 Aloha, welcome to Politics in Hawaii on Think Tech Hawaii with Dennis Eszaki. Today we'll be speaking with Mufi Hanaman, former athlete, teacher, coach, city council chair, and mayor of Honolulu. Among his accomplishments, he was a White House fellow and a full-bright scholar. He also worked for the US president. Now the CEO of the Hawaii Hotel and Lodging Association has his work cut out for him. Oh yeah, in Hawaii, he has what school you went and we mean high school. I think he went to Puneho lower campus called Iolani then on to Harvard University. Mufi, welcome. We have so much crowd to cover so please start with telling us about your time in Washington DC with all the present. Well, you know, it was a wonderful opportunity. Obviously, I've always been interested in government. That's what I majored in at Harvard. US history was always my favorite subject along with English at Iolani and I was raised at a very early age to look to give back to the community to as much as given, much as expected. So my parents raised us in Kalihi or raised me in Kalihi and I went to three public elementary schools there, Fern Kalikai Puhale, went to Iolani, matriculated at Harvard and I did a full-bright in University of Wellington in New Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. So it was a fact that I started in public service with Governor George Ariyoshi led to my first opportunity to serve a presidential administration and that was President Jimmy Carter. I worked in the Office of Territory and International Affairs. Later, I was able to serve President Ronald Reagan during his administration by being appointed to the Office of the Vice President of the United States and that was George Herbert Walker Bush. Very, very fortunate to have received that appointment. It was a very coveted post. It was in the White House Fellows Program. Everybody wants to work for the President of the United States and you don't get that opportunity on a one-on-one, if you will. But the Vice President's Office affords you that and so I was able to be selected by Vice President Bush, travel around the world. That's what Vice Presidents do and made lots of friends and relationships and networking contacts and the like. Then I also served as son George Herbert, George Walker Bush in his administration by being on the U.S. Secretary of Labor's Apprenticeship Committee. That was a very wonderful opportunity to do that there. Then doing President Clinton's time, I was the U.S. Representative to the South Pacific Commission in the Department of State. I represented our country amongst the nations that make up Oceania. Then doing President Obama's time, obviously, it was a very close working relationship with him. I actually met him when he was at Punahol. He was playing for the Punahol basketball team. I was the coach at Iolani. We forged a relationship then. It continued where when I became mayor, there was only two mayors that he always used to do a shout-out to. One was Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago and the other one was yours truly because of our personal relationship and did many things with them to further the interests of the mayors because I was the chair of the Tourism Committee of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. All of those relationships obviously gave me an opportunity to lobby the U.S. Senate, advocate in the U.S. House of Representatives, met lots of wonderful senators and representatives through the year had a very close relationship with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a good friend of Senator Akaka in particular and Senator Inouye. Of course, senators like Hillary Clinton and the like were always very cordial, receptive to anything that I would bring before them that would benefit the state of Hawaii and when I was mayor, in particular, the city and county of Honolulu. A lot of things you did. What exactly is the White House Fellow and the Fulbright Scholar? The White House Fellow was a program that was started by President Lyndon Johnson back in 1964 to encourage young Americans to come to Washington, D.C. after you are selected and you get to then serve in one of the departments or in my case, the White House. Wonderful opportunity to work in Washington, D.C., but they have this thing called the education program which allows you to meet as a group with movers and shakers throughout the country, throughout the world. And then every White House Fellow's class gets to take an opportunity to visit a foreign country. In our case, we wanted to go to the Middle East, so we went to Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan during my time. So that's what the White House Fellow's program is all about. And so that led to me creating a home here called the Pacific Sentry Fellows program made up of outstanding young leaders in the state of Hawaii. Then the Fulbright Fellowship is something that you receive after you graduate from college, so I applied for a Fulbright Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholar, and I selected New Zealand, where to me it made a lot of sense because I am of Polynesian descent. Auckland is the largest Polynesian city in the world in terms of different Polynesian ethnic groups throughout the city of Auckland and in New Zealand. And so I used that to study more about the Pacific Island nations and territories. Wonderful opportunity, too, to play basketball throughout New Zealand. Rugby is king there, but when I was there, they said that they wanted to develop the game of basketball. And so I was in early on in the country's growing interest in basketball. So the rugby team that is known as the All Blacks, that the number one rugby team in the world, and then what they call the basketball team, the Tall Blacks. Okay, so why move back to Hawaii when you're rubbing shoulders with everybody in DC, especially the four presidents? Well, you know, I've always wanted to be here. And, you know, I knew that this was home. And you asked a really good question because when I was finished with my White House fellowship, there was an opportunity for me to stay there or to move to another state and basically stay involved with things that are happening at the national level. But I met a wonderful man, JWA Doc Byers, who used to head up C Brewing Company. And he made me a wonderful offer and I wanted to come home. So I came back home. But before I worked for C Brewing Company, I went back to work for Governor George Ariyoshi, who I'm really indebted to because he gave me my start in public service. So I worked in his office. I was one of several young special assistants. And the responsibility he gave me was for Pacific Island areas. And then from there, I also worked in the Waihei administration. Governor John Waihei made me his director of the Office of International Relations, as well as the state director of the Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism. So those two gentlemen really provided me that opportunity here at home to be in public service. And I'm very indebted to them. I learned a lot from them. Governor Ariyoshi was a fiscal conservative. He didn't like to waste taxpayers' dollars. He was always very frugal with the public dollars. And with Governor John Waihei, it was all about being very creative, all about thinking beyond the box and going beyond just being a place of sun, sand, sea, and surf, and seeing how we can compete with the rest of the world. So I had a lot of latitude to travel, promote Hawaii nationally, internationally. And he kind of called me his Secretary of State when I was working for him versus the Director of International Relations. And as the DBED director, is when I really got involved with our industries here, military, agriculture, the other diversified activities that we tried to do during that time. And of course, our number one industry to today, tourism. So in that job, I got to travel around. I went back to my roots. You know, my parents are originally from Samoa. And so with the relationships that I had been developing at the Office of International Relations and the like, it gave me an opportunity to meet the leaders through my involvement with the East West Center through Governor Ariosha and Governor Waihei. And also with respect to meeting with island nations and leaders, you know, the governor of the state of Hawaii is in a very unique position, not only does he represent the state here and also in Washington DC, but many times he's at the forefront of American relationships throughout the Pacific region. So in that case, I was really given lots of opportunities in my younger days in government to meet a lot of these foreign leaders. I should say our brothers and sisters, because they really are, especially our Pacific Island leaders, forge these relationships that remain very strong to today. So whether it's Guam, CNMI, Halao, the Marshall Islands, Federated States, certainly throughout the Polynesia with Fiji, Tahiti, Tonga, Samoa, American Samoa, and then of course, over in Melanesia with the Solomon Islands and all those other entities that make up Melanesia. It really was a wonderful opportunity and I feel very strongly to today about the importance of Hawaii maintaining those relationships because we are part of the Pacific family. I mean, you read the story of Hokulea and what has happened, as to say you witnessed what Nainoa Thompson is doing. He's kind of reawakening the feeling that we should continue to have and that is we are one family. We were navigated throughout the Pacific that way. And certainly as we fast forward to today, it behooves us to maintain that close family relationship with our Ohana in Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia. Yeah, terrific. You mentioned Governor Arayoshi. I think he ended up with his term with like $300 million surplus or something. And our friend John Oye came in. He did a lot of things like you mentioned. I know one was worked with him on housing projects. He did a lot. Thousands of homes came up, beginning Kapolei, hundreds of millions of dollars. They both did great things. You mentioned the Hawaii Office of International Relations and the South Pacific Commission. I worked on in the Pacific Island in Palau and Marshall Island. That's where I learned about atomic bomb and all that with the comeback of free association. We'll get a lot of these Pacific Islanders coming to Hawaii now. A lot of them. It's a large percentage of COVID cases. Are you involved with those kind of things too? Absolutely. Let me spend a minute on the Kofa, as you mentioned, the comeback of free association. That is very, very important. And I really am proud of our delegation. Senator Schatz, Senator Hirono, Congressman Case, Congressman Caheli, they feel very strongly that America should honor its commitment to those islands. In the FSM, in Palau, and the Marshall Islands, who as you know during World War II were used as a test site, a bombing area. And therefore, the citizens that are there and remain today have had to endure and their families had to endure the fallout from having these kind of tests through the years. So there's a situation now in Congress where those agreements have to be extended. And our delegation is right up front there urging the rest of the United States Congress and the Biden administration to move post-haze so that we can honor these agreements. Now, it's true that a lot of them have left and they've migrated to places like Hawaii, California, and elsewhere. And like with every immigrant group that comes to a new homeland, they are going to encounter problems of adjusting, be it language, be it culture, be it just employment skills, education, and training. So they also, along with many of the other Pacific Island entities here, who have hopes that have moved here and our native Hawaiian community, have not really done as much well in the area of getting the vaccination. And also, we have to keep on top of them to make sure. There's a lot of times it's accessibility, it's them feeling that, you know, how can they afford to go and see a doctor to get that, or don't realize that you don't have to see a doctor to be able to do a COVID test. And certainly now as we try to emphasize more and more vaccination. So I am doing my part, along with other folks of Polynesian, Micronesian, Ancestria, or just people in Hawaii, they call Hawaii home, to ensure that we bring everyone along as we preach the importance of being vaccinated, but making sure that we can cope successfully with this COVID-19 because the variant that is raging around us now is something like no other that we have seen, nothing that we have seen of late in terms of how we can cause serious harm and hospitalize you and sometimes cause even a death in the family of a death of a loved one, if you don't take the necessary precautions to try to head it off. And that's why the whole thing that we talk about, especially my prison job today for everyone to observe and social distancing, wear your mask, do all the things that that's important to make sure that we are healthy and safe community, and that we don't let our guard down so that we get a situation where, you know, we may lose a loved one or we ourselves might be in danger because we're not doing the necessary things we need to do to keep ourselves healthy and free and safe from this COVID. Yeah, thanks. Regarding Kofa, do you know if Hawaii got federal funds to accommodate these Pacific Islanders? Well, that's the argument that's being made right now. And I know both members of our delegation have introduced legislation to ensure that there will be federal funds set aside in addition to what the Biden administration would want to do. So, as I said, I'm very, very proud of the efforts that they're putting forward there because through the years prior to their service, it was always Senator Inouye, you know, Senator Kaka, you know, they did the same thing. And for Senator Matsunaga, Congresswoman Patsy Mink, you know, Congressman Eftel, we can just go down the line of all those that have served in the nation's capital that have always felt this special kinship, and they look up to us. And Dennis, you experienced that. I'm sure many of the friends that you made when you traveled throughout Micronesia, they're still very close to you today. And it's our obligation and responsibility to help them come into the mainstream here and be a very productive citizen. Thanks. Okay. Moving on to DBEDT, Business and Economic Development and Tourism. When you were there, I guess we're pushing for tourism. Didn't we even have a race car with Hawaiian vacations on the side or something? Oh, you remember that. That was a project that we and HVCB, what we call Hawaii Visitors grew at that time. You know, Navo idea came before us and Governor liked it and some others in the community liked it. And, you know, it was a tough sell because many of our folks in the industry couldn't see how you could promote Hawaii through a dragster car that was being traveling throughout the country at these various racing competitions and the like. So I did not have a long history with it because I think I gave it like six months to prove that it could be productive and meaningful and all the metrics that we put out then or certainly wanted the measurements for success, you want to make sure that it could meet certain criteria. So it was having a difficult time doing that because it was such a novel concept. But, you know, when you are in tourism to separate yourself or differentiate yourself from other destinations, you know, you have sometimes these out of the box ideas that people throw before you and if the money is there, you kind of take a look at it and it's not working. You shift gears and you move to something else. So the biggest thing we did while I was there in terms of tourism, I believe, was saving the probe. I remember getting a call from Roger Goodell who at that time was a Vice President to Commissioner Paul Tagliabu. And he called the governor's office. Governor Hawaii said if I could call him back and remember talking to Commissioner Goodell, well now he's Commissioner Goodell at that time and started the conversation with something like this, I got good news and bad news. The good news is we love the Provo in Hawaii. In fact, Maki Yanagisawa deserves high praise for keeping the Provo here or bringing the Provo here. At a time it was plain before no one throughout the United States. I remember one time the Provo was played in Buffalo, New York in the dead of winter or in the Coliseum. No one would go. And when it came to Hawaii, we made it a sellout game besides the thousands of tourists that came here. But Goodell's message was this, I have good news and bad news. The good news is we want to keep the Provo in Hawaii. The bad news is that there are other places that want the Provo. So you folks have to pay something for it because basically we would provide you a lower stadium and the expenses associated with that and we didn't have to pay a fee. So in talking with Governor Hawaii at that time, I said, you know, I checked on who our competition was and those days you didn't have the internet kind of go and get information fast. You had to either coconut wireless the bugger or you had to get on that phone and you had to fax people and so forth. And I remember telling him and said, hey, I understand our competition is Orlando, Florida and Orlando has Disney World. It has the city of Orlando, which has a major sports authority. They're just not overseeing a swap meet because they don't have a swap meet at their stadium. You're talking about major sporting events that come to Orlando. And then the third thing is they have ESPN and ABC. So they have all the elements to make it very successful. And we don't have that. So Governor said, what do you suggest? I said, I think we need to promote this as a sports tourism opportunity. And that is with the monies that D-Bed gets from the legislature for tourism. We transfer that over to Hawaii Visitors Bureau. And then they do marketing. So let's call that sports marketing because the Pro Bowl is played here. It's not just 25,000 people that come to watch the Pro Bowl, assuming that half are tourists, half are local residents. But it's a fact that in the dead of winter, it's being shown throughout the mainland. And people watching it in their freeze and freezing weather will see, wow, got to get on and see that sunshine. Look how sunny that beach is and so forth. So it would spawn other types of business opportunities for us. And then let's talk to the National Football League to expand the benefits that we get from it. So they never used to give charitable grants, for example. Prior to that, I said in return, we'll ask that they donate the various Boys and Girls Club or the YMCA or whatever groups that we would suggest to get help and then do football clinics throughout the state of Hawaii. And so that's how it went. And fortunately, like people like Senator Milton Hope in the legislature at that time was sports-minded. Both Milton and I went to Harvard together. He played football. I played basketball. And he understood the importance of sports. And so we were able to save the Pro Bowl then. And then from then on out, it became a sports marketing event with funding from tourism through the Hawaii Visitors Bureau later on with the Hawaii Tourism Authority. I recall all that. However, when they came with that request, the library probably had a different answer to them though. We won't go into it. I don't think he'd be happy. We talked about what he said. But the other thing I remember to Dennis, your home island was involved in one of my experiences at D-bed. And I believe it was Hurricane Iniki occurred when it was either Iniki or Eva, maybe Iniki. But I remember Governor Whitehead dispatching me to Kauai to oversee the evacuation of tourists from Kauai because I was a director of D-bed. And then also at that time working with the county of Kauai to try to identify other industries to help because tourism was going to be in a slump for a while. In fact, that philosophy was throughout the state of Hawaii in that regard. But yeah, it brought me to Kauai many, many, many times. And Senator Kochi and I talk about that a lot because, wow, I remember coming to Kauai in the aftermath of that hurricane. Holy smokes. It was really devastated big time. Yeah. Okay. As a president, CEO of the Hawaii Dodging and Tourism Association, how do we balance tourism? Some people say parent over tourism and the pandemic. You know, Dennis, you know, I've been involved with heavily with two of Hawaii's governors, certainly have a working relationship with Governor Hige. I know Governor Abercrombie tried to do this. Governor Lingos tried to do this. Anyway, back to Governor Burns, they've all had great ideas on how to diversify the economy away from tourism. But for one reason or another, it always comes back to tourism because you know, we just haven't been able either to pull all the capital we would need to truly diversify or a talented pool of people specific to that industry that could help us or Hawaii's just not seen as a place that could offer things at other places in the world that have been able to diversify, find diversified industries around tourism. That doesn't mean that we don't stop trying. I think we should. We should continue to try. But in the meantime, we're not going to find another industry overnight that will employ over 200,000 people or bring in $2 billion in tax revenues or bring in $17 billion dollars in revenues that the tourism industry does. So let's make it more responsible. Let's make it more sustainable. Let's make it more resilient. And let's do it in such a way that the local people don't feel that they're being shortchanged, that they're being left out or that everything that is being done for the tourists and at their expense. When I was on the city council, I championed legislation there to create a Hanama Bay special reserve fund. Let me go into it just a minute or so to do that. And that is the Harris administration at the time. It proposed a fee to charge people to go to the bay. Never before had that been offered or I should say introduced. The problem I had with that, it was the monies collected at Hanama Bay to perhaps limit the number of people that would go down there because you're going to charge a fee now. It's no longer free. We're going to the general fund. And the problem I had with that is that, well, if it goes into the general fund, how do we know or how does that person's assess if we know that in the future, whatever it needs to be done at Hanama Bay, the improvements that need to be done, could be bathrooms, could be the road, the parking area and so forth, or things along the beach area are going to be done. Because once it finds its way in the general fund, it could go to other areas. So I propose that those monies go into a special fund for the preservation, maintenance and education of those who come into Hanama Bay. And let's rename it the Hanama Nature Preserve. And let's make sure that as tourists are charged to use the beach, because you cannot charge local people to use the beach, that there's a parking fee that locals would pay and residents would pay if you're going to park your car at Hanama Bay. And I'm very happy to see that this present city council has basically kept it in place by even charging a higher fee now for people to go down to the bay. I really believe when we talk about how do we make an industry that will be much more receptive for people here, because the complaint is that there's too many people using many of the popular attractions, trails, the valleys, what have you, that the local people are used to? Well, let's institute a user fee so that it'll be maintained properly. And those who use it a lot will pay for it. And we're talking in this case, the tourists, as long as it goes back into a special fund. The other thing I think we should be doing is finally being able to root out illegal vacation rentals in the neighborhoods. I've always said I'm fine with vacation rentals existing in resort areas. That's where they should be and compete with resorts and hotels that come here. But when you go in the neighborhoods, that's when you get into problems because of the fact absentee ownership, you drive up the cost of renting those spaces, local people can't afford it. So I think there's going to be a lot of effort by the county governments, fortunately, and the industry and the state working together to see how we can do that and then set aside more opportunity for affordable house. Yeah, thanks. Okay, we want to get a short time left. You didn't think you'd get away without talking about the rail. Where do we go from here? Well, I think right now, we just got to make sure they clean up the house there. They thought that when they asked the last executive director to basically step aside, Andy Robbins, that they were now going to be able to show improvement. But that didn't happen. There was a bunch of backroom shenanigans, backdoor dealings that came to light thanks to Senator Fevella and some media folks. So they got to clean up their house. And that led to the resignation of the chair of the hardboard. So that's number one. Number two, I think they should make a commitment that they're going to start interim service and get it to Middle Street sooner rather than later. There's enough money there right now without having to look for future funding to complete that and start interim service. Dennis, the sooner people ride, the better off it would be, even if it goes from a maipahu to a law stadium, let people then get on the buses to express bus service to get them riding to create some momentum because transit oriented development will lead to more affordable housing. And that's what we want to see the TOD benefit. I've always said, if you like rail, you're going to love transit oriented development. Thanks. Believe it or not, the time is running out yet. You've been watching politics in Hawaii with Dennis Isaki, Mahalo Tumufi Hanaman, and to the viewers on Think Tech Hawaii. Please log on to thinktechhawaii.com and support our hardworking crew and volunteer staff. Do you all get in two weeks? Aloha, a hui hou, ma la ma pono. Thank you, Mufi. Aloha.