 This show is the state of the state of Hawaii and I'm your host Stephanie Stoll Dalton. This show is about the campaign campaigns of the election season that of course we've been in since January and we're inviting as many guests as we can to meet the viewership of Think Tech Hawaii and to learn about the process and the promises that are coming forth from these excellent candidates we have running in this election. Today our candidate is a first time running is first time running for an office in the state senate and his name that is Ian Ross and he is as I said from district running for district 11 and that includes Manoa and Makiki and Punchbowl and Papakalea and we're here to add to find out what it is that he plans to seek as his goals and how he will accomplish those and we'd also like to know how the campaign is going and what that experience is like for him especially as a first time campaigner. So welcome Ian Ross to Think Tech Hawaii. Oh Stephanie thank you so much for having me this afternoon. Well thank you for coming and spending some time with Think Tech Hawaii and its viewership and I'd like to start off by asking you a little bit about your local history and background and what you think that brings what that experience you think brings to your candidacy a lot of promise. Absolutely thank you so much. Well I was you know truly blessed to be born here in the island so I was born in the district I'm running in. I grew up with my mom on Kauai. I went to both public and private schools there. I attended for the beginning of college Kauai Community College before transferring back into the district at the University of Hawaii at Manoa where I graduated with the degree in economics. Throughout my you know early adulthood I was involved in a large number of different grassroots projects and initiatives. I'm really happy to have spearheaded the Student ID bus pass for Kauai Community College which kept it as the only college campus to my understanding among the UH system that still doesn't have a fee or paid parking because we're able to decongest the parking lot by bringing more people onto public transportation and increasing the sustainability of the campus. I was also involved working with Mayor Bernard Caballio as the Youth Advisory Committee to the mayor's coordinator. We worked on a large number of different initiatives there both big and small. One of the small ones I was proud of was back then iPhones couldn't open PDFs and that meant people who wanted to with their smartphones check bus schedules couldn't do that and just a really small file change increased people's ability to know when the bus was coming. This was before the days that we had integration with you know Google Maps and those other things we now take for granted. Well you know this is a very young example of service. It sounds like you were orienting to be of service to your community from a very early stage. Did I also see something on the website about high school work too that you were in leadership there? Sure well I back in high school I was like Vice President of the High School and losing an early losing an election back in those days for presidency but I think it goes back to my mother who started her grassroots advocacy around women's rights and disability rights in the 70s when she was going to school in Washington DC. Growing up I was always brought to different community meetings and you know I'd often be sitting in the corner playing Pokemon in a Game Boy or something at eight or nine years old but I very early on had my introduction to how like community meetings work and forms and how to bring people together and as soon as she could she drafted me into being like the emcee for disability rights forms and stuff like that on Kauai. That's wonderful work and thank your mother too that's just wonderful. I guess it was Mother's Day so I I'm going to give her some thanks certainly for helping me become the man I am today. That's it really good point you know I want to get to your major issues which are interesting to everybody and certainly prominent on the list of desirable places to get some work done and make some changes and add some hope. I'd like to ask you though at this point well what is how is the campaign going and what is that like for a first-time person you said that you started in mid-January or so what's the end of it how did how does it get started and how do you get some traction can you can share a little bit about what that experience was like? Absolutely with the announcement that Senator Brian Toniguchi is retiring it was very clear to me that he was leaving big shoes to fill. He's been a excellent senator to the district for his 28 years and he was a house representative of 14 years before that getting his darn electoral politics a younger age than I am today. When I heard that news and coming out of this pandemic and of course we're still in it today I saw real urgent need for people who are connected to the community to run for office so I went out and I announced on January 25th in front of the Father Damien statue at the Capitol that was in pretty high rates of cases so we all wore masks we're only 10 of us try to stay well spaced and it well I'd considered running for office before I certainly didn't expect it to quite look like that but the energy was really great and I felt a lot of support and you know we've been out raising money knocking on doors waving signs the most recent reporting period showed that we didn't have a single dollar from a corporation or union but for that specific filing cycle we raise more money than any other states in a candidate through small dollar donations 101 people have you know taken some time and some effort and some of their hard-earned cash to invest in a vision for Hawaii where we can solve our homelessness crisis have affordable homes improve education honor capuna and support caregivers and that's been something I've just been incredibly grateful to my supporters for but the day-to-day of campaigning looks like this I throw in a little bit of sunscreen I go out holding some walk pieces that look something like this and I knock on the doors my neighbors and we have really frank discussions and I found the way to start the discussion with someone who you know hasn't met me before and where I'm trying to make a connection I don't start by asking what problems do you want to see fixed or what don't you like or what are you mad about that's not how we have the conversation I start with the question what do you love about Hawaii and we talk about the things that we care about shared values things we want to preserve things we see under threat things that we see we want to get back to and in many cases what we want to see improve and time and time again I hear just about three main issues homelessness affordable housing and actually crime as the ones that are really affecting people's lives and our front of mind right now for the people of Manoa and Makiki well that that is just wonderful to know that you can approach people not you personally but that you are sounds like you were welcome so we still you can still approach the door after all we've been through with this pandemic and this distancing that you you felt like you had to act you could access it and people accept that you're coming in is that the case I'm just done kind of just get the tempo of the community they're not very yeah you know um and people at the door say well thank you for knocking on doors it must be so hard no one must be answering people must be so mean to you and honestly no one's mean to me I've had wonderful conversations I think our divisive political rhetoric I think the pain and difficulty of as a society navigating this pandemic and other things has allowed a lot of people to villainize our neighbors but our neighbors you know I find conservative or liberal I'm finding some not always agreement on the main solutions but these problems and the types of visions they'd like to see and I really just think we need to get back to talking to each other I my theory of change is when we have a conversation when we work together when we know who's in office and when phone calls are answered and emails are responded to when we bring people to the table we'll be much better positioned to solve problems and I don't think it's a coincidence that we've seen a deterioration of the sense of community in Hawaii at the same time that we're experiencing so many problems piling up in the sense that we're not getting anything done politically anymore I don't think these are isolated incidences and I think again my theory of change is what if you had a state senator who was responsive who was easy to reach you left your cell phone number on the walkpiece and willing to talk to you and kept that energy while working in government to help bridge the divide between our community and government I think we'll see a lot more done and that's what I'm trying to test the that's a communicative approach and and it's building community at the same time I think that is really an interesting description of it I I also wanted to ask you why you are running for the Senate as opposed to the the um the legislature so what can you talk to us I say us now viewership but I don't know that everybody else may know exactly how it works here but um I think we could uh profit by knowing a little bit about how you make a decision to choose an office area to work in which section of the government you chose and why did you do that absolutely well I think the biggest piece is that we had the retirement of a really fantastic senator announced uh and with that idea is that idea of big shoes to fill and I was looking around at the people who might be candidates and the types of approaches they might want to take and I thought you know what I if I had this vision of trying to bring the community together after you know really traumatizing divisive experience or pandemic in politics these last few years um if I'm not going to do it who's going to do it was one of the basic questions but the other one is so the retirements what spurred it on but also and I hadn't mentioned this earlier but I I've worked in the state senate I've been in age two separate senators I've been up close and personal seeing how the job is done I've also worked in the state house but it wasn't for any particular member I was a a bill drafter for years so they and I throw those people in the back room and make them uh write and rewrite bills until the end of session um but being up close and seeing how the senate works I think is something which is a useful uh experience I think it's borderline a prerequisite to being able to hit the ground running um and those were really big factors for me I also throw in as a neighborhood board chair I've had the opportunity to get to know the approaches of our various legislators and I when I considered where to run I felt most called and I thought it was most relevant to run for the state senate seat well as a first time candidate um I was interested to to know what were the levers or what the uh what the the breadcrumb trail was to toward to to choosing which way to put in your effort because I think that um this is a very challenging uh act to campaign for an office right I haven't done it just wanting you to make sure you share you know with with the community that this is really tough you work very very hard I'm canvassing and going door to door and having all of that communication and community building going on is really demanding and I mean when do you stop I mean it can be 24 seven right I mean you have to make yourself stop so I think that is really interesting and um definitely I've been I've taken to telling people it's like having the check engine light uh for your body on you don't know if you're tired thirsty hungry all this all the above it's not really clear what you need to do to refresh yourself because everything just feels off and you're right there's not really a clear place to stop um it's one of those like infinite jobs there's nothing you can never complete it you can never do everything you could never do enough and so you just have to break down uh the various parts and do the best you can and hope that's enough um and uh yeah it's a it's a very daunting experience in that way I think but um it's one that I found incredibly rewarding so far well along that line I also wanted to ask about the financing of it um we know everybody needs um the finances and the budget as big as possible and everybody's asking for donations but I've come around to thinking well wait a minute how much is enough I never get a sense of and I don't know if other voters do um get a sense of how much is enough and would they talk about the campaign chest but that's mostly out for the the big the big uh executive positions but for this kind of uh level of uh office um which is just as important as all the rest of at I guess maybe the way to just describe it is um the other ones are executive high level offices and these are making the whole government work with them and for them and and working on that policy those policies through um but what what is it what does it take to run a campaign like yours well how much money can you go what's the most would well give me some parameters here but how do you think about that so people just can understand it not to reveal any intricate budget information but just give us a sense of that well first off one of the reasons for burning is I'm very happy to give the inside scoops and let people know how uh politics is working behind the scenes I don't think uh we're benefited when people don't know not to say that individual shouldn't be allowed to have secrets or things about themselves that aren't shared but people deserve to understand the politics um well really basically um the amount of money you can spend in each campaign and be useful is a changing number depending on the office on any given year but the biggest expenses for state legislative race like the state house or the state senate would typically be mailers it can change a little bit on some of our uh neighbor islands so for example kawaii's uh one senate district so it would make sense to do tv and radio because it would cover the whole area so there's geographical considerations there but typically um radio ads and print media don't give as much of an impact for some of these seats so it ends up being things like mailers yes you have to buy banners and signs and t-shirts but those aren't usually as prohibitively expensive um to mail the entire district uh that I I'm running for it's somewhere between six and seven thousand dollars there's a lot of little factors that can affect that and that means if you want to gather your message about affordable housing or how we can solve the homelessness crisis uh you're going to have about three to five seconds of someone's time looking at it and to buy that time uh cost six to seven thousand dollars and this is one big reason why money has so much influence in politics but like I mentioned you know the way I've been financing this campaign has been calling old middle school high school college friends and asking for contribution and I'm letting you know about my vision for hawaii what I think that we can accomplish together and uh we've been able to bring it together on these individual basis um but in a state senate seat a corporation or pack uh can write a check up to four thousand dollars for the state senate uh and they can do that for any given reason um and it's not as tied into those personal connections often not to say personal connections don't matter um and I'd be remiss not to highlight uh how I feel this can have a really detrimental impact on the way politics works so for example in the time it would take to call 40 friends and successfully get a hundred dollar contributions someone else could you know have one interview uh with a corporation and get maxed out and I don't think that's particularly beneficial um I think looking at public financing systems in a more robust way is helpful but I'm not going through the public financing system I'm hoping that through small donors and working with organizations that I share a similar vision for hawaii with we're going to be able to have a really strong warship and like I highlighted earlier there were certain reporting periods so for the January 1st April 25th reporting period those candidates that did report and are running for state senate either as incumbent or otherwise our small dollar approach actually raised the most money um and as a first time candidate I'm really grateful uh that I've earned the support of my friends neighbors and family that's very interesting um well thank you for that I I'm sure that there's much to read about how it all works um uh but I I did want to get the essence of it you know what it is that you know on the ground how it feels to be there doing doing that then of course you have to run the staff I mean your expenses in in that budget so it's bringing that money in and then you have to pay your staff and build an office situation right okay all right well I want to move on into your issues because they are laudable issues and certainly need attention um but tell me a little bit about the affordable housing you mentioned them before I think you mentioned affordable housing homelessness um you've got the population decline issue that's adjacent to all of that and you're also interested in assisting capuna for their well-being and and their health and you've done some already done some considerable work on uh trying to get paid sick leave in place too so I've seen those in your materials and those are laudable goals for sure well tell us a little bit about like affordable housing now we're working many are working on that can you tell us a little bit about how you plan to robustly affect that or do something what what is it that you're going to uh create that might have an effect that will be uh noticeable and in ways that that we're stuck with not noticing till now well absolutely and as you had highlighted uh Hawaii's population is essentially in freefall for the past six years we've been in population decline uh we're currently at the third fastest rate of population decline and some people see this as a good thing they think less people in the islands less demand prices will go down but I think the extreme surge in home prices the fact that on Oahu today it's 1.1 million dollars for a family home and three of the four counties are over a million dollars as well um should completely dispel any illusion that the solution to our problems is to wait until our neighbors give up and leave their homes um we're in this together and we're going to have to solve it together one of the ways that we can think about uh solving this and it's something related to a resolution I helped pass through the Makiki neighborhood board as chair uh we supported the aloha homes proposal now we need a whole think tech uh a 30 minute session to break down all the aloha homes but let me give some basic highlights uh one these would be homes that would be only purchasable by residents uh the resale value is limited uh it has to be your only home um you own it while you're you're there uh it's constructed by the state uh no by the state works with contractors to build on-state lands in the dense urban core and a long transit line this is to try to reduce traffic and to create density which allows for you know better tax bases to support robust infrastructure and wonderful parks and things like that so now this has been referred to as a Singapore model but it has drifted somewhat from there but essentially you can keep our low density communities well having low density I grew up in low density communities on Kauai uh it's important to me that people are able to have that I think that's what people picture for Hawaii but also we have one of the highest rates of high rises and these things can actually go together well in the sense that what you end up having is one space for one and one space for the other and this is how you end up having low density and high density next to each other um so for instance for instance Makiki is that a low density uh because their lower rise is there I mean what I would consider Makiki to be one of the higher density communities in the state you would okay um okay because of the the uh it's not the height then so we have we have many many high rises in Makiki in Makiki it's it's majority low rises but even that is somewhat is rather dense I was just trying to get a grip on what what that density issue is like on the but we don't necessarily want to see Manoa Valley uh have green spaces paved over I mean that's not the right way to be going but if you have you know really wonderful parks and in Makiki we're having conversations about getting dog parks currently uh and you have all these networks it can make density work and you can have robust sense of community but what you don't want to see is overly um scaling up some of our more um low density communities to be somewhere in between I think that's a fall and I think we're seeing a lot of pushes for that when really we need robust urban planning that makes these things a strength well would you say that Manoa is low density absolutely because of the single family homes dominate in the area okay yes just to get a good grip on that's a really important point and um certainly um it's a new a place that's coming up which isn't your district but I mean isn't kaka ako like their decisions that are going to be made about an area like that as an often question maybe we all question who is making the decisions about how this thing is going is anybody really thinking about if they have control over whether it can be high or low density what are they choosing and this is why I think the state needs to take a more robust role the state has a lot of state lands we shouldn't use the seeded lands for this um in terms of developing urban areas and the trends and doing transit oriented development um we end up trying to play a lot with the leavers and we need to do this about getting affordable housing but I think kaka ako is a really great example of how so much of the development in Hawaii today is not for the people who live here let me give you a quick statistic on this before kaka ako is more recent development before many developments across the island saying I think the year was 2015 we hit a 10 vacant home rate which is not ideal but it's not horrendous when you compare it to other states we've actually gone up since then to today at 14 percent of the homes in Hawaii are unoccupied um this really I think underscores well we have a housing crisis we have one of the highest rates of unoccupied homes um and that is just amazed it is so important and it answers my question of uh when I've been at alamo on a park or been there at night and turned around instead of doing ocean view um and focusing that way but turned around and look back at like key in the area that you can see the lights are out and uh and that people comment on that that there's so many so many areas of these huge condos that have no lights and that means that they're empty people are not there yes every day every day residents are paying the price for not us not having a robust clear people centered housing policy for the state uh you know Hawaii is one of the best places if you want to take 10 million dollars buy a property and just let it appreciate and you know get the money out of whatever country you're from it's one of the best places for that uh I think we should be one of the best places to live I think that's the goal that we should set for ourselves not just the best place to park money all right so let's go to then the process of it so as a senator what are the what are the means of influencing others to work with you on these issues how do you go about developing your coalitions or how do you go about getting that legislation written um with what happens there once you're there in there well the magic number in the senate is 13 so if one senator can convince 12 other senators that's the minimum number of votes to pass something in the senate so the the main goal is you're going to have to work with coalitions you're going to have to work together you're going to have to be clear with your vision but you're also going to have to be empathetic and understand the views and concerns of other senators having worked in the senate I at least you have gone to know uh several of the senators and begun to develop those relationships I also was the public policy manager for the Alzheimer's Association where I brought together legislators who didn't always think of kakuna issues and we were able to get bills passed we got um uh bill passed a set of standards for dementia training for first responders so they could work with kakuna while we established the nell timers coordinator position within the state government I know the sort of the basics of I know we're running out of time but yeah the basics are having a one-to-one personal conversation understand the visions of fellow senators highlight the problems build a consensus and then you start talking about solutions you don't say it's my way or the highway but you do need to be uncompromising and your fundamental values and support for the people otherwise the whole thing goes in wire but that sense of urgency you have to be able to see that others have to share that sense of urgency or you have to make it clear about why there is a sense of urgency that they need to get with well that's that's really very interesting and and sounds like maybe productive and I in this last a bit of talk we can do tell me about the outcomes that you would like to have at the end of your term of your first term tell us what you'd like to see has happened as a result of all effort well it's mentioned earlier you know I'm just very grateful to have been born in the best place in the world and raised here my mom and I growing up we had to make a lot of sacrifices to make that work definitely was working through high school I'm spending my weekends at flea markets and selling what we could in order to eat sometimes fruit and other things people would be familiar with and we really worked hard to make it work but the ability to do that is getting harder and harder in Hawaii it's even more difficult than when we were facing that growing up I'm experiencing that now I know my neighbors are so many people I speak to are saying they have one foot out the door and they're thinking of leaving the islands my vision is to get back to what we love about Hawaii to get back to being a place that cares about working families that is a place that you can live and more importantly a place you can thrive and I think and that's the vision when I talk to voters throughout the district that seems to be shared among all of us we need to get back to being Hawaii again I think that's a final statement well said and certainly shared can as a common a common consideration and ideal um we are um we're running out of time and is there any other statement that you'd like to make or or would you want to point to anything that you'd like people to think about or go to um would you like to mention the facebook page you have that people might want to see and they can find that themselves if you want them to sure thing well I'm really excited about the good we can do together as a district in the state and if people want to see more about my vision or get in contact with me and share their manao they can go to Ross for hawaii.com that's Ross for f or hawaii.com all of my social medias facebook instagram twitter accounts are all slash Ian Ross hi as in Hawaii and I'm looking forward to future conversations very good all right we really appreciate your guesting and being so forthcoming about your background and your your current your current challenges and where you want to go and how you want to do it for all of us and the state of hawaii appreciate your being on this show the state of the state of hawaii which is on every two weeks on monday and I'm your host Stephanie still Dalton thank you so much for your viewership and we look forward to seeing you again hello ha thank you so much for watching think tech hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram twitter and linked and donate to us at think.kawaii.com mahalo