 Aloha! Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Performers. This is the Politics in Hawaii series. I'm your host, Carl Campania. Today, our guest is Mr. Randy Aaron Gontz. Very thrilled to have him today because he, just like I, recently ran for public office. I ran for State Senate. He ran for House. House District 40, actually. So, we're going to have a conversation today about campaigning in Hawaii. What it takes, what's involved, the ups and the downs of it. So, thank you for joining the show, Randy. Thank you. I appreciate you having me today. No, I look forward to this conversation. Yeah, it should be a good one. So, okay. So, tell us first of all a little bit about yourself. I'd like to start every show with a little bit about yourself and then what got you to run. Sure. So, I'm cresting on 30 in a few years. I just turned 28. A young candidate for State House this past year. I was in the military, United States Air Force, about six years. Then I came to Hawaii to study at HPU, Hawaii Pacific University, and I fell in love with Hawaii and made it my home. I ended up meeting a professor. His name is Representative Matt LaPresti. He's a legislator here, and he was my professor at HPU. And we really saw a lot of issues. He liked some of the things I was writing in class. I wrote a paper for him. So, he offered me a job at the legislature. So, I got to work with him in the 2016 session, and I was just blown away. I mean, I was always a politically or civically involved individual. And then, working at the legislature, I saw there was a need in my district for a new representative. Someone that could really give the people the voice that they deserve. I told him. He didn't approach me. I told him. I said, hey, I'm going to run in the district that's next to you and the guy that's next to us that we work next to. And his reaction to that was? He said, hey, I mean, you're your own person. You can do what you want. And, you know, you got my support. He enjoyed my campaign a lot, and I was glad to have his support behind the whole effort we had. It was good. Yeah, Rep Lepresti has come on our show a couple of different times, and so he's always welcome back. He's a wealth of information. Yes, absolutely. I truly enjoy conversation. Very intelligent. Yeah, so, okay, so, yeah, so, you made Hawaii your home. Yeah, absolutely. Many of us do. Many of us do. So, welcome. Thank you. I will welcome you as much as I can. Appreciate it. But, okay, so, let's talk about, I'm going to ask you a tough question. Okay. You ran as a Democrat. I did. And you ran against one of the louder Republican voices that we have. Correct. Let's start by saying, let's start by asking this question. What is it that makes you a Democrat? Well, I ran as a Democrat because in my lifetime, being a Democrat has always meant being for the people, being a voice for those that maybe don't have a voice. Maybe those that are less fortunate, maybe some that have not historically had a voice. That is including our LGBT community. That's including our immigrant community. That's including maybe those that just work full-time and come home and take care of their kids every day. And they don't have the opportunity to dive into politics or go down the legislature and testify or things of that nature. So for me, being a part of the Democrats here in Hawaii is about giving those people the voice. Maybe they don't have the opportunity to. Okay. I'm trying to add a voice to the voice list. Absolutely. Absolutely. So is there one issue in particular? Are there a few different issues? I know you mentioned LGBT. Right. What would you say for you? I guess it begins with you. For you, what is the top couple issues that matter to you? I would say probably, number one is civil rights issues. And that goes across the board. Remember, we're talking LGBTQ. We're talking, again, immigrants talking across the board. And that really stemmed from my time in the service. My time in the service really opened my mind up to the world in general. It was the first time I was able to travel overseas. It was the first time I was able to feel like a world citizen and kind of look outside of our country and look around the globe and see where we stand in this whole global perspective. So you're the epitome of that campaign from a couple of generations ago. Join the Navy and see the world. Right. Kind of a thing. You joined the Air Force. Absolutely. I did. I saw the world. And some would say at a very pretentious time we had a lot of conflicts going on. And for me, I was born in Philadelphia in Delaware area. And then getting out of that bubble and getting into the world spectrum, it really changed my ideas on the world in general. And I wanted to help as much as I could and extend kind of my compassion and that kind of voice. I've always had, I played hockey growing up when I was always kind of outspoken on the team. I always tried to make changes with the coach, things like that. Same thing when I was in the service. And they tend not to like that so much in the service when you're so outspoken. But I stuck to my guns. You're going to be a leader in my way. Right. Exactly. I was always advocated for my troops. I was able to make it to a leadership position in the military and advocate for the guys underneath me that normally just came to the service that I'm just going to put my head down and shut up and do my job, which works when you're in the military. It does. But there are times where you need to stand up for yourself and say, maybe we should do things this way, maybe we should do things that way. And X actually shows leadership qualities. It does. It does. And military is not closed to that. It's just how you do it. Right. Exactly. Yes. Has to be strategic. Has to be very strategic. Well, thank you for that. All right. So we're going to jump now more into the actual campaign stuff itself. I would like to really have a conversation about what it's really like to campaign in Hawaii. It starts off with, okay, so you were saying, okay, you worked with Rep. LaPresti 2016, which ended in early May. Correct. When did you know you were going to run and when did you file? I knew I was going. So I had it in my head that I wanted to run in 2018. That was my thought process through the session. I said, you know what, this is something that I think I can get into. And I really admired Rep. LaPresti what he was doing 2018. It's on my mind. And then there was actually one big speech in the legislature from the representative who represented me in my district and it was against Planned Parenthood. And that was something that's close to my heart because I grew up in a household with all women, my mother, my sister, and then we had an exchange student that lived there. That was the man of the house. And they needed health care. They needed things. We weren't, you know, the wealthiest, you know, family on the block, but when they needed it, we would go to them for help and they were extremely helpful and they really meant something to me. So when I heard this defamation of this organization, I said, you know what, someone needs to stand up to this guy. And so I looked into the elections in that district and who has traditionally ran against him and if there was ever a strong candidate that could take away maybe some of the things that he had as he was a veteran as well. So myself being a veteran, I thought I could reach out to the veteran community and things like that. So at that moment, I said, you know what, if I was going to do it in 2018, you know, it's better to get my feet wet and jump in there and get my name out there now. It was actually interesting because I went to go, I went and filed. It was probably, I think it was like the first week of April. And then that next week I had all of my materials and belongings stolen. Oh no. All my campaign materials. I was in town and there was a car accident. I went to help a car accident. People in an accident. I remember hearing about this. Right. And then I went to go help the family and I put my bag down and I was all my campaign materials and everything was in there and it got taken. So it was a kind of hit to the campaign. I had to redo everything. So we were kind of late to the game. I mean, we only had about three months to campaign for the primary. Which, the hard part with that, so that everybody really understands that the first time anybody runs, unless you come in with a name, like you're a celebrity or you've done something that has been newsworthy for some period of time, maybe you've been on the news, the biggest challenge is name recognition. Absolutely. People don't know who you are. They don't know what you're for. And they don't know why you're there. So that's the first initial hard part. So first of all, kudos to you for jumping in with both feet and going for it. You as well. Thank you. And then dealing with that hard part. So okay. So April, so again, sorry that you had your stuff stolen. Yeah, I mean, it is probably not connected, right? No, I don't. You don't assume it's connected in any way. Absolutely not. Okay. So one of the first things that's needed is you need to begin building your support base. Absolutely. So tell us what you did. So my district is really interesting in House District 40. You have a good group of conservatives, a good group of military members. And then you have the Filipino district. And then you have kind of the people who filtered in there because it's affordable housing now. So there's really a large base of constituents. And then the current representative, he has a small group of constituents that he's loyal to. So and unfortunately, it's in the past has been against maybe the LGBT community in our neighborhood. So I reached out to the LGBT community and said, I've been a supporter of this community my whole life, even when I was in the service, when I was in there was still Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Yeah. And that was kind of a pretentious issue when we were in it. And I was a big supporter for repealing it and allowing everyone to openly serve. So I really tapped that market and said, hey, what can I do for you? I know you've been had a voice for a while. Is there a, what is the, I guess, population within the district? So it's changing. I mean, it's growing a lot. I would say there's probably closer to almost 25,000 now in that district, but only about 11,000 registered voters. Yeah. Well, that's typical, right? Yeah. But there's a large community of LGBT there. And there's a large community of working force there. And support. And support for that as well. Family support. Absolutely. So that was my main issue was to reach out to them and give them a voice and say, you know, I'm here to advocate for you. What can I do to kind of combat the device of rhetoric that's on the other side? And how can I make you feel like your voice is being perpetuated at the legislature? Okay. So you reached out, okay. So LGBTQ, you winked to them. Right. And that makes, certainly, up against Bob McDermott, that makes a lot of sense, as a first obvious choice to go to. Then you have, there are other groups of individuals. Absolutely. There's other ways of trying to reach other people. You had mentioned you were a veteran. Absolutely. So you reached out to the veteran community there. I did. And how did that work? It actually worked really well, actually. And especially being a younger gentleman who's been in the current wars, kind of knowing how to lay the land of, I guess, military and politics have been going in the past, you know, Afghanistan War, Operation Enduring Freedom and then Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Iraqi War. I think blended a little bit more credibility to, I guess, my campaign in general. They realized that I had some worldly experience, and that I could relate to them, even if they were conservative or they were identified as independent or libertarian. They said, you know, you have that military experience. They kind of offer that respect and they say, you have a perception that they can give a certain voice to that community. Is there a large veteran or military population there as well? There's this large military community and also government employee community. So people have left the veteran or left the military now, our veterans that work with the government now, either on Pearl Harbor or things like that. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Okay. All right. So pulling together the difference work, because that's one of the things you got to do. Now, did you reach out to other other electives? Yeah, absolutely. So other elected officials. Yeah. So I reached out to the senator in that district, Senator Will Sparrow. I actually reached out to my opponent in the primary, Rose Martinez. She had ran in that district. I believe this was her fourth time for that seat. She ran for city council once or twice before. So she's been there forever and she's a mainstay in the Filipino community there. So I kind of, you know, offered her my, you know, good luck. Say, this is, you know, nothing personal. I'm not coming here trying to take away your, you know, the momentum she had. But I thought that after, you know, maybe four times running that district, that it was good to have someone who was, you know, just a different idea, different perspective. Exactly in a fresh face. And that was something that when I spoke to a lot of constituents that were happy to see a new face. Someone who was going to kind of shake things up in the Ewa Beach community. They have always seen the same candidates over and over. That's actually one of the biggest topics. And one of the biggest challenges. And we'll go into that for a minute as soon as we come back from our break. We'll take a little break here. So thank you for joining us. This is Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers, the Politics in Hawaii series. I'm your host, Carl Campania. And thanks again to our guest, Mr. Randy Aaron-Gott. See you in a minute. Aloha, my name is Danelia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. We are the co-hosts of Keys to Success, which is live on Think Tech live streaming network series, weekly on Thursdays at 11 a.m. Aloha. Aloha. Aloha, everyone. I hope you've been watching Think Tech Hawaii. But I'm here to invite you to watch me on Viva Hawaii every Monday at 3 p.m. I'm waiting for you. Mahalo. Hi, I'm Keely Akina, president of the Grass Root Institute. I'd love you to join us every week Mondays at 2 o'clock p.m. for Ehana Kako. Let's work together. We report every week on the good things going on in our state as well as the better things that can go on in the future. We have guests covering everything from the economy, the government, and society. See you Mondays on Ehana Kako at 2 o'clock p.m. Until then, I'm Keely Akina. Aloha. Aloha, thank you for coming back and joining us still for Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. This is the Politics in Hawaii series. I'm your host, Carl Campania. And once again, thank you to Mr. Randy Aragon for joining us. We're talking about campaigns today. And we're talking about how to campaign in Hawaii. And Hawaii is perhaps one of the most different, most peculiar areas and locations and states to actually campaign in. Because there are things that we do here, things that are expected here that are really not done in any other state. To some degree, but not really. So that includes things such as door knocking, literally going out and knocking everyone's door, going out and sign waving, standing on the side of the road with a sign waving at people. These things are not done other places. So let's talk a bit about that. Once you got your campaign going and you were rolling, you had to pull your committee together. You had to pull different supporters together. You had to figure out fundraising. That's a whole other topic we can do a whole show on really. But okay, so you have all these moving pieces, right? Tell me about the process. Tell me about your day to day and how you would schedule out when I do this and when I do that. So tell me about what you did as you were campaigning. So about the first month was really for me was trial and error. It was kind of figure out. I kind of knew the basics of what a campaign in Hawaii takes. Kind of, I was a part of the young Democrats of Hawaii and we had a kind of a training session earlier that year. So I kind of understood what it took, but I didn't know how to implement it. And I was out up by myself. At that point I didn't have a campaign manager or anyone to assist me. So it was a trial and error. I'd wake up in the morning and I would make some calls to some really close family friends and said, hey, I'm really trying to improve my community. If you could throw me 25 bucks, that would be great. So I can get some signs and get moving. And then I jump out there in the morning right around 6 a.m. when everyone's taken off to work. And I would wave at them while they're going to work. And it felt really weird at first because it's something you're not accustomed to doing. And people are going to work while they want to be happy. But I was really surprised. People in my district were pretty upbeat and happy in the mornings. So what do they do? As you're standing there on whatever corner you're on and there's different corners that you have to schedule daily and week and all that to make sure you're hitting as many corners as you can, right? What do they do? What do the people do? I'm a big shaka guy. I love the shaka. And that resonates a lot with people in Hawaii. So I give a big nice smile and I give a shaka. And I've got a military service animal. So I took my dog out there with me. And she kept me company. And people always love seeing a dog out there hanging out and she's always smiling. So I always give them a nice big shaka as I drive by. I usually get one back either way. So they'll give you a shaka back, a smile back. Sometimes they'll honk. Sometimes they'll honk, yeah. And sometimes actually it'll be a string. So someone will honk and all of a sudden other people will start honking. Yeah, exactly. I felt kind of bad in the morning though. I mean it's 6 a.m. and I'm like next to the house people are honking. I'm like, should I be asking people to honk? I don't know. They will honk whether you ask them or not. In my experience they appreciate that you're there. Whether they're going to vote for you or not. Absolutely. And I heard from others saying that sign waving is not going to win you a campaign but it could lose you a campaign. If you don't do it. Because they want to see that you're out there working. They want to see that you're doing your best to represent the community. And that's something that they can latch on to. And there's only so much you can do. I mean depending on how much money you're able to raise there's only so much you can do. So you went out and you also doorknocked. Absolutely. So after sign waving I had to go grab a cup of coffee and scarf down some eggs and then I'd be at it pretty much till the sundown to knocking doors and trying to meet voters. Knock them on doors. 50, 60, 100 doors a day. 200 doors a day. I was fortunate enough during that time. It was the summer and I was still in school. I was finishing up my degree. So I had time to do my online courses really late at night but the rest of the day was all just knocking on people's doors and hoping to catch them if they're off work or maybe some of the capuna that were home during the day that I'd catch them and chat with them about issues in their community. So did you find that people were open and they would open their door and they would be ready to engage you or what do you say the percentages of openness versus not? It really depended on the area that I was knocking in and I figured that out pretty quickly. Certain areas were more susceptible to opening their doors and having conversations. Other ones were not. And then I had all the area near James Campbell High School that a lot of those houses are fenced in so I couldn't even get to the door. You couldn't get to them. So I would holler. I'd go to the fence and scream hello. How's it going? You have time to talk and sometimes they would watch TV and look up and look at me and keep watching TV. And every once in a while to have a great conversation sometimes I'd be invited in for some food and have a drink and eat some soda or something like that. Yeah, a lot of people are sure of water. Yeah, exactly, and some water. But a lot of people thought and Zuri actually just put this in my ear as well but a lot of people as I would knock on their doors as well. Their first thought was, am I a Jehovah's Witness? Who am I? Right, yes. What do I want? Right, right, right. Why are you knocking on my door and you know what, I'm going to keep my kids away from you for a moment. Right, yeah, yeah. Until you engage them. Oh no, hold on, I just let you know who I am a little bit and they're like, oh, okay. So I found actually, and I'm curious if you saw the same thing. Once you would engage them a little bit, let them know this is who I am and this is all I'm doing. And all of a sudden then more doors would open. Right, absolutely. Like, oh, okay. Well, tell me more. Tell me more about, okay, okay. So what about this issue? What about that issue? Okay. All right, so you also would send out, you would send out direct mailers, right? Correct, right. And you would try to get them to everybody, right? You targeted based on the amount of money you have and you kind of get it out, right? Right. What other sorts of things did you do to try to reach people? So besides the direct mailers, actually direct mailers was something that I had a strategy at first and then it kind of fell apart. I was going to say, oh, I'm going to do everybody in the primary. I'm going to go to every door. I'm going to mark the ones that are likely voters and things like that. And after a while, you're going so fast. You have so much to do. And again, I was at it my own for the first while. I scrapped the plan and said, you know what? I'm new in this neighborhood. I'm going to blanket the entire district. Yeah. You know, I've got a certain amount of money that I want to spend. That first mailers going to blanket the entire district. So I was able to hit all, I think it was 11,000 voters, but around 8,000 doors in my district, the first mailer. See that's clear. And it was something that identified me. And then again, with my service animal, she was always with me. So some people last on, oh, you're the guy with the dog. So I make sure to include that in my mailer. And then after walking around, going to Starbucks, you know, later that month, people would recognize me and come up and say hello. I was the guy with the red hat that didn't say make America great. Right. I was the guy with the red hat that said volunteer. I was like, oh, there that guy. Yeah. Yeah. I like that slogan better. Me too. Okay. So, okay. Now, what about your usage of media, social media? Right. So I actually hired, well, I wouldn't say hired. We put together a program for college students who wanted to intern in my campaign. Yeah. And we got on board, a gentleman who was going, he's actually at Harvard now. And this is his first year there, but he was my social media intern. He was able to, you know, compile all the events we did, put together a couple slideshows or nice pictures that he wanted to post. And I would give him a little excerpt to write. And he added all my spelling mistakes and posted for us, which was fantastic, because nowadays social media, it's a great way to reach people. But then again, a lot of voters are over the age of 70. There are limitations. Yeah. It's a way to continue to grow some awareness. It isn't a way to definitively get a vote though. Right. Absolutely. Sometimes yes. But it's a way to say, it's another way to try to reach somebody. Because any good marketing campaign is all about how many touches you have. Exactly. How many impressions you have. So that means how many times your face and your name has gotten in front of somebody. Right. Because again, it's that name recognition thing. Oh, it's that person again. With the dog. Oh, okay. You know what? I like dogs. Right. And sometimes it can be as simple as that. I'm going to vote for him because I like his dog. It can be as simple as that. Okay. How about fundraisers? Did you run? Did you have any fundraisers, particular events that were? I did. I did. And this was actually, my first fundraiser was at a friend of mine, Larry's house. And he was gracious enough to open his house to me. So I didn't have any overhead costs for renting out a space or anything like that. And then I invited people from the LGBT community. And I said, you know, this is your chance to, to, you know, give me your concerns. And then, you know, I'm obviously going to need monetary support. And that's the thing that, that, you know, we all wanted big money out of politics, right? Right. And we wanted to see kind of like a publicly funded type across the board where everyone can meet those standards so that no one's going to sign it. It's not about money. It's about issues where we actually are forced to sit down and say, hey, this is what I think. Right. So that was hard to kind of being able to make that first ask to a community saying, you know, give me your money. Right. I mean that in general is just hard to ask. Because the first question is, why? Right. Exactly. Why? And, you know, and what they really are trying to analyze what your end goal is. Right. And I think Senator Schatz, this past after the election went up well saying that nowadays, people don't believe you when you go to their door sometimes and that's kind of why we don't get the results that we really, really want or we expect after we do all our analysis is because how many times have they had politicians knock on their door or people who want to be politicians over and over again? Hey, I want to do this. Hey, I want this. Hey, can I have some money? Then they get elected. My favorite one and the thing that breaks my heart actually every time I think about it is knocking on doors and I went up to this one woman, walked up her house. She was outside. I was like, hold on Auntie, how are you? I'm going to introduce myself and she goes, oh, okay. And I let her know that this is kind of some of the things I'm trying to do and all that. She said, you know what? That's wonderful. She said, you know what? I'm sorry right now. I don't have any money on me. I just gave all of my money to my kids and I don't have any cash. If you can come back next week, I'll give you some money. I was like, Auntie, I didn't come here to ask for money. I came here to introduce you. I was like, it's a dollar. Thank you. That sort of thing is like, you know what? If you reach somebody and if they recognize, oh, you know what? I do believe you. If you actually were able to reach them, it's that thing that I then feel responsible to them. Now it's like, you know what? Now, even more so, I have more energy than I did a second ago. That's one of the wonderful things. It really is. And it really humbles you a lot too. It does. Big time. I'm happy to talk to someone and they give me something to go home and think about. And I would come back and make sure I follow up with them and catch them again when they're home from work. Yeah, oh, you want some work done here, want some work done there. Okay, let me take a picture. Let me do this and I'll follow up with you. Can I get your email address? Okay. And then you follow up with them and then when you follow up with them, like, you actually followed up with me. Exactly. Yeah, I told you. Okay, now you have my vote. Now they get you. Now they get you. Okay, so I actually, there was an opening, but I had school that exact Thursday night that everybody couldn't do it. That's another way to reach out to people or just, the key is not so much for me anyway. It's not so much, how do I get people to know me as much as how do I get to know them? Exactly. How do I learn what matters to them? All right, so we're already at the end of this and there's so many more things to go over. We didn't talk about endorsements and we didn't talk about Kennedy forums and things like that. That's cute. But of all the things you did, what would you say was the most effective? The most effective. The most effective thing that you did. I would say do or not. Do or not. I mean, I think every candidate will probably mention the same thing unless they're running for a huge, huge position in the company or a position or something like that. Where you literally don't have. Right, you can't not on every door and state. You need people to do that for you. That face-to-face, that one-on-one interaction with the voters and just the public in general and letting them know that you're not doing it for any other purpose but to serve. And that really connects with people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you for running. Thank you. And you're going to run again. Absolutely. Yes, exactly. Because that's the most important thing. We got that message from Senator Schatz as well saying if you didn't win, run again. Exactly. So we appreciate that. We love that too. So, okay. Thank you for joining us, Mr. Randy Aaron Gantz and thank you for joining us and listening to this conversation. I hope there was something in here of value to you. I think there was some value to me. And I hope you join us next week again. So thank you. This is Think Tech Hawaii, Movers, Shakers, and Reformers, the Politics in Hawaii series. I'm your host, Carl Kempanya and we will see you next week. Mahalo.