 Aloha and welcome back to Talk Story with John Wahee. And again, once again, we have a very interesting guest for all of you. I have with me this afternoon the former governor of Hawaii, Neil Abercrombie, and a longtime congressman and city councilman and just a public service personified, but most important, a dear friend, a good friend, and Neil Governor Abercrombie. Welcome. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Aloha. And you said you were having a real interesting guest. So is someone else coming? No, Neil, you're you're going to be it. Tell us just so we can get people oriented. What are you doing these days? I mean, what happened? Well, I'm here in my little office at Smith and King Street, down in China town. After I left the governorship, I decided that whatever time was left to me, that I was going to try to devote to the rehabilitation, the rejuvenation of Chinatown. I love it down here. And so I got connected with, as an example, with Monacae Marketplace. I think a lot of people are familiar with that. Right. Those who have visited it down y'all Monacae, a hotel, White Street down there off River, just up from River Street. There was all these wonderful little businesses on the on the first floor. And they may remember there was a second floor there, a big courtyard, and it was used mostly for storage. So I thought it'd be an ideal place to put the rental apartments. You've got to tell the people about that. You need to tell us. So this is a very important project you've been doing. Yeah, rental apartments. I'm not talking about speculation and condos and so on. There's a place for that, but not in Chinatown and not for those who, especially those who are working, but don't have the income to be able to afford apartments. And so after you left the governorship and you set up your office there, you actually took over this marketplace in terms of turning it into rental housing. I work with the owner. The city owns the property underneath Monacae Marketplace and I work with the owner of the marketplace of the building to get an extended lease for the owner. So that the financing could come into place so we could build apartments. And I worked with a really terrific organization. I mean, a lot of times we're able to bad mouth government for good reasons for sure. But I'll tell you, the Department of Community Services, then under Pam Woody Oakland and Becky Soon and a great team over in Community Services is in charge of the Affordable Housing Fund of the city and county. And so working with the owner of the property, working with the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Land Management of the city, working with the Department of Community Services, we built 38 rental apartments for low income people. They're fully occupied now down in over on the second floor at Monacae Marketplace. And I'm looking to do more in Chinatown, more affordable apartments that are permanent rentals. We're not in the business. I'm not a developer. I'm just trying to be a catalyst for seeing that the most pressing problem that I think we have when you see that the median price for a home on Oahu right now is a million dollars. The most pressing problem is to get rental apartments permanent, which is what I'm working on. And I'm trying to do it in Chinatown. I have high hopes that we're going to do dozens and dozens of them. That's what I'm pushing for. Well, Neil, not that we're on it. Okay. And since, you know, you're a veteran of government and since you have discovered that there's this niche for yourself in Chinatown. But what about, what's your view of the overall sense of where housing needs to go in the state? Well, John, let's jump right to it. I'll tell you what we could do right now. There's a huge argument about what to be done with heart with the transit situation. Do we stop it? Do we extend it? Do the station go here, station go there? This, that, and the other thing. Setting the argument whether we should do it or not, I think we're way past that argument. Now, the question is, is what do we do now? Right. And how does it work? And what about ridership and so on? Here's, and we've got a couple of real funding dilemmas. Right now, and I've tried to involve myself in this too, out at the, where the stadium is, Aloha Stadium. People may not remember, but I remember very, very well that when the stadium came in, in the early 70s, way back, Frank Fossey's time, that was called Halava Housing. There was housing on it, John. Right. I know people who actually grew up there, you know, and then got displaced, got displaced by the stadium and the parking lot. And again, for whatever reasons that it happened, that's where it happened. And the idea was sound at the time, the university was going to become division one and, and okay. And then we had baseball here then, minor league baseball and the stadium was supposed to move from football to a baseball configuration, so on and so forth. Well, the situation today, though, in 2021 is, is we may not know where the, the, the rail is going to go or not go once it's in urban Honolulu. But what we do know is it's supposed to go to where the stadium is and that we know that where the stadium is now is also just outside Pearl Harbor. It has thousands of people going to work there all the time. Well, there's a hundred plus acres there, John. And right now they're talking about the legislature's talking about floating general obligation bonds for $400 million for the stadium and trying to get developers to come in and, and, and pick up the tab for, for retail development, some housing. John, here's my idea on, on affordable housing. You know, I actually would love you to fuck. Go ahead and say it. We could put thousands of units, not hundreds. We could put thousands of units out there at, well, law stadium is now in, in Halava. Put the, put a stop there. You get ridership. The ridership would be there. You get ridership coming in to go to Pearl Harbor to go to work. You get ridership from, from, from two or three thousand families, people and families in, in Halava Valley. I call it Halava Valley. It's probably more. Daniel, what that'll do is that'll lower the median price of housing, I think. Of course it will. I think what's the supply increases. Of course it will. So it benefits everybody. You don't have to pay for the land. We could, you want to put up bonds. You want to, you want to get a giant co-op. You want to turn it into a co-op. You could do it. My point is stop talking. If, if, look, if Neil Abercrombie and the, and the little department of, of community services of the city and county can build apartments, rental apartments in, in Chinatown, you mean to tell me we can't take a hundred acres where the stadium is now, get the stadium down, put in housing, and then build up Chang Field. Where would you put the stadium? You do need the stadium. We got it right now. Chang Field. We already had the first game there. You could put 25,000 seats in just like when, when I used to go down and maybe you used to go down to a stadium park down on Eisenberg Street and, and King Street. Come on. All the high school games were played down. Sure. You just put a double deck, you double deck the stadium out at the existing state, which they put up in what 90 days, 60 days, they put the stadium up. So you got enough room. You got to know what you're saying, Neil, is that you got enough room on campus to build a 25,000 seat arena and it would be perfect. It would be the best seats in the world. Come on. It's the best seats in the world. You're right on the top of the game. You're right there. It would fill up. Well, that's exciting. That's exciting. And you know, one of the things that the current stadium did or was built was that it was built for this huge 50,000 seat arena. But actually what we're discovering is we need something for university sports, around 25,000, maybe 30,000. And you can cook that right on campus. John, that's realistic for us. 25,000 is realistic for us, for, for our games, our division, one games, 25,000. Look, you, you could have boxes there, you'll put you, you know, box, box seats. Then the university would get all the revenue right now. Aloha Stadium sucks revenue out of the University of Hawaii. The division one sports are, are, are hobbled by the fact that it costs so much money to do it. And that the University of Hawaii actually is a loser out at that Aloha Stadium in terms of revenue and control. Well, tell me, tell me, Governor, why, why do we keep sticking to the idea that a stadium has to be located where the current stadium is? Why, why, why is that? Why hasn't anybody just put this all together? Because it's not enough imagination. Look, you got, what you do is you see what the situation is in front of you. And if circumstances change, you got to change with them. So I'm looking at it and I'm thinking, wait a minute, you know, this thing with the $400 million and the, and, and will we get the developers in? I mean, look what happens before when you try to get the P3 developers in with, with transit oriented development for, for heart. It fell apart because the developers can't make enough money out of that to be able to justify their investment. I'm telling you that there is no way that you are going to be able to, to try to pass up to off a $400 million general obligation bond project from the state and try to get the developers and get anything done over the next five years or a decade. It's not going to happen. So here it is. You can start right now. We've already got 9,000, 10,000 seats. You have a space for thousands of affordable rental housing and others. And you got, and you got the ability to build a state. You know, we built, when I was in office, we built the arena. And everybody said you couldn't do that. You can't have it. And there it is. So I, you know, I have only one argument, John. I had only one argument with it. I wanted it to be 15,000 seats instead of 10. Well, what can you say? You know, you mentioned that one of the, one of the causes of all of this may be the lack of imagination. And I just got a, I got a question from the audience out here. Okay. Is that lack of imagination, the consequence, so what are the consequences of having a one party system in Hawaii where everybody's a Democrat? And apparently, what do you end up with is about five or six different factions. Okay. But, you know, talking about one party system is lazy. Think that, that, that, that lets you off the hook. Then you, then you, then you have an all purpose explanation for a question that you never asked correctly in the first place. Yeah. The question that needs to be asked is how do you revitalize the Democratic party? And of course, I thought you could ask concurrently with that. Is it possible to revitalize the Republican Party in Hawaii? I think starting from the latter and going backwards, I don't think you can't revitalize the Republican Party because the Republican Party in Hawaii is a, is a combination of, of Trumpists and Tea Partyists who are not interested in being Republicans. My, my association with the Democratic Party and the Republican Party goes back 63 years. You know, my, my first activity as, as, as a Democrat in Hawaii was 1959 with statehood and, and the elections that, that, that followed from that with Jack Burns and, and, and Governor Quinn and, and on through the success then of the Democratic Party. And let me tell you something. Whoever asked that question about the one party, there were Republicans in those days that almost beat the Democrats. People think it was just a cakewalk for Jack Burns or for George Ariyoshi. Maybe John White, hey, you know, that's not true. It wasn't a cakewalk. It wasn't. That's right. That's right. I remember Randolph Crosley came with like 6,000 votes to win an elections. Some of the elections for, for Senator even, and some of the congressional seats. Why is it like it is today? Why is it? Because the Republican Party has degenerated into speaking of not any of the factions as degenerated into what Ronald Reagan really wrought, which was to take individualism and turn it into privatism. And this privatism has come into this, this selfish, self-centered idea that somehow you, you get to have anything you want, say anything you want, do anything you want. But you don't have any responsibility towards anybody else. And in a democratic society, especially in Hawaii, you have to have a community orientation. It has, it has nothing to do with individual, individualism. My God, if you want to talk about individuals, how about Tom Gill, how about Jack Burns, how about Patsy Me, how about John Ushijima, how about Tony Kounumura, how about Memorial Yamasaki, come on, do Kawasaki. We, we've had, how about Vince Yano and, and Vince Esposito, the two Catholic senators who solved the abortion question in Hawaii 60 years ago, 60 years ago. We are, you know, this is fantastic because what you're describing really is the, is the, the political questions of the entire country right now. What, what will happen? What we have now, John, you're right. What we have right now is political entrepreneurs. They're not, there's no, that's not a party. People put a D in front of their name or an iron in front of their name. And what it really is, is a bunch of political entrepreneurs all looking for the main chance for themselves that don't believe in anything. Well, you know, I think, take somebody, I know you know her, Liz Cheney. Yeah. You, you probably served with Liz or at least. No, no, I, I, I, I mean, I know all of her. We weren't acquainted, but I guess she's, she's a Republican. She's a Republican. I doubt if I, I mean, she's a hot core Republican, conservative as you can be. And yet, she doesn't fit in her party. I mean, how does that happen? John, before you were trying to even, I served with, you know, I'm so old, I need myself coming back. The, I served with real hardcore conservative Republican. Why's it worth you? You own Pacific insurance, right? This, you're asking me, how do you revitalize the party? What I think we should do is have multi-member districts again, because we had multi-member districts. We elected Republicans. We elected Democrats. We elected a broad spectrum of ideological and political philosophies across the board. I remember when I, when I ran for the state Senate, number one of the four senators to be elected, four votes you got. Don't talk about democracy, you have four votes for a Senator. Was he conservative Republican insurance company owner was number one. I was number two. And then the Republicans, then the Republicans pushed for single-member districts. Single-member districts. And I told them, I said, you're going to kill yourself. I, I remember talking to my, and he was my friend. We worked together. And a necessity. We were legislators, right? So we worked together. I told Rods, if you go to a single-member district, I told Rods, if you go to a single-member district, I'm going to have to run against you and I'm going to beat you. We're going to, with that, with that note, we're going to come right back from a short break. Aloha. I'm Dan Leif. I go by Fig because I was an Air Force fighter pilot for 33 years and you have to have a nickname. I get to host, I'm Think Tech Hawaii, two shows. Figments, The Power of Imagination and Figments on Reality. The Power of Imagination introduces you to some of my incredible friends and their life experiences, astronauts, war heroes, Hollywood writers, you name it, they're on it and you'll be inspired and entertained. And on reality, I'll give you something hard to find, non-political commentary on today's events. That's right, non-political because the vitriol doesn't help folks. So Figments, The Power of Imagination, Figments on Reality, both on Think Tech Hawaii. And welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii. Talk story with John Wahey and our special guest this afternoon, former congressman, governor, and all around servant of the people. I don't know how to stress this, but he has never stopped, ever since I've known him, never stopped working for the public good. So Neil Abercroft. Neil, look, you're talking about, on the edges of a very sensitive issue, we talked about people like Liz Cheney and so forth. But whether we like it or not, the last so many years, the culture in America is just sort of falling apart, I mean, or dividing so graphically. And recently, the Supreme Court upheld a very draconian law regarding the woman's right to choose in Texas. And when does all of this take us? I mean, what's happening to America and how will it affect Hawaii? Since you have the experience of being somebody who not only served in the state capitol, but in America's capitol in Washington, D.C. Well, that leads me to actually answer a question that's implied from what you just said about the parties disappearing, if you will, as parties, a value system associated with political activity. People ask me, well, you know, do you miss Washington? And I said, I miss some of the individuals there. And I miss being able to work with them. But by the time I left to run for governor, part of the reason that I left Congress was it was getting impossible to do the legislative work. I mean, you sent there as a legislator. You're not sent there as a pontificator. You're not sent there as a preacher. You're not a graduate of the theological school there. You have to understand that there are 434 other people beside yourself, all of whom got an agenda, all of whom have an agenda, all of whom have particular political, social, and economic dynamics in their districts that that requires a special attention and require and require your empathy and your understanding and your willingness to concede that they may have have a problem similar to yours, but solutions that are entirely different from what would apply, say in an island state like ours, as opposed to a landlocked state like Iowa. My whole point being is that might seem obvious to everybody. But what happened is is about the time in the early 90s, when Newt Gingrich came in and started the denouncing the House of Representatives as the people's House, to which you cannot be appointed, to which you must be elected, for ideological reasons of trying to gain power, sheer power in the exercise of power. And that that's the kind of people that are there now. And the Democratic party is not free of it either. People who are infused with a sense of self-righteousness and a sense of of determinist certainty that they know exactly the way things should be done. They don't take it into account that you have to get 218 of those 435 people in the House and sometimes 60 votes of the 100 in the Senate in order to accomplish anything. You're there to legislate on behalf of the common good. And that's not a good job. Some of the people there think that the idea of not legislating is why they're there. I began to see people, right, I began to see people coming into the Congress who were not, who's a vowed purpose, was not to legislate, which was to destroy at that point the House of Representatives. And they succeeded. They very nearly succeeded. Nancy Pelosi, bless her, I think she's the most astute politician and maybe certainly in the 21st century, that's for sure, has been able to to to short up and keep it going. But I keep thinking back, John, as I do every day, I have in my in my home in my in my study, and my chair, my favorite chair that I sit in directly opposite me is a picture of Patsy Mink and I that was a great you guys, you guys were one of the best teams that there never ever was anybody like Patsy Mink, they're never ever will either way, we can't see, we can't see. I apologize to our guest talk there. I mean, people looking in, I get so excited. I keep shifting the picture, but I will tell you something Patsy Mink ranks among the top legislators in the history of the United States. And and and that kind of person, Patsy Mink, an intellectual, passionate, committed, but she understood legislation. She understood legislation and what it took to get 217 other people to vote. You know what the secret of legislating is, John? People don't vote for you for that for your reasons. They vote for you for their reasons. You have to understand what it takes to get them to reason that voting with you is something that it's okay for them to do. You can't you can't overcome them. You can't argue them into it. You can't bludgeon them into it. They vote for you for their reasons, not yours. And if you can remember that, and if you have a humble attitude towards what you bring to it, then you can legislate the problem we have. Well, I tell you, I hope I hope that we have young inspiring or not young necessarily, but aspiring politicians today who are listening and can take that advice. That is really good. We sure need to have them 2022 or we're in very deep trouble. But if I can just pivot back, John, because I know we don't have a lot of time. Maybe there's other questions coming in. I just want to indicate that in Hawaii too, what's necessary for us is to understand that we have to subsume our own interests, so-called factions that said got brought up from one party. It's not that there's one party. I'll tell you what happened from where we started. The Republican Party, a whole bunch of Republican thinking people just put a D in front of their names and ran for the legislature. I'm sorry, but that's my view. And I tend to agree with you. You know what's interesting, though? I don't want to leave this issue. Then I want to come back and circle back to a positive thing, which is what we were talking about earlier regarding the stadium and housing. Yeah, absolutely. We can do that. But before we get there, that's something we can do. People say, well, what are we going to do? You know, the environment, the ocean is coming in and so on. And all of that's true. But I'll tell you something. Turning the stadium area into affordable housing and taking the stadium idea and putting it up on the Manoa campus is something that can be done right now. That's what we should be concentrating on. You know, I know just today, you and I and Governor Kaitano actually discussed that. Governor Kaitano is a big champion of the stadium at Manoa. Well, that makes a lot of sense, you know, and the idea of building housing. And actually, that's where the stadium is now, Alua Stadium is now, is in the center of really kind of a residential area. City is going all the way up there. With heart. Regardless of what you think about where it's going or all the rest of it, at least it's already built there. And you've got to stop right there. And you could get shuttles into Pearl Harbor. And if you build a community there, I mean, you could do shopping centers. You can do schools. You can do everything right on the spot. And because you got transportation back and forth. Well, I tell you one thing, Governor, I want to join you and Governor Kaitano in expressing our support for that. I think that's fantastic. And folks, you heard it here. First, on Think Tech Hawaii, what one solution to the problems we face here is to take Aloha Stadium, forget about making some kind of mega-tropolis, whatever out there, and instead build affordable housing, mainly rentals, make it possible for thousands of people to actually live here in Hawaii. And then go build us a 25,000-seat stadium right on campus. You want to know something, John? I know we're getting close to the end. Part of the reason I would like to see the housing out at Halaba Housing, which is what the stadium was and still is, is it's heartbreaking to think that so many people of Hawaii have to go to the mainland to make a living. They have to go to the mainland in order to afford not have 40% and 50% of their disposable income. That's a joke to say that. 40 or 50% of whatever income they're able to retain or sustain for themselves just to pay rent. Come on. Yeah, we're just talking about that today. I think it was Ben had a friend that went to the mainland and went there so they could afford to send their kids to college. And when does this all end? Well, I'll tell you, one of the reasons I ended nationally, finish up nationally, is back Joe Biden's plan. I certainly hope that every single member of the Hawaii congressional delegation is going to get behind Joe Biden 110% because we need to preschool. I want to add to that. Ben Cayetano got the A plus program and so on. We need to have preschool. We need to have family lead. We need to have kids be able to go to their first two years in the community college. We need to back up Joe Biden. We need to back up a stadium in Manoa at university. And we need to get housing into a lava gulch where the whole stadium is now. And you can count on. Let me say, Ben Cayetano. And by the way, it would be a shame if not every member of our delegation voted to support that plan. Governor, I really want to thank you for being with us. You were a great congressman. I know that when I was in office, I counted on you 100%. And also, I believe you were a really good governor. So welcome and thank you for being with us and I'm sure. Let's do it again, John. Anytime. Next time we'll do this. Let's get Ben on. We need an hour show. All right. Aloha, everybody. And welcome back in two weeks. Thank you. Aloha.