 And welcome to Business in Hawaii Special Edition. Normally we broadcast on Thursdays, but we got a special occasion today where we're broadcasting today from 3 to 3.30. Today is Tuesday. We have a special guest today who's just made an announcement that she's going to be running for the state chair position for the Republican Party, which is going to be an interesting process for her for a lot of different reasons. Andrea Topola is no stranger to politics. She knows how to run elections. She has won more than a few in the past. And there is great optimism that she's going to take this one as well. So Andrea, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure as always. Now you've just announced, and I guess it's been a buzz for a while, that you're going to be running for the chair position for the Republican Party and for the state of Hawaii. I mean, you've got a very secure position. You've just won an election. Your constituents love you, and you're going to be going into a very interesting environment. Why are you going to do this? Well, you know, when I first got elected in 2014, I was the only candidate to unseat an incumbent. And I think for a lot of people, they would say, oh, that's great. It's amazing. Well, in my eyes, it kind of signified that there was no plan. Because if there was a plan, there would have been multiple of us that had gotten elected that year. It was a discouraging year in 2016 as well. So when I first got elected, I was immediately, my eyes opened to the fact that our party, and potentially even our caucus, wasn't really thinking too far ahead about how we can recruit candidates, how we can gain seats, how we can really bring a two-party system to Hawaii. I mean, people talk about it, but what I was looking for was a plan. Where is the plan in the party? Where is the plan in our caucus where we are studying each district, where we're helping to mentor and groom candidates? So in 2015, I took the time to create a candidate academy. So I took candidates aside. I tried to talk to them about running for office. I tried to give them the resources that they might need, the pointers. You did this yourself? Yeah. I'm a teacher. Okay, well, but that's the role of a party, isn't it? Yeah. And I didn't see the party actively doing that. And I knew that if in 2015 we weren't recruiting, we weren't going to win any seats in 2016. Of course not. So in 2015, I took the time to call around, open up every circle that I had, asked people to run for office. I might have asked maybe 50 people, got about 20 to engage in my candidate academy, and about three people or four people actually put their name on the ballot and ran for office in 2016. That's good. I mean, it's important to get candidates out there. You know, if they win, that's great. But even if they don't win, number one, it's good experience. Number two, it gets the brand and the name out there. But number three, it also requires the opposition to spend some resources making sure that they win that seat as well. So there's a lot of strategic reasons why you want to put as many candidates as you can on the ballot. Right. And I think for a lot of these candidates, they've been really struggling with trying to be relevant. I mean, who sits them down and talks to them about policy, about what issues their opponent voted for that maybe they should use in regards to them winning in a new seat? And I think that as an elected official, even more so, I work with them every day and I'm able to help these candidates think through, how could you start talking about community issues that people would really jump behind your cause? They jump behind your campaign and help you get elected to office. So it was for me a decision because in 2016, the party didn't take as active as a role as I wanted them to in producing a second option. We should be that second option that's viable that people want to follow, that people are looking for these candidates. So at the end of 2016, when we lost a rep seat, we lost a senator seat, I knew that it was time for me to step up and really get the resources I need to get this party organized so that we can make a bigger difference for the state of Hawaii. Well, being a teacher, you ran in 2014 against an incumbent. You won by a big margin, if I recall. 56%. Yeah. So, not bad. And then you ran again and got reelected and you did this by having a well thought out plan to be successful. I guess it must be very frustrating to know that it's possible to show that it's been done but not see it happening anywhere else. Right. I mean, because I could articulate to candidates how to go through each precinct because in both elections, I won in every single precinct. I have five in my district. But that's not a mistake. That's a planned effort of how many numbers you need in each district, what Koalina is versus Nanakuli. What Nanakuli is versus my little pocket in Eva. And so I can help articulate this to candidates but they had no volunteers. They didn't have people helping them poll watch. They didn't know how to file the reports on time to the campaign spending commission. And these are the kind of things that I really need the party to start organizing so that we can be a viable option in the 2018 election. So I guess what I'm hearing is that since the party wasn't doing this, you've decided that it's time for you to get more involved with the party and do it yourself or have your team do it. I would love to teach a team of people how to do this. I mean, when I had the candidate academy, I started to teach small groups of people, but I want to teach a team of people that want to jump behind causes and purposes that make Hawaii a better place and empower them with good strategy. That wasn't just me. I had to call colleagues on the mainland. I had to call over to Arkansas to see how they got from four Republicans to 76 now that they have since Bill Clinton was the governor. This is no easy task. You have to study it over years. Well, not only was he the governor, but wasn't he also the president? Well, that really took the scale because in Arkansas they have 100 seats, right? And they got all the way down to four Republicans. We think we're bad with five out of 51. These guys were in the doghouse with four out of 100. Now they're up to 76. In 2012, they had 24. And so I've been in touch with the majority leader because I asked him, how are you getting this done? He said, I'm an engineer. This is a numbers game. Well, true. It's got to have some structure. It's got to have some planning. It's got to have some good execution. It's all these different components. They have to come together. Plus you have to have some energetic people to make it all happen. Yes. And I think one of the things he talked about was some of their polling guys. I've asked the party this numerous times. How are you polling the districts? Not only to see if it's polling Republican votes, but as the candidate is coming down the stretch, are we letting them know where they're at? Because some of these guys told me the one before the election, am I even close? I don't even know how many votes I have right now because they're not vote counting. They're not getting poll guys out there that are actually taking that temperature check of, ooh, you only have 20% name recognition right now. We still need to up our game. Well, I mean, there's so many different things you need to deploy to make these things happen. I mean, how can you manage anything if you don't know where you're at? You know, I mean, if you're low in name recognition, then that takes a different type of promotional activity. If you're low in a particular district but you're high somewhere else, that's those resources in the area that needs it. And if you don't have that information, you can be flopping all over. And I think that's what we see in the state of Hawaii, a lack of data and facts and figures where if you set a goal and you don't have a baseline, you can never reach that goal because we don't know what the baseline is. And so for me, this decision was based more upon the need for us to have a good, well-thought-out strategy. Right, and you've obviously done it and you can help other people do it too, which is why we're in the position of running for state chair. Yeah. Well, this is all very exciting. Now, before we get into what are you going to do after you get elected, a couple other questions. How are you going to make this all work because you've got your hands full. You've got a lot going on already. Right, and a lot of people have brought up that issue about time. I was a professor at the University of Hawaii. Since being elected into office, I haven't been able to teach there because the University of Hawaii comes to ask the legislature for money. So there would be a conflict there. So I've resigned from being a professor. I used to teach at Kamehameha schools and I don't do that either. I want to make sure I understand this. So if you're a professor at the University of Hawaii, you're not supposed to be engaged in politics? I think the conflict is when you're collecting a salary from UH and you're collecting a salary from the state. When you're elected. Yes, when you're elected. All right. So I think for me, the past two years of only being working per se from January to May and the legislature has given me a lot of free time for May to December to really go find candidates, teach them, help them, mentor them because it's not a one year process. If you're running for election in 2018, I hope you thought way before 2018 before you decided to run for office. Absolutely. I mean, it's just like any other big project you've got. There takes a lot of upfront planning to make sure that you've got a flawless execution. Right. When I decided to run for office, I think in 2013 in May, I made my final decision to run for election in 2014. I already raised $10,000. And it was a starter, but that's what I want to teach these candidates how to be mentally and physically financially prepared. Right. Success tends to lead to other successes. So having it planned out and anticipate what the challenges are going to be and have a plan to respond. That's critical. I mean, there's a lot of parallels to running for office and having a business. You've got a budget, a business plan. You've got to have all of these pieces together and look into the future a little bit and anticipate what the different outcomes might be and how you're going to respond to each one of them. A lot of parallels with running for office, too. And I think that people downplay the fact that on that home stretch, Republicans typically don't have money set aside for answer pieces when somebody does a hit piece on you. They don't have extra money to push them down the home stretch unless they need that last 200 votes. A lot of them, by the time we're down to the home stretch, have no money. Nobody's helping them out. So we really got to, as a party, make this plan real where we have money set aside just for candidates, not for party operations, for candidates to help push them across that finish line. I remember a long time ago when I was a treasurer of the party, we used to have some funds available to help candidates, not as a primary source, but as a source for emergencies in case we were really close and we just needed a little extra to get us over the top. We'd have the ability to help out with some of that. It's super necessary. Every state that I've been interfacing with in regards to this plan, all of them said we always have contingency money for our candidates because at the very end, you've got to dump everything you have into that to make sure that you guys win the seat. It's important. And again, it's important in business to have that, too. You always have to have your reserves or your contingencies and the funds available to help out with this. You're no stranger to multitasking, though. I mean, you did this in college as well, didn't you? Yeah. I ran for student government when I was a junior at BYU and in addition to majoring in music, I was able to do that. We had 33,000 students that we represented and the election was a little different. It was two weeks. So we had one week of a primary, one week of a general. And I joke about it that sometimes I think that that might have been harder because getting people to know you in two weeks, because we couldn't campaign more than the two weeks because we were supposed to be doing schoolwork. Uh-huh, yes. Yeah. And so the university in their wisdom said that the two weeks was enough for us to do what we needed to do to do student leadership offices. So it was a very condensed type of, I guess, election. And it was snowing. So we would knock doors outside. We would do things inside. So we hit off campus, on campus, and online students. Wow. Well, and you were successful. Yeah. We pulled that one off. I think our percentage was 54 and I think our vote count was 460, 4,600 something. I still remember the vote count was even higher than the district that I ran in, but it was a neat experience because I got to see the value of volunteers. They can be powerful. Right. And at a very young age, I was, what, 21? I think when I, at a very young age, I realized that in a business or in an organization that, yes, you are the leader, but the people who ran and went in the front line and kind of, you know, took the hits for us, those are our volunteers. You know, in economics, they call this the multiplier, multiplier effect. So as your business grows and you get more customers and it starts to build and you've got people talking about you, the impact starts to multiply by more than just yourself. It starts growing. And that's the way, you know, your volunteers are because they've got family members, they've got neighbors, they've got friends, they've got relatives and they're all talking about what they're doing, sign-waving or going to meetings or whatever and it just multiplies throughout the entire community. It was amazing because our volunteers are the ones who aren't paid and our officers have scholarships but yet we knew how to treat them and empower them with the tools and resources so that we could have gains everywhere and I hope that that's what we can do in the party is that our base needs to be expanded, not just in age, not just in ethnicity, not just in background, all across the board, different types of people getting involved in the causes that we fight for. So I guess what I want to conclude with on this segment or this part of the program is that you're no stranger to multitasking and being able to handle multiple things simultaneously and do it successfully. Well, you know what they say, well, there's a way. That's right. Well, this is Business in Hawaii Special Edition. I'm here with Andrea Topola. We're talking about her candidacy for the Republican Party of Hawaii's State Chairman. So it's going to be a big job. There's a lot of work ahead and we're going to talk about what she's going to do if she's successful in getting that position but we'll be right back in about 60 seconds. My name is Calvin Griffin, host of Military in Hawaii, which airs here on Think Tech Hawaii every Friday at 11 a.m. Please join us. We'll be talking about issues concerning our military, veterans community and other related issues that concern all of us. Hi, I'm Nicole Alexander-Enoz and I was born three weeks ago. Congratulations on being there for me for some of the few weeks of my life. I'm starting a new show, The Millennial Mind, every Wednesday at 2 p.m. for the month of April and we'll go over some of the reasons why millennials are some of the most anxious and frustrated people at the moment. Ahhhh! Hi everyone, Ted Rawson here, host of our Think Tech show Where the Drone Leads and a lot of you, of course, have been setting your clocks at 4 o'clock on Friday so that you can make sure you see our show. It's now changed. It's now going to be at noon on Thursdays. Noon on Thursdays, new standard time for where the drone leads and where the drone leads is to systems like this, technologies that we're using here in Hawaii these days and we need you to pay attention to this, be part of it. So see you at noon on Thursdays. Aloha and welcome back to the special edition of Business in Hawaii. We normally broadcast on Thursdays from 2 to 3 but we've got a special guest today that we're doing an interview with and so we're doing this on a Tuesday from 3 to 3.30. We're broadcasting live from the downtown studios of Think Tech, Hawaii in the Pioneer Plaza and we have probably some of the most talented technicians in the state working with us here today. Coming back to Andrea who's explaining, or has just explained why she's running for the state chair position and it sounds like we've got some really good rationale for this. The bottom line is that we really need somebody to set the tone, to have a plan to execute the plan to do the teaching, to support the candidates. We haven't had that in quite a while and it's time. So let's just flash forward and say you win the election and now you're the state chair. What are you going to do first? Well my vision for the party is to create a candidate-centric party that gets local community members involved and expands our influence and reach to the 20 to 40 year old base that currently is not participating in our party. And so our plan is to have a slate of people running with me. So there are seven other officers that have to get elected as well. Our plan is to start to implement activities, coalitions and now when I say this I'm not saying oh we're going to call up people and see if they want to join, no. Do you know at this time that the Korean Association is fighting to get the ballot translated into Korean? They actually have had translators helping them. Do we know that the congresswoman from Samoa is Republican? Do we know that there is ultimate unlimited resources out there to do leadership conferences where we can talk about business? Where we can talk about lower taxes and that we can take the lead on this as a Republican party. We want to really start to organize these efforts throughout 2017 so we can start finding candidates, getting people who believe in this cause. The party says a lot, oh we got to find more people like Andrea. I tell you where you'll find people like me. Where there's a purpose and a cause. If we have a purpose and a cause that we're fighting for that's the magnet. More people will come out. Everyone knows there's a lot of work to do but you got to get these people excited to do that work because we actually can make a change, a difference in Hawaii that we've been waiting for. You know other candidates maybe at a national level or on a mainland have been very successful at being able to get that 20 to 40 something engaged. As a matter of fact I think that age group has been instrumental in getting certain people elected into office. You know I mean on a micro scale we can do something like that here but we have to get something in place that attracts them to get engaged. Well I think we have to realize that engagement is different in this day and age. I mean for people in Waianae engagement could be online, it could be through social media, it could be through phone calls, it could be through conferences because a lot of them have jobs that take them away from attending the nightly meetings. The Saturday meetings where we are taking our kids to sports, other people are having meetings so we have to adjust the way we allow people to engage so that they can engage at a time in a space and in a place that they feel comfortable doing that. And they need a reason to engage. Right. You know just asking them to is maybe half the battle but the rest of it is going to be okay they're going to get engaged. What are they going to get engaged with? They have to have a cause that they can get behind it they believe. What and I think there's so many causes we can jump behind let's talk about homelessness. There's actually a position who will be running on my slate that's over community service. We need to be the party that doesn't talk about homelessness but that actually produces results and solutions in the homelessness crisis that we're having. Absolutely. And you know I'm not sure if we're in an anomaly over here in Hawaii or not but I know in different places the university seemed to have a shifting interest in you know more of the basic core values of you know business and working and being successful and you know they're more centralist to maybe what the Republican platform has been in the past. You know I um do you see a possibility of tapping into that demographic at the universities and get them mobilized? Definitely. I mean to be honest for me everything is wide open all I see is opportunity in front of us because there's space in the university to have young Republican groups. There's space in humanitarian causes to partnership and build alliances every project that I do in my district I don't do by myself. I do it with businesses I do it with nonprofits anybody in civic organizations that want to get involved right now because homelessness is here and the closest solution is here there's all this great area that we can work in to start helping to make a difference. You know and again going back to the analogy of business I mean you can't go and have a starting point here and have a goal here you have to have some steps along the way that gets you eventually to that goal and that's why they have a three-year plan or a five-year plan so you can take these incremental improvements to finally get to where you want to be but we'll never get there if we don't take these initial steps along the way. I'll share that it's not just initial steps it's realizing that there is a need for initial steps because if we know the gap is this big as a party we should be addressing the fact that nobody is working in the gap and if nobody's working in the gap then oh who's up I'm in. That's right you know another analogy like in baseball you can't hit a home run every time you've got to do some base hits and some doubles in order to start driving those runs in and I guess we just need to accept the fact that we don't have to do the home run every single time you know let's just plan on winning the game getting those good solid base hits and that's part of getting those fundamentals that you were talking about earlier it's conditioning so you're teaching fundamentals and you're conditioning your people I mean at our level we don't need to get trained to run for office they could be going neighborhood board they could be going to commissions they could be preparing themselves to run for office so we have to have a mindset that sees towards the future which is that we got to prep our bench so that we can start winning these seats as far as I'm concerned no one's looking at the fact that our bench is shallow that there's not people ready to go to hit these home runs. Absolutely there's not even a first string let alone a second or third string. That's what I'm talking about and if we're concerned about generations of leaders coming up we should concern ourselves with getting those university kids involved even as young as high schoolers I mean at St. Louis they actually have a class where they have to participate in a political campaign as part of their class. Interesting. And certain candidates this past election took advantage of that. I walked the streets with these young kids and I asked them why are you doing this oh for our civics class we have to do it I said what do you think they said what's our first time people yelled at us some people you know accused us of things and these kids are having their very first experience in politics but was our party ready to go and help these kids learn get them involved tell them that after this campaign there's more that you can do to help. No it's it's there's a lot to be done yeah and you're gonna have your hands full it's good that you have a good solid team backing you up oh they're awesome I can't wait to um we're gonna have a press conference next week and I'll be unveiling and introducing these people to the rest of the party and anybody interested anybody interested because we want everyone to join that's you you can come out and sign up as well because we do want to start this on a high good energy good people anybody that's interested in a good cause hit me up I'm interested in getting you involved all right now you've we've got a convention coming up on kawaii right yes and when is that so it's on May 13th it's going to be at the aqua resort so at a hotel in kawaii if you want to be a delegate and you actually want to engage as a voter for the state at the convention yes so if you want to vote in the party leadership then you can get a hold of the executive director and call towards the headquarters and they'll get you I guess acquainted with your district chair they'll appoint you as a delegate and then you have a convention registration fee and then of course booking your ticket to kawaii right and kawaii is beautiful place it is maybe make a weekend out of it yeah it would be good and you know I think it's an appointed position so you don't really have to run for any or get elected I mean to be a delegate is appointed by your district chair and so you just have to essentially just let it be known that you are Republican and you want to go to the convention and be a delegate and then I think the cost is like $30 or something the registration fee at this point is 75 for the convention but all you have to do is be a registered voter and then a registered Republican party member and I think it was the republic no actually to become a Republican party member is free yes doesn't cost anything I'm pretty sure that you signed up online well yeah yeah and so there's no cost for that and then you get elected and then you go to the delegate and you get to participate and for people who have never been to one of these it's an interesting process and I'm there's no doubt in my mind there's going to be some drama well I think whenever you have a passionate group of people you're going to have a lot of emotions in the room I'm totally familiar with that being from Y and I and representing that district the great part about it though is that as a voice teacher I love hearing different voices even if they're dissenting even if they're yelling a lot of these voices that come out especially if they're coming for the first time you know really embracing them and letting them know that it's okay to have you know a opinion but to the end that we have to come to a goal we have to figure out where all these voices go well and that's part of what I think somebody needs to do like you is to try okay have all that discussion get it all out hear all the different sides but somehow we have to come together and become unified and then we speak with one voice that will be powerful right and I think you know in choir we always have to go through warm-ups you pick your voice parts you work on you know harmonization so it'll take a little bit of time to get these voices to melt together but if our goal is to create a better Hawaii and to elect Republicans to office then we should remember what our goal is and I've even heard as strange of me sound that there are some Democrats that would like to have a better balance you know we need somebody in the Senate to have a voice you know that can be heard it doesn't look good to have a monopoly in any parliamentary procedure I mean you need to have a little bit of a balance in there and there's even Democrats that are suggesting that that would be better oh I think there's people all over the board you don't have to be a Republican to believe in this cause there are people who don't affiliate with any party and they say I would like to see anybody that walks the walk and talks the talk good point there's a lot of independence out there yeah and they're looking for leadership they're looking for someone that steps up and says this is the plan and then do it under we've come to the end of the show as always you're a passionate very engaged guest you know and it's great to hear you I wish you all the best unfortunately I'm not going to be able to make it to the convention because I'm going to be traveling on the mainland but I'm trying to give my proxy to as many people as I can thank you very much I appreciate your help this is business in Hawaii with Reg Baker a special edition we're going to be back on our regular broadcast time on Thursday from 2 to 2.30 and I hope to see you then bye