 Welcome viewers to thinktechhawaii.com. This show is the will of the people, and I am your host, Martha E. Randolph. Today I am so proud to welcome Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa for this episode, which I am calling, Being in Congress, You Can't Always Get What You Want. How does business get done in the House of Representatives? And for my guest, we can compare her past experiences to current events. I expect that the reality may prove very different from voter assumptions. In addition to having a doctrine in law, Colleen was the first female president of the Hawaii State Senate and the first woman to chair the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit. And in her third year of her current term, as a congresswoman, she is a member of the House leadership team and is on several important committees, the House Committee and Steering Committees, the House Armed Services and Natural Resources Committee, where she is the ranking member for federal lands, and the Science and Space Technology Committee. What an introduction. Welcome Colleen, and thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me, Martha. It has been—it's a wonderful, wonderful blessing to me that you agreed to come, because this woman knows things, and we're going to ask her what she knows, because we will never find out any other way. To begin with, I would like to ask you if you have any set plans. Now that you have—you came back to Hawaii, you competed for the governorship's nomination. I think that you lost in part because of the very poor turnout for Democratic primaries, which in this state you'd think they'd know that the primary is almost the election. So what are you going to do now, and does it have anything to do with running for office in the future, or for just right now, if that's all you want to talk about? Well, I'll tell you, right now I'm still in the Congress, and we'll be until—I think it's January 3rd of next year. And so technically, depending on what happens next Tuesday, it's going to determine how busy or how not busy we're going to be. Because if it's—of course, if it switches, which of course many of us hope that the House will switch, then I would estimate that the Republican majority will try to do as much as they can, as the majority will, they control everything. For my future, I really don't know yet, Martha. It's something that people always ask, as you can imagine. And the one thing that I have to admit that makes me feel gratified is the fact that there are so many people who come up to me and say, well, the one thing we don't want to hear is say that you say that you're not going to run again. And I keep telling people, you know, I've had an amazing run. I really have. Yeah. For a political career, compared to others, I have not had a long political career by Hawaii standards. As you know, people like Calvin Sey has been in office for 42 years. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I basically have held office for 18. So I'm a relative newcomer to all of them. But in that time, like you said, I've been able to be the first woman Senate president, the first woman to chair either house, the first Asian woman in the nation, plus run for Congress, and have that for six years now. And I said, you know, for people, it's an amazing political journey, because what it has given me is a taste of everything. So in a way, I feel like I've been very blessed, for lack of a better way of explaining it. Yeah. Maybe it's time to have others have the same experience. And yet there are others who tell me, oh no, no, no, you can't let all of that go to waste because we've invested in you. So a long answer to a very straightforward question is- Which is, you don't know. I don't know yet. I don't know. Okay. That works. Now, as we were discussing before, I did my research, Good Girl Me, and discovered that your first experience in the House began in 2011, which for those of you who may or may not know, was when the Republicans took control of the House during the Obama Administration and they have not let it go since. And the nature of Republicans today is not Republicans as they used to be, although there are certain issues they've always had and contested with the Democrats. But this is a very reactionary group of Republicans. And let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that I'm using the term reactionary in the conventional traditional sense, which is people who want to roll back the clock on progress. We can call them right-wing extremists if you wish, but I don't know if that's true of all the politicians. I know their support base tends to be that way, in many cases. You have been in office having to be on the receiving end of this dominating way of thinking. And I wonder if you can tell people how that has made you feel, and if it had anything to do with your ultimate decision recently to return to Hawaii and try to run for local office. Your answer is always, I would do better for the people if I'm home. Let's tell them why. Well, you know, it's true. And as we said earlier, the first 12 years of my political career was in the Hawaii State Senate. And when you're a Senate president and, you know, I was a combination of judiciary chair, majority leader, vice president, vice chair of ways and means, in addition to being Senate president. So I had a lot in terms of leadership positions in that short period of time. So you know what it can be like to be able to affect change and to be able to affect legislation. You're right. Not only is it the numbers. There's only 25 in the Senate, but you still have to convince the House, 51 in Hawaii. But on the mainland, in Congress, it's 435 of us in the House of Representatives, 100 in the Senate. Plus, you know, right now we don't have a sympathetic president. But having said that, what, if you want to do something, well, I believe that for someone like me who wants to do something and feels that there'll be a stall in Washington because of the, as long as they control the presidency, I'm talking about Republicans control the presidency and they control at least one of the houses, you're not going to see anything done. I felt that Hawaii was at a major crossroads, that we have been very fortunate. But so much of our economic base and the well-being of the people are coming sort of at a major crossroads now. And unless we have great leadership here who can see where we need to go, we're just going to wake up one day and say, what happened to the Hawaii that we all care about? So that is the reason why I said, it's time to come home and I can do more because it's not going to be simple to do things in Washington, D.C. When you're the chief executive officer of the state, you're the chair or you're the head of one branch of the three branches of government, and there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to affect change because everything here is relational and everyone knows each other. Well, you know, like for example, I know the chief justice of the Supreme Court, many of the justices were quote-unquote confirmed while I was there. And also, you know, the legislature, they're all my friends, a lot of them are my friends. I shouldn't say all, a lot of them are my friends. So if you can't go and do things in that scenario, then something is absolutely wrong. Meg, just ask, when you were talking about the Supreme Court, were you talking about the federal Supreme Court? No, I'm talking about the Hawaii Supreme Court. Well, you were also there for the confirmation of a number of federal Supreme Court judges, which I didn't think they were your friends. No, no, no, no. All right. I'm talking about the Hawaii Supreme Court. Yeah. Okay. That's what I thought. All right. Yeah. So, you know, it's an opportunity here, I believe, to be able to do the change and to be able to actually affect what we would like to see happen for Hawaii's future. That's why he said, I can do more, and it's always a matter of serving Hawaii and coming back. Now, I have to be honest with you. I mean, it's not like being in Washington, we did absolutely nothing. That's not true. And I have had the, I guess, the opportunity to actually work across the aisles and get things done. But it's not like what you can do here. No, no, of course not. I was going to say, I'm sure that the most important reason to have people like you in Washington would be if your ability to go across the aisle and to speak to your colleagues and remind them that their responsibility is to the nation, not just to the party, and work on your personal relationship with them, you can sometimes get some support. But I have noticed in the era of Donald Trump that even the Republicans who will speak out against his position will still vote to support it. And I find that very questionable. If you have any insights into that as to why the Republican Party and the Republican leadership, which in many cases does not agree with what Donald Trump has done or has said, continue to push through agendas which obviously are not really supported by the majority of the people and which go against the things that they say they support, I would love to know what does the leadership have on these people besides we're controlling the Bucks to get any reelected? And is that why there are 70 Republicans who've insisted that they will not run again? Well, you know, I was going to point out that it's not true of all Republicans. And a lot of them who are not running again is actually a function of this guy called Newt Gingrich, where Newt Gingrich put in a maximum term of how long one could be a chair. So many of them who have decided that they will retire, it's not only whether or not they have to worry more about the quote, the freedom caucus or the Tea Party when I first got elected. It's also about where do we move in terms of our status. So a lot of the, unfortunately, the moderate Republicans, those who I would be able to reach across the aisle for have decided it's time to go. So many of them we have been able to quote, cut the deal with. And because they are moderates, but they have also said, no. So someone asked me this question when I first got elected, he said, what would you go back home to Hawaii and tell your constituents that would absolutely surprise them? And my response was that, you know, we have two groups, the extreme left. We have left two and the extreme right, and the extreme right was called Tea Party then. And the amazing thing is that they come together and they vote no, for absolutely different reasons, but they vote no. So it leaves it up to the middle, or those who may not be as progressive or as to the right to come together and get things done. And that's a really odd position to be in, because they will come to you and they'll say, you know, you're pretty safe in your seat, so can you support us on this? Whereas those who have, depending on which side they're on, a more difficult election, they're given the pass. And you can go home and say, I voted this way because of this, and you know, and I'm not compromising my principles, but to keep government, for example, from shutting down, the rest are asked, okay, can you vote for this? And your nose, but vote for this. And that's what it's still all about. It's still about how solid are you in your district, and can we call upon you to support this position, even if everything in it is not what you want? Okay, all right. So there seems to always be a degree of personal, individual interest, self-interest, involved in the whole thing almost from the beginning, from the very first day of office. And while certainly the power of people would be to, we will reelect you, or we will not reelect you, it seems to be interfering with the process of government, almost as much as the Supreme Court decision that had corporations declared to have equal rights with people when it came to making contributions. If money is going to determine what your candidate will say, do you remember back in the day when you gave money to the candidate who represented what you want instead of giving money to the candidate who will do what you want? I'm not sure. A lot of people say that time never existed, when people actually gave money to candidates, and that's why there's such a movement now to have just publicly funded elections, except when people find out how much a publicly funded election will cost, and it will cost taxpayers' dollars, and then of course no one thinks that's a wise use of our monies. But no, you are right. And I think for contributions that are so small or not large, but people who run for office, especially federal office or statewide office, they're always looking for as much of the maximum contributions as they can get. And of course with that comes the assumption, especially with Citizens United, that it's got to be with strings attached, because why would anybody give you that money? That's right. Why would they give you that money? Exactly. And I don't know of any politician that will have the guts to stand up and say, I'll take your money, but I'll do what I think is right, because it don't work that way. We're going to take a short break here, Colleen. Boy, I could talk to this woman for the next two hours, but fortunately she's not obligated to do that. And we will be back in just a few minutes to the will of the people on ThinkTechHawaii.com. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of ThinkTech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on ThinkTech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawai'i Ana all across the sea from Hawai'i and back again, aloha. Hey, Stan the Energyman here on ThinkTech Hawaii, and they won't let me do political commentary, so I'm stuck doing energy stuff, but I really like energy stuff, so I'm going to keep on doing it. So join me every Friday on Stan the Energyman at lunchtime, at noon, on my lunch hour. We're going to talk about everything energy, especially if it begins with the word hydrogen. We're going to definitely be talking about it. We'll talk about how we can make Hawai'i cleaner, how we can make the world a better place, just basically save the planet. Even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore. We got it nailed down here. So we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan the Energyman. Welcome back to the Will of the People on ThinkTechHawaii.com. I am your host, Marcella Randolph, and my guest today is Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa, who's going to have a very busy several weeks to come, because she is still our Congresswoman. And let's appreciate the fact that she's here. Thank you, Colleen, for being with us. Oh, thank you for having me. I would like to ask you, if you think the Democratic National Committee or the Democratic Party in general has understood or learned anything from the past 15 years or so of electioneering, and if they are really recognizing that it's not just that the Republican side won, it's that they have lost, which tells me that they have not been doing their job correctly. We heard, yes, great, National Committee has two leaders, and they're representing both sides, because the most recent debacle between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton really raised everyone's ire and really caused this situation. As we approach very important elections in the next few days, and even maybe more important in two years, has the party seen what's going on? Have they made some wise choices, or are they looking for leadership that wouldn't really take back the Congress and the presidency? You know, I think that's a question that applies across the board. You know, in 2008, Senator Noah and I did Hillary Clinton's campaign here. And, of course, the way we explained it, and people in Hawaii understand this, is we said, that's the most low-low thing to do, because Barack Obama was one of ours. Yes. But we both believed that Hillary had then probably the most qualifications to do it. Absolutely. I voted for her, yes. And then, basically, in 2016, I was fortunate enough to be the delegate to the Platform Committee for the Democratic National Committee in Orlando, Florida. And that was really, Hillary had already secured the nomination. I will tell you, it was very interesting, because in 2008, the Hillary people, the position was Barack Obama is the nominee. Therefore, the platform should be Barack Obama's platform. And there was really no attempt to affect that platform other than, you know, to basically support the president, because he needed that support. In 2016, there was a completely different view. And I think what it shows you, it isn't negative or positive. What I'm saying, it was a different perspective. Those who supported Bernie Sanders felt so strongly in what he stood for, that they would not, they would not simply say, you know, we're just going to step back and let this be a Clinton platform. It was, we are Democrats, and this is what we believe we stand for. I think what that showed you already is that there was a difference in the party. So there was a divide in a way, and it was almost, in my opinion, to a certain extent irreconcilable, because they were so far apart on certain issues. And even when we were able to strike an agreement in Orlando, there were many of the Bernie supporters who refused to simply buy into it, which I thought was a very strong statement and that maybe the party was beginning to change, and can the party change? I think, unfortunately, what we're finding is that the party cannot change as easily as people think. It's not something that we can, you know, like we all say, we must make room for the millennials, the millennials of the next generation. But how do you reach the millennials? How do you tell them that democratic principles are really what you should covet and you should seek? And that's not something that people can do easily, because like you said earlier, we are all coming at this from a certain perspective. And that perspective is not something that has been open to how they feel. And they sense it. The generations that follow us, and also those who are not supportive of the same candidates that we may have supported, they don't believe that we're sincere and that we really mean to reach out and say, yes, you're part of us. They don't think we think that way. How much would you say the shocking incidents of the invasion of the Democratic Party's computers and the revelation of the emails might have played in this? And I only mention this because while I was less than surprised that something like that had happened because it seemed to me it was going to happen sooner or later, what bothered me is I don't recall any Democrat getting on screen and saying those emails never should have been there to be found in the first place. It was inappropriate to try and orchestrate a nomination where the two very important people with things to say who were very respectable were going to compete. So be it. But you don't put them down. You don't support one or the other. And you certainly don't put it in any situation where it can be heard or read about. It was like a thief who apologizes for getting caught instead of having committed the theft. And I think from the supporters of Bernie Sanders that I spoke to that that created this whole line of mistrust of the establishment Democratic Party because, frankly, they're not very politically wise, our little Bernie Sanderites. I love them, but they're not that wise. And they haven't watched the process since the time of Kennedy being manipulated on the floor. These things have been going on. This is not new. But I think they were shocked and surprised. And so I bring up the question. You know, I was concerned after the 2016 election. This is what I was concerned about. I was concerned if Bernie Sanders would run for re-election as a Democrat or as an independent. And the reason why is because I think what was lost in this whole process and was not emphasized, and I would, as a Democrat, I would have liked to see it emphasized is the fact that the Democratic Party is really a party, like we always say, has a big tent. Because what it did do was for an independent, and we know how almost impossible it is unless you're a billionaire like Ross Perot, to launch a presidential campaign is something you can't do unless you have all these billions behind you. So I think what I thought was missing in that whole discussion was the fact that the Democratic Party set things aside, like whether technically he could run because he wasn't a card-carrying Democrat, as a Democrat, and then tap into the system or not. And I thought the fact that the Party said, OK, we're going to try and build them. And I'm sure with self-serving, whoever made the decision, that it was to build a bigger base, and they were hoping to tap into it. But having said that and having done that, you're right about Debbie, Debbie's emails and so forth, that what should not have been found and should not have all these things should not have been written in the first place. If you want to talk about that in the corner, fine, but don't communicate over main channels. But I think the problem is that because there's no expectation that it will be. And I'm sure we all can agree that people have said these things orally to each other and whether on both sides probably have done it. But the fact that it was available and written and then it was made public is what undermined I think the whole integrity of the system. I agree with you. It should not have been done. But I also believe that that's something that was being said anyway. This is true. And it's something that you can't undo. No. But the problem still remains though, do we have it in us to come together as a party in the end? And has the party learned from that? Because Bernie obviously, as you just pointed out, represented certain ideals, which to be honest, since George Bush, Jr., since the 9-11, I have watched Democrats backtrack and backtrack against principles that they used to stand up for. There is a point where negotiation becomes giving up. And I understood. I did not agree with all of Bernie's theories for the simple reason that I didn't think it was going to be doable. But I understood his passion. And that's what I'm concerned about, whether the party has recognized that this passion for people who will speak out, who will stand up and who will not compromise certain essential values is there. But I only have a few minutes, and I would like you to please tell the people how that money is distributed when it comes to elections. We have seen some interesting campaigns recently where Democrats, some have been supported, some have not, some of them whom you would have thought should have been supported, lost by 2%, where one who was actively supported lost by 30%. It seems to me the decision making is a little skewed. Can you tell us a little bit about how that big election money is spent and where it comes from? Where it comes from, but also more importantly, does the party realize it may have to start supporting more newcomers and fewer of the old guard if they're going to take back the country? Well, the other thing that we have to realize is where the money comes from and it raises that money. So I can tell you about the DCCC, which is what the organization is, the Campaign Committee for the House, the Congressional House. So what happens there, and a lot of people don't know this, is that once you get elected, you're assessed a dues. And it's huge, like for example, Nancy Pelosi, I think single-handedly, can raise almost $100 million, but I think her dues are officially around $25 million or something along those lines. One person, that's her dues. She has to pay that to the party. To the party, to the DCCC, not the DNC, the DCCC, so the Senate and the House have their own, basically, their committees that then selects the candidates and determines who will be the person endorsed. I can tell you, when I ran in 2010 for 2011, I was not the choice. I know this. I know this. I was not the choice. And so the party decided on their own, including those in power till today, that I was not the choice. And they didn't think that I could win in 2010, so they did not support me. So what happens is that all this money goes in. If you are able to prevail, like you are for the general election, then the assessment will be made, can you win? And then people within the Congress will start to write checks to you. And some of them who are interested in you as a candidate will get their support base to do it. What has happened since then to now that people do not pay attention to is the use of the Internet. Wow. Yes, of course. And so media. That raises Bernie taught us, Obama taught us. That's a big issue. And that is another issue. As I said, ladies and gentlemen, we do have to go now. I want to thank Colleen Hanabusa. As I said, we could do this for the next two hours. And I will probably beg her on my knees and grovel pathetically in the hopes that she will return to the show someday. And we will pick up here because, ladies and gentlemen, you need to understand what's happening. Yes, get out and vote, but also find your information. I want to thank you all for watching the show. I want to encourage you to come back again. And we'll see you in two weeks. This has been Martha Randolph and Colleen Hanabusa on The Will of the People.