 Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us. This is Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers Policest in Hawaii series. I'm your host, Carl Kimpanya. Today is April 26th. We are somewhere around the 100th day of Donald Trump's presidency for whatever that is. It's been fascinating, really going back more months than just, you know, the 100 days or three months or so that it's been. Going back to election day and what started on election day with Women's March and with all of the resistance groups, from Women's March to J-20 to People Power. On Hawaii here, we have Windward Resistance. There are so many groups that have gotten together or that have organized themselves in opposition to Donald Trump and all of his, I guess, intentions, at the very least. Part of that, though, is also what our party structure is. And, yeah, a little bit about what happened last year between Democrat Party and Republican Party and all that. Yeah, we have a problem as far as the Democratic Party was concerned. But that's kind of how things go. There are cycles of things. And whatever the perfect storm was that created Donald Trump as president, that happened. And now there's a lot of things going on, including investigations, FBI investigations into everything that may have happened and what transpired and connections to Russia and so forth. So, okay, there's a lot going on there. But what everything comes down to in the end is how we organize, how we come together, and why we come together. Each set of ideals gets identified and grouped. And sometimes you've got various aspects of what you agree on and you decide, okay, you know, what most of what I agree with belongs with the Democratic Party. Or most of what I agree with belongs with the or agrees with the Republican Party. And therefore, you will choose a side in our two-party system primarily that we have. And let's remember, we actually have more than two parties out there. We just really only ever mostly get Democrats or Republicans elected. It becomes a stronger base that way. But as a result of that, we have a wide range of ideas within the Democratic Party. And this is nationally and even more especially so locally. Here in Hawaii, there's the Big Tent Theory that we currently have. And there's an article in midweek, actually today, by former Governor Ben Cayetano talking about that and whether that's a good idea or whether we should change that. I think that would be an interesting read. So I would recommend that. But that's how we get here. Now in Hawaii, most of our legislators are Democrats or have become Democrats. And some of them were Republicans before and have become Democrats. We have one of those cases coming up soon. We had all likelihood with Representative Beth Bukamoto, who was a Republican. She's become an independent because of her opposition to Donald Trump because he's been recognized as an international misogynist at the moment. So she came in opposition to that. So her party, her Republican Party, beat her up for that. And it was awful. It was wrong. I don't agree with what they did and how they did it. It's not my party, but I still don't agree with how they did that. They basically excommunicated her and made her feel not welcome. So she left the party. And she's now currently an independent. It is widely known and expected that she's going to request to become a member of the Democratic Party. Okay, there's a process for that. And it'll be interesting how that comes together. Historically, the Democratic Party has pretty much allowed everybody in that wanted to be in. That's the Big Tent idea. So we've got our values and our principles that are out there in our platform and in our resolutions and things that we do that define who we are as Democrats. And what the process includes, as far as representative Fukumoto coming over and becoming a Democrat, the process includes her having to request it officially and then go through a questioning process and she has to sign off on our platform and agree to support the platform. That will most likely happen and it will be administered through the Oahu County Committee. This is all a transition to what we're going to discuss for the rest of this show, which is the Oahu County Committee. Just this last weekend on April 22nd held its annual convention. So it was the Democratic Party of Hawaii, Oahu County Committee Convention. That convention, it was organized. We do it every year, as mentioned. It was organized about two and a half months ago. We created the rules or the executive committee and the convention committee got together and they created the standing rules for what was going to happen, how it was going to happen, and how things were going to operate, what was going to be included, how it was going to be included, what the agenda was going to be, who the speakers were going to be, and how it was going to come together. So we're going to do, for the rest of the show, like I said, we're going to do a bit of a recap of that convention and some of the process and really what happens in that. So first of all, in order to participate in the Oahu County Convention, it's the Democratic Party of Hawaii, Oahu County Committee Convention. In order to participate, you have to first be a Democrat. So you have to be a registered Democrat, which means you have to fill out the paperwork. You can do it online or you can get the piece of paper and you submit it to the headquarters and they say, okay great, thank you, you're welcome, you're now a Democrat. And then in order to then take the next step to be a member or to participate in this convention, you then have to become a delegate. To become a delegate, there are several ways that you can do that. To become a delegate, you can either be a current or former elected official. So whether it is a governor, former governor, current sitting legislators and some past legislators, the current chair of the party and past chairs of the party and of the county and so forth, the most recent past chair. They get to be delegates. In addition to that, you've got the rest of the party structure, which includes the executive committee from the committee level. Anyway, the executive committee at the county level, you've got the region chairs. Region chairs actually are not delegates automatically. Then you have your district chairs and the district chairs are all of the house districts. So we've got on this island, we've got our house districts throughout the entire island with all of our legislators, house of representatives, all of the district. So each of those districts has a counterpart within the Democratic Party and representation within there. So you have a district chair that runs and organizes that district. Inside of that district, you've got precincts where you've got precinct presidents and vice presidents and so forth. And that is the basic structure. There's a bit more to it. That's the basic structure of what a district looks like within the precincts. All of those people that become elected, elected by the people who show up to these meetings and show up to these conventions and so forth, get to be delegates except for the region chairs. Region chairs can become a delegate through other means. So once you've gone through that process, each district gets 24 delegates. So across the entire island, each district gets 24 delegates. From there, you get all of your precinct presidents, your district chairs and so forth. And then you get at large. So once you get past the elected seats within the party, there's at large. And depending upon the number of precincts that you have, the number of people that you have in those precincts is how many, once you get to 24, in order to get to 24, it's how many at large you may have. So the goal is 24 per district. So there, you've done it. You've become a delegate, which means you also have to register for, sign up for and pay for the convention as well. Great. You've done all that. You've paid the money this year. It was $40 in advance or $50 a day of. So now you're a delegate. You get to show up. There's two things you get to show up for. You get to show up for the convention committee meetings, which is where we go through all of our different committees, from rules committee to platform committee to resolution committee to affirmative action committee and go through and there are meetings to discuss what is to be, what the agenda is for each of those or if there are rule changes or if there are platform changes or what resolutions we want to bring as a party. And all of those get discussed. At that meeting, well, that meeting took place this year, not this last Saturday, but the Saturday before. We all got together at Farrington High School and we all had our meetings. I had the fortune of being the co-chair of the rules committee. So we went through and we sat down. We had about 30 people and we all discussed the platform. In advance to that, people came up with ideas and suggested changes or additions to our rules. So using, and this is another important thing, all of these meetings and all of these processes, when we are having our meetings and conventions, utilize Robert's rules of order and how we proceed and how we administer and operate. So we had our convention meetings. Through the process, we had in our rules committee meeting, we had five or six different rule changes or rule additions. And this includes, so you have to take a look at our bylaws. You can go to the website and take a look and pull up the bylaws and say, okay, here are the bylaws. The bylaws are the rules, how we operate, how we really do the business of the party. And that includes things such as, to some extent, behavior and comportment to some extent. I wanted to make sure that we are acting with Aloha. In other ways, it's saying, well, okay, this is who can run for this chair position or who can run for those positions or what the requirements are in order to be able to run for an elected office within the party and so forth. So a lot of the rules about how we are who we are and who is eligible and so forth. So one of the rules that was posed to change started off with saying, well, you know, we should require and many of you may remember from last year there was much to do, perhaps about nothing in the end about a certain member of the party who on the national stage did something that was inappropriate and was not by many people's opinions, representing Hawaii and the Aloha Spearing at the national stage at the convention. And as a result of that, a lot of people wanted there to be a code of conduct and then want us to include some form of code of conduct. So that was discussed. We got to discuss that. We got to debate that. There was a sentence or two. There was some language that was posed in order to cover that. What can we do? What can we do to make sure that we understand that as representing the party from Hawaii, we expect you to behave in a certain way. So that was part of the discussion. We went back and forth in different diverse different ways. And in the end, as the co-chair, myself and Limo Mekan got to be co-chairs, we oversaw the conversation and made sure that we had a good discussion about it. And then everybody voted on it. That particular language did not pass. People didn't like the idea of having to put these rules in. Because what does that mean? What does it mean if we start to put these rules in? How do we begin to interpret behavior? Was this good behavior or bad behavior? And does that mean that you get kicked out of the party? And so there are concerns. Okay, that was the debate. It was interesting. That was one of them. Another one that I thought was very interesting was brought up. This one was specifically with regards to a member of the party and their eligibility to run for county chair. The rule change that was being proposed was to say that no member or any member that is running for county chair should not be allowed to be or become a paid registered lobbyist while running for or becoming county chair. Only that rule. So in some ways that can kind of make some sense. Well, okay, well, we don't want a paid registered lobbyist to be in a position of power within a party because credibility concerns and so forth. Okay, well, again, that opened up a huge, huge debate that lasted a lot longer than every other debate at that meeting and then also at the convention this last Saturday. And that that we changed the language, there were suggestions of well, what if we add, you know, disclosing that you're this or what if we you know, change it completely or some people just were completely against it because well, there are many entities that are many registered lobbyists who are 100% in agreement with what our party platform is. So we don't want to exclude them. So okay, it became a question of inclusion and exclusion to a certain extent. But remember, this is just for the chair. So a leadership role, one of the primary leadership roles within the county. So it was very fascinating was interesting how that whole debate came through we did come up with some final language that was agreed upon so that we can move it forward to the convention for next week. So that one, it passed with some language out of our committee. So we're gonna take a quick break right now and we're gonna go back and we're gonna talk about what happened then and a bit about more about what the convention is. So thank you for joining us. This is think tech wise movers shakers and reformers politics and Hawaii series. I'm your host, Carl Kompanya. See you in one minute. Hawaii is my mainland here on think tech Hawaii every Friday at 3pm. We address issues and importance for those of us who live here on the most isolated land mass on the planet. Please come join me Fridays at 3pm. Mahalo. Hi, I'm Nicole Alexander Enos, 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 2pm for the month of April, where we'll go over some of the reasons why millennials are some of the most anxious and frustrated people at the moment. Welcome back to think tech Hawaii is movers, shakers and reformers politics and Hawaii series. I'm your host, Carl Kompanya. Thank you for joining us again today. So okay, I go back to what we were just discussing. We had this big proposed rule change that passed out of our committee, our rules committee, and it was a rule change saying that we should not allow a person, a member of the party who is going to run for county chair to be or to become a paid registered lobbyist. It passed after much discussion, much debate and much disagreement about a lot of different pieces of it. It passed, which means it got to be posed with the rest of the report from that committee at the convention, the county convention the following week. So okay, just to recap that what we've got is once you become a delegate, you decide if you want to participate and I recommend everybody do if you're a delegate to participate in one of the convention committee's rules platform. There's credentials committee. There's there's resolutions committee. And this is all this is like the business and the guts and the core and defining the values and principles and how we operate as a party. So that's why it's important to participate in that. So that we had those meetings. And so this one rule about being a registered lobbyist was in our report. So then we get to the convention. So everybody who registered and signed up and more people registered and signed up between last Saturday and the Saturday before this last Saturday. So a whole bunch of people showed up in the end. We had about 300. I think the number was 338 total people showed up to the convention. Not all of them were voting members. Some of them were observers. But in the end, 338 people there. So take a quick step back and say we have a total of about 26,000 registered Democrats on a Wahoo. 26,000 of the 26,000 registered Democrats on a Wahoo. 338 showed up to the convention. Well, there's a limited number of people can show up because of the 24 per district as I mentioned. So okay, we didn't hit that full capacity but became close. So okay, we have the convention now. So everybody shows up begins to show up. The convention was at the aloha stadium in the hospitality room. And it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of activity. A lot of people walking around talking a lot of things. A lot of issues being debated. And then, you know, factions coming together and discussing this, that or the other. Because I knew some, you know, all these people knew what was coming. Because all of our changes got posted. So people could see, oh, okay, that's what we're going to talk about. So the whole process begins with the registration. Everybody shows up. They get registered. Some people had to pay day of some people had already paid. Everybody gets a little voting card. It was an orange little voting card. Put your name on it. And then you go find a seat. And people tend to sit and congregate with their district that they live in. So you end up with people that you go to, you know, your district meetings and precinct meetings with or region meetings for you. So you end up getting together with the people that you're used to working with. And then it begins. The meeting is kicked off and we start going through the credentials report. This is how many people showed up at 7 o'clock or at 8 o'clock when we gave this report. Okay, good. We have this many people to begin with. And then we start going through the business, which includes our committee reports. So as we go through this process, you know, each step of our agenda, we get through this and around about 9 o'clock, 9 30 or so, we got to the rules committee where we have to give our report. And our report included these five different sections. I think at the end it was four different sections to have some change or modification or addition. And it was posed we recommend from the committee that all of these be adopted. Well, out of that it was decided and this is what you can do. It was decided that one of them needed to be pulled out and discussed separately. See if you can guess which one that was. So of these, and I didn't go through all of them, but of these, most of them got voted on, one got pulled out. And then all the ones that were not pulled out were basically approved. So that passed. And then we got to talk about, and we spent an hour at this point and then another half hour at another point later discussing this one issue about the chair being a registered, a paid registered lobbyist. So again, discussion and debate going back and forth and back and forth. Who thought it was a good idea? Who thought it was a bad idea? And why? The ramifications of this are huge because for one thing from the Democratic Party perspective, unions play a big role in politics in general, let alone the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Hawaii. And rightly so. Unions are very important. They've done a lot of wonderful, great, amazing things for us. But unions technically are lobbyists. So that is therefore you can see that unions wouldn't necessarily want to be excluded from the chair role. Okay. And that was part of the debate. Other people got up and said, well you know what? Here's the problem with that is if we have someone who is a paid registered lobbyist and is in that seat, how do we know they're going to be fair? How do we know when it comes to some issues or other issues, they'll make sure that things get administered and that the process is handled fairly and evenly. And that's some of the concerns. And then other people say, well what about just the mere fact of influence? What if other groups out there say, hey you know what? There's a paid registered lobbyist who was in favor of this idea. And therefore the chair of this Democratic Party of Hawaii, Oahu County, is a paid registered lobbyist for this particular lobby firm, for this particular idea. So therefore as a result we have some sway over what policy gets passed. Those are the concerns. Those are the ramifications. So this got debated back and forth by everybody in the room. And then we hold votes. And then people have different changes. And then we hold votes. And how about this amendment? There were five or six different amendments to that language. It finally came down to the final amendment which was just say, okay we must just disclose. Let's disclose that they are a paid registered lobbyist. Or will or maybe come a paid registered lobbyist disclose that. And then therefore the body will be able to vote knowing ahead of time that that's who they are and what they are. Okay that was the final amendment. That amendment, this is extraordinary. That amendment failed by one vote. At that time the vote was 120, I believe it was 129 to 128. And that amendment failed. It was one vote. And that person who did that vote knows who that was. One vote made that amendment fail. So then there were no other amendments offered. So then we had to go back and we had to vote on just the language itself saying no not disclosure just no you're not allowed. And in order for that to pass we needed a two-thirds vote. Well we didn't get the two-thirds vote on that which meant that that language did not pass. So now in our Oahu County rules we did not pass the rule that said you cannot be a paid registered lobbyist. So that implies that it's very possible that the chair or someone running for the chair could be or could become a paid registered lobbyist. So just to give you an understanding of how these things come together and the debates and what gets resolved and what happens at these conventions and why these conventions are important. That's why I wanted to introduce this and walk you through this lengthy process. So sorry about all of that. But that's kind of how it all came together and everybody voted. Now that was that. That was those rules changes. Other things happen. Other very important things happen at this particular convention and happen at every convention is there are elections. At this particular convention we elected our new county chair. Our new county vice chair. Our new treasurer. Our vice treasurer. Our secretary and our vice secretary. And those all were elected positions. So we all voted we all as a group got to vote on all of those. That also becomes very contentious in different ways because everybody has different beliefs about you know who should do this and how things should be done and who we want our leaders to be and why and how. So everybody got to give up and give a little speech or at least you know the chairs and the vice chairs got up and got to give a little speech. And the treasurers got to give up and give a little speech. Because those were the contested races. The secretary and the vice secretary were not contested. No one was running against them. So they won by what's called acclimation. So they were in. So everyone else got to get up and got to give a little speech about why they felt you should vote for them. And it was all very interesting. It was all very exciting. Everybody got up and gave a little thing. But this is what it is. And then we got to vote. And you voted by everybody taking their card. Remember the little orange card I mentioned. And you have to all walk through a single file and it comes two lines. As you get there and you hand the card in and they mark it off that you voted once and you fill the form out. It's a signed ballot. It's not a secret ballot. And then you submit it. And then once everybody has gone through the committee, the elections committee, then goes through and adds up and tallies all of the votes. And then they come out and they tell us. Now in order to win one of these seats, you have to get more than 50% of the vote. A percent isn't accurate way of using it as been thoroughly explaining me by our by Bill Pughett, Dr. Bill Pughett. Thoroughly explained by our parliamentarian. You cannot do 50% of a person. So it's not about 50% but you have to have over 50% of the total delegates in order to win outright on the first ballot. So what happened was the first ballot, it didn't happen. We didn't get 50% on the first ballot for the chair. So there had to be a second ballot for that. Then we get to the vice chair. The vice chair, vice chair won outright, had more than the other two combined that were running against the vice chair. So that person won that on the first ballot. Then we get to the treasurer. Same thing. First time through, got all the votes needed, no second ballot. So then we had to go back and everybody had to regroup and re-gather and then go re-vote again. So there were three people running for county chair. And the way that it works on the first ballot is if one of the three people does not get over 50%, then there has to be a second ballot. But the person who got the least number of votes gets excluded. So then the top two vote getters are what everybody votes for or who everybody votes for. And then everybody then goes back through. Well, not everybody stayed. Some people left after the first vote and that was that. So our actual total numbers decreased for the second ballot. But in the end, the second ballot came through and everybody voted and we ended up with our final chair. Our new current Oahu County chair is Mr. Rich Halverson. I believe he's a doctor. I'm not 100% certain of that. But Mr. Rich Halverson is a new Oahu County chair. Our new vice, our vice chair is the same vice chair that we had as Mr. Dylan Armstrong. Our new treasurer is Mr. Raphael Leonard. And then that we have the same. We had James Logue and Myra and Daniel Jacob all were in their roles. So that's the new leadership moving forward. So in future shows, and this show is going to come to an end now, so thank you so much for joining us. In future shows, I have invited Mr. Rich Halverson on the show and we're hoping to hear from him, hear what he wants to achieve as the leader of the county party and how he's going to coordinate with other groups, other entities. And we're looking forward to having that conversation. So I hope that insight into sort of the insight and kind of a recap for a Democratic Party convention, county convention. I hope it was helpful, it was informative. I hope it is something that can inspire you to be involved and engaged. Because as I like to say, your voice is our purpose and your action is our strength. So thank you for joining us. This is Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers and Reformers, Politics in Hawaii series. I'm your host, Carl Campania. See you next time.