna, or whether it's taking up the beach parking at the beach parks, or even taking up space on the beach that, you know, that might get crowded. So I think tourism is our number one source of revenue right now from Maui, for Maui. Now, the jobs that come out of that, well, there are a lot of jobs that they're not the highest paying jobs. A lot of people have to work two or three jobs that work in the business industry. So some ideas we have, our economy, we cannot give up on tourism without having some other drivers, economic drivers. Just to answer your questions first, before I come back to my point is, you know, some small businesses, especially restaurants, were deeply affected by the pandemic, and the loss of customers, the restrictions, and all sorts of things that were happening. And I think some of that is starting to come back. I couldn't tell you numbers, but I know just so sort of anecdotally, we just had a bunch of restaurants open here, fast food restaurants, you know, raising gains, Chick-fil-A, Sonic, those kinds of fast food places that are opening on Maui and hiring employees. You know, I know the big push for Maui is to go into ag, do a lot more ag, more sustainability, we can grow our own food, import, I don't know what the number is, 80 or 85% of our food. And so we want to, we want to try to flip those numbers. So we have a brand new Department of Ag that came online for the county. I think we're the only county that has a Department of Agriculture July 1st that came on, that came live and then it started to just appoint a new director. That's not going to be as regulatory as the state one is. So I think for us, that will be an agency that can help our farmers by applying for grants, getting them grants, making like a co-op where they could share large equipment, right? So these are more micro farms, not large tracts of farms, where people can help get their, you know, distribute their product, get it to, get it to market, store it, you know, get it to storage, other things like that. So I think agriculture, food security, we like to use the word food sovereignty is a big area right for industry on Maui. And I think that's something that every candidate who ran from here, all eight of us were probably on the same page on this supporting that. In particular, what's different from our plan is we have an idea of artificial intelligence, driverless and electric vehicles. Now, this isn't a hypothetical. Someone who's who's an expert of this, the lives of Maui is actually testing a vehicle right now in Indianapolis, exactly now. And so Gary Passan is his name, and he's been working with students at the University of Hawaii, Maui College, some University of San Diego grad students by putting this together. The vision we have for Maui, how that would impact Maui is to cut back on our traffic, tourists renting, needing to rent vehicles, maybe getting shuttles between the airport and some of our key locations on the island, and then providing these driverless. Think of them like sort of a rental car shuttle, if you will, except small, you can have a two passenger and we could have maybe up to eight or 10 passengers. Just going along the South, if you know South Key, he rode on Maui, a very busy corridor. But driverless is more is more of a safety, is much more safe than, you know, like an Uber or Lyft situation where we they've always, you know, they've had several conflicts between unruly passengers and really drivers. We could eliminate that. And again, no emissions, less cars on the road, more reliable, cleaner energy. We have a high research and technology park on Maui at one time, we had the super computer up there. It's still there, but it's no longer the top computer, obviously, but we have a place that was designed to do this. So we're excited that we could do not just the software, but the hardware and manufacturing of some of these, we think it's possible to do it right here on Maui. Another area besides agriculture, besides artificial intelligence driverless cars is the access to your problem. We have a Maui, I've been talking about this since January. There's so many people call me about this issue. The access to your problem, Jay, is we have about 60,000 head of deer in Maui County. And the managed, the managed rate is 20,000. The managed number is 20,000. And we just can't keep up with this. The reason this is a problem is these, these herds, they'll eat farmers crops, they'll eat ranchers grazing land. We had 171 traffic collisions just last year, 2001. There have been a couple noted ones just happening in our city, in Kahului, the last couple of weeks. We're not talking about up-country Maui now. So they're spreading. But the biggest fear I have is that if they make their way to our watershed and denude our watershed, that's irreparable. And so, I mean, there are people who have been here longer than me that know this and have taken some steps. But I'd like this to be a more concerted effort of not just eradication, because that's already in place. We have access to your task force working group. So there's some people doing some good work on it. But that's mostly game management. I want us to go into meat production and marketing. I want us to turn this, this high quality venison into a marketable product. We have, any other product, any other ad, you got to go plant it. You got to tend to it. You got to weed it. You got to water it. The deer feeds itself, waters itself, and is very, very abundant. And so, if we could figure out ways to not just shoot them and eradicate them, but to turn them into a marketing source, we got to develop our processes, our butchers, our marketers. We got to have more slaughterhouses. They actually got to be mobile slaughterhouses that you already have one here. We need to have more USDA inspectors inspecting the meat so they can go to market. Right now, everything's home use. Everybody, whatever they shoot, they give away, they process, they eat. That's fine. That works for us, but it's not an industry. It's a hobby. We got to turn it into an industry where we can... Very visionary idea, I must say. And it leads me to ask about the relationship of the islands. A lot of people feel that every island should have its own identity, and it should, you know, that the islands don't necessarily have to be connected all that much. They have to find their own way individually. And that is somewhat problematic when you talk about undersea cable. It is problematic when you talk about the ferry. And I wonder what your thoughts are about undersea cable for electricity and, of course, the ferry. Your thoughts? So, let me first talk about the undersea cable. You know what you're really talking about is digital equity. When we talk about broadband, this is a subject near and dear to me because I have very strong feelings about this. And especially when you bring up the inequity among the different islands or rural communities. Obviously, we have very rural communities like Maui, Moloka'i, but I am not sure you can get more rural than us, our county. Don't forget the big island, yeah. Well, yeah, I'll let Mitch Roth talk about the big island's capacity and issues. But I would just say that for us, you know, there's a broadband hui, a group of about 400 individuals and organizations that started up right around the time of the start of the pandemic, because they recognize that certain rural communities did not have access to telehealth, did not have access to at-home schooling or virtual schooling, did not have equipment, did not have connection, did not have the access. And so for me, I would like to make this a big focus. There are federal dollars available in grants, right? The infrastructure bill that I think you might have November of 2021 put about $2.3 billion aside for Hawaii. And a big portion of that, excuse me, was for digital and broadband access. So, this is exactly what we need to make it not just safer for people who can't get to, don't have as quick access to the doctors as others, but those who might be denied a valid education because of that. So I'm a strong proponent. And whether it's undersea cable or any other way to connect it, the words I'm going to continue to, the mantra I'm going to continue to say is digital equity. And again, that starts from physical equipment. Like you and I right now, we're on a Zoom call. We kind of take it for granted. We just open our device and press start, and it shows up. There's so many communities and families and places that don't have that. Now, some of it did start to come about a little bit during the pandemic because there were monies that came in. But as I said, I think Maui, we need to apply for our fair share, whether it's a formula grant or a competitive grant from the federal government. But we have so much need. And the big island, by the way, speaking of that, they are way ahead on this discussion. As far as readiness, they are ready to apply for funds and kudos to them because they're ahead of the game. We could do a better job. We will do a better job. For example, on my team, my campaign team, I have representation on the broadband hui, which has regular meetings. And so we can get information about applying for grants and whatever the cutting edge latest technology is. Sorry, you mentioned, I got caught up on that. I know it's treated as radioactive and dead, but I'm wondering if you see any possibility for it. I think that's a state issue, not really a county issue, but I know the county will benefit. I know more people than not were very, very excited, pleased. I thought it was a huge benefit for us to have the ferry system run. Now I realize the pushback on that was the environmental impact statement. So I suppose if the governor, the next governor was willing to restart there from scratch, I think it would be very receptive during this time. It was a convenience. It was an option to airfare and to travel, especially if you wanted to be over a vehicle for camping. Now there were some drawbacks. I would say the one that jumps in my mind, the biggest, we're all a little territorial and depending on your cultural beliefs and just your way of thinking about what's appropriate and what's respectful, there was accusations and of course it became proven that people from other communities would come to Maui and take resources from here back to their place. For example, the one I'm thinking of is river rocks used for Imu stones. They have to be those porous river rocks. Even on Maui, you can't take them. You're only allotted one five-gallon bucket a day for a person if that's what you need for your garden or for most people it's to make an Imu to kalua pig. There was all these accusations that people or a person drove here with their truck, loaded up their truck, drove it on the ferry to the back to Honolulu. I think those issues and the fact that it was so convenient to do that rather than you couldn't have done that on an airplane made people think that the system was broken. But I don't think it was a system. I think it was more the individual who decided they would be opportunistic I guess. But those are the things, just one example of that makes people think, ah, we have the ferry to come and steal all of our resources here and take it to their place because they don't have any more. I don't know the reality to what exactly happened and how and why, but I am generally speaking I think that our community would welcome, especially our small businesses. Because I don't know if you know this, but the Love's Bakery Truck when they were still running drove on to that ferry in the morning, drove off here, delivered their product and drove back on. So we were getting fresh bread on the ferry instead of the instead of the airplane. So I'm sure there I'm sure flower people that had flowers that put them in refrigerated trucks and get them somewhere quicker, drive on, pick up something on the other end, drive off. So on a business perspective, I'm sure it opened up a lot more options for us. Let me, I have one last question before we go. And that is, let me understand this. This is the first time you run for office. I had no plans. No plans are never running for office. It was never in my, this was not on my radar. I thought I would retire as you know, I selected, I selected law. So I got into law that became my, my career. And I thought I would retire, but I've got to tell you, I'm running for three reasons. Yeah, I don't know if I exactly answered this, but their names are La La Kea, Nalu Wahi and Kilinahi. Those are the names of my three grandsons. And I'm worried about whether they're able to afford to stay and live here. I never feared that there's a young boy growing up on Maui thinking that I could never live the place that I'm from. I don't worry about that for my three adult daughters. But I'm very concerned if the next generation can afford to stay here or will they be priced out and not be able to afford to live in our home. Amen to that. So that's why I decided to run. How has it been? How has your campaign been? You know, these are things that you haven't done before. These are experiences you haven't had before. And you're doing pretty well. Can you tell me what the experience is like running for office, running for mayor of Maui? Yes, I'll answer it two different, in two ways. First, we're just a bunch of amateurs trying to do, you know, a professional job. And so, you know, if you look at us, you don't have the experience, but the energy, the effort, the organization, just the commitment from the team has been incredible. On the flip side or on the personal note, you know, when I used to work at my job, I'd come home after a day of work and tease. It would be just, you know, you spend a lot of time thinking about your decisions, making your decisions. Now, it's very different because I have lots of meetings like this, like this Zoom meeting. This is the first of three that I'll have today. Sometimes I'll have five in a day. I'll address groups, like a group that I'll address tonight in a situation. So, what I find though, is that when I talk to somebody like you or anyone, it's an exchange of energy. It's not a depletion of energy. I get energy from the person that I've been talking to on the campaign trail. And it sort of fills me with, I guess, energy, for lack of a better word. And so, whatever I put out, I'm getting back. And if I'm back three or four people, I'm getting back three or four times that. And that's how I've been able to sustain myself throughout this process. I look forward to it. I signed up for this. I'm not complaining about it. Getting up early, staying up late, going to meetings, meetings, meetings. This is what I signed up for. And this is what I look forward to. Rick Pison, it's great to talk to you. Thank you very much for joining us this morning at Think Tech. We really appreciate it. Good luck on the election. Thank you. Thank you, Jay. It's nice to meet you. Take care. Aloha. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.