 Aloha and welcome to Talk Story with John Wahid. Today we have a very special guest, the Dean of Hawaiian Politics, the person who has served us well in the Hawaii State Senate for over 20 years. I have with me Senator Sam Sloan, welcome. Thank you Governor, pleasure to be with you again. You know, it's amazing because most people may not know this, but for a period of time out of that 20 years you actually were the only Republican Senator in the Hawaii State Legislative. For five years, that's right. I had my research staff look at it. It was the only time in the previous 40 years where there was only one member of either the Republican or Democrat Party in any state legislature. Do you mean anywhere in the country? Anywhere in the country. It had been 40 years previously it was the state of Oregon. And now that I'm not in the state senate and we are the only state in the union now that has all Democrats in the state senate, again, we're the only state senate. Well, there must be something about Hawaii, you know. Look, you know, we love monopolies in the state, right? It looks like it does, doesn't it? And, you know, I mean, if we look at our history, the Republicans control the territory of Hawaii not with the same numbers, but I mean, they had large numbers. And since 1962 now, the Democrats have controlled every aspect of the state here. Yeah, so what do we do every 50 years? I guess so, but the problem is we still can't air-condition the schools, fix the roads or do the things. Now, some people might say, wow, it was because I was there and it was 24 to 1. I laid across the railroad track, but I don't think so. I want to tell you, that's why I wanted you here, because you've been a crusader in Hawaiian politics. Well, I tried. And as a matter of fact, but before you were elected to the state legislature, I knew you as an economist. Yes, correct. An economist for the Bank of Hawaii. Right, that's right. And actually, you were responsible, in a sense, for producing or predicting what the state budget would be like. Yeah, and you know, we were different from our guys across the street at First Hawaiian Bank, who of course were very active in the Democrat Party. And we tried to look at things differently, which we did. And I was very proud of the work that we did. I also taught at Hawaii Pacific University, part-time University of Hawaii, and also James at the Japanese Institute. What I liked about the Bank of Hawaii and your particular point of view on the economy was precisely that. The Bank, First Hawaiian Bank, and this is not meant as a criticism, was First Hawaiian Bank tended to give the opinion of large business. It's true. And you always seemed to have a burden for small business. We were very independent. I'll tell you how independent we were. We had departments in the bank that got mad at us, and we'd go to management meetings and they'd complain because we weren't pushing the things that the bank was pushing. And we would tell people, this is not the time to go into debt. This is the time to look at your assets, husband your resources, and be economically wise and all that. They didn't like that too kindly. But we were also the guys that back in the mid-70s, we had this young fellow come to the bank and he sought the largest loan in Hawaii's history up to that time. I don't think you've ever heard of him. His name was Christopher Hemieter. Oh, yes. And he sought a loan of $100 million to build the Hyatt Regency Waikiki. So the rest of the bank is saying, wait, we're in a recession, 75, 76. And that's a lot of money, and why would we do it and all that? Our department said, make the loan. Do the deal. And they said, how stupid can you be? And I said, look, we're in a recession now, which means several things. Labor costs will be down, materials costs will be down, it'll be very competitive. And when he gets it built, and his whole scenario is build the one tower and then build the other tower. When he gets it built, we'll be out of the recession. He'll make money, the bank will make money. We made the loan. What a great, great advice that was. But we weren't getting that support from the other department. Well, I have to tell you that. I thought it was funny, but I'm trying to remember which, maybe it was Frank Menott. Who was the president when you were still there? Well, Frank Menott had taken over from Willie Cannon. Willie Cannon was there. Wilson P. Cannon, one of my heroes. One of the great business leaders, not only of this state, but also of the United States. I'm really disappointed nobody's written a book about it. Well, Willie Cannon was a great, one of the great leaders. He was a killer from Maui. And he rose to be the head of the largest bank. You had these two banks, and it was really, you had Willie Cannon on one side and Johnny Ballinger on the other, and these were self-made people. And they were very competitive, and it really, I think it was Frank Menott that I complained about you. I said, why, why Mr. Frank? Because he came up to, I'm almost certain it was him or how expensive it was, but one of them. And it was, I said, you know, the bank's taking a position, I don't even remember what it was. And your economist is writing in your newsletter since it's completely different. And this was called to my attention by DBED. That's my introduction to you. And I got to say this about Willie Cannon, because he was the greatest. When he said he had an open door policy, he did. You'd have to stand in line to complain about me and what we took, because it wasn't the Democrat position, right? I had union guys that told Willie, you know, fire him, because, you know, he's doing this, doing that. And he said his simple answer, and he was related to everybody. He was related to union guys, he was related to Lex Brody, everybody. The guy was personable, but he knew, listen, he used to walk down into the mailroom, he knew the mailroom kids, into the stockroom boys, because if you wanted to know something in the bank, you could wait three days or you'd get the news early from the stockroom girls and boys and the mailroom. They knew about it. Well, I tell you what, he knew everybody by name. My experience with him, it's a lot of tracks that, because, you know, obviously Johnny Ballinger was much better known in terms of politics and government. And here I am at the state con con, you know, 1978 Constitutional Convention. Hey, I was there, I was watching you with your famous, you know, signal, yeah, I watched you, right? Yeah. But I was there and I knew, I knew actually Johnny Ballinger, mainly because, you know, we started off the con con by opposing Bill Patey. Right. And Ballinger, that huge Ballinger's guy and all of this stuff. And so, but, you know, in the middle of the, we got past all that, in the middle of the con con, I get a call from somebody named Willie Cannon. You didn't know who it was. I didn't know who he was and he invited me to lunch and I thought, what in the world who is, and we sat down there and we talked about, it didn't, nothing really about any of the bank business. We talked about Hawaii, we talked about that and I didn't realize until later I was getting checked out because I was wondering, why am I here, you know, so I do appreciate. Now, you came to terms with all of this and you decided to go and make policy yourself, right? So you ran for the service. Well, it's really funny, you know, for 25 years people were trying to get me to run for office and I said, no, no, not me, not ever. When you're young and dumb, you say not ever, right? When you get older, you say, okay, I'll listen to it, I'll sit down with you and talk with you. Finally, in 1996, things were so bad. We had people going to jail, we had a lot of corruption and all that. I said, I'll run. So the, you know, the pundits would always tell you, well, okay, now start off with the city council and then run for the house and then run for, I said, no, I'm going to run for the Senate. I ran against Donna Akeda, former Republican, turned Democrat, who was the head of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, the single most powerful committee. And everybody said, well, you don't have a chance and all that. She raised and spent over $300,000. I was embarrassed to say we raised about $35,000 and spent $28,000. See, it's just like you, and I got a little typed on the Internet. Oh, yeah, always. I'm part Chinese, you know what I mean? Poland's Chinese. Well, what a company. But I was, I enjoyed it, but I never thought I would stay that long. I never... Well, you know, if you listen to you, you don't advocate staying long. No. Well, I've always been for term limits and still an initiative, referendum, recall. And John, I'm a lousy politician, which shows, that's why I got bounced. I don't know. You got elected for 20 years. Well, hopefully I was a good senator, but I was a lousy politician because we didn't take names, we didn't have a database. My little business card, not paid for a taxpayer expense, said state senator. So I took that to me. Somebody calls me from Ca'ou. You take a call? Yeah, and we visit them. We had a lot of strong neighbor island support because they would say, well, my own representative, we can't get to see him or her, and they don't return our calls and all that. And in business, which I still was in and still am in now, you learn you better return those calls and you better talk to people. Right. In fact, by the way, young politicians ought to take this advice. Yeah, they don't do that. They're good at campaigning. You know, take the phone calls because that's where you develop. I want to ask you, for five years at least, you were, well, for time before that as well, you were the Republican leader in the Senate. I actually used to look forward to your speeches on opening day because, you know, I don't know if people know this, but on opening day, the majority gives a speech, the speaker or the, I mean, the president gives a speech, and then you get a chance as the minority leader to say something. And you would always be extremely provocative, you know, and I was just, what, what was it like to be so, so much in the minority? I mean, even when you had a Lodge group with you, Lodge, you only had five people. Five people. And then it was like five years. But look, see, John, that's a mindset. I never looked at me as a minority. I looked at me as representing the 48% of the people that didn't get their candidate or get their philosophy espoused. So I knew what I was down there for. I knew I had a duty to do that. On the other hand, I didn't lose any of my principles. I never backed away from anything, but I wanted to prove you can disagree without being disagreeable. Well, you could be civil and conductive. Yeah. I did a radio program, and my good personal friend was Colleen Hanabusa. And we did a program for five years that was the talk of the town because we talked story for a couple of minutes, and then we get into it and really pound each other, you know, on the issues. And then at the end, I get beer, I went to our wedding and all that stuff. And that was what we were. We were both very cognizant of trying to show that something that's missing, missing absolutely more so than ever before nationally and locally. I enjoyed my tenure in the Senate. That's why I stayed. My colleagues were good to me. I went through seven different Senate presidents. They were all good to me. Well, they all wanted to be muscled. They wanted bipartisan support. They did. They had to come and get you. Yeah. And I was on every single committee, every standing committee and ad hoc committee and investigating committee, and as I was telling you, I'd be sitting in one committee and somebody would come to me and say, Senator Solm, Senator Solm, we need you for a quorum next door. And I'd say, wait, there's 24-1, 24-1. But I tried to be agreeable. I think. You always were. I mean, you had a reputation as being a gentleman in the state Senate. Well, on the other side, you gained a reputation. Well, they also got reputation for being strident when you believe in it. Sometimes? Absolutely, yeah. And I'm saying, you know, a lot of people think and a lot of Republicans today, well, we're just more like the Democrats. And we sound like them and look like them. No, nobody respects you. It's like in the jungle. They don't respect you. You've got to have strength of principle. You have to stand up for it, and you have to have good arguments. I tried two things. I never played gotcha. If my research staff, which was the best in the Capitol, if they found something, I'd go to Senate President, I'd go to the Senate Majority Leader, tell them. And the second thing was, if I could work with them, make a better bill, we did it. Well, I tell you what, we're going to take a short break now, which is something that I'm required to do. Not a commercial break. No, no, no. Thank God. A short one. Hey. And we're going to come back, and we're going to talk about... Can I stay here with you? Well, I want to know what you think. Let's get on some of the issues. Okay, you got it. And also, think about, you know, what can be done to increase the Republican... Got it. ... presence in the legislature? Well, I can't wait. So, here we go. We'll be returning shortly to Talk Story with John Whitehead. Hi, I'm Marianne Sasaki, and I'm here today to tell you about the Women's March on Washington on January 21st. It's an incredibly significant march in which both men and women are going to stand up for women's rights, women's reproductive rights, and all the rights we've accrued over the past 40 or 50 years. There's also going to be marches in each city, on each island. There's one in Oahu. I urge you to join a march and stand up for women's rights. Okay. I'm here with Brent Overgaard of the Faculty of the School of Journalism and the Department of Communications at UH Minoa. We've had a number of shows. We have a movable feast going on. And we talk about journals, and we talk about language. We talk about communication in general. And we talk about the effect of that on the country and on individual people. Brent, it's so good to be able to discuss this with you in our movable feast. Oh, it's my pleasure. This is a great opportunity. You'll have to come back again and again. Okay, Deal? That's a deal. Brent Overgaard. I'm Jay Fidel. We care about everything. Thanks. Welcome back to Talk Story with John Whitehead. Today we have as our special guest Senator Sloan, who is the dean of Hawaiian politics for 20 years. And we have an opportunity to talk to him and get his opinion out, which he doesn't hesitate to give, folks. This is a senator that won't hesitate to tell you what to think. You know, people used to criticize me, among other things. Oh, you're always on the media. You're always on television. The only reason was, first of all, our door was the only one on the second floor that never closed. Everybody was welcome. And you didn't hesitate to take the position? And I didn't hesitate. So somebody would call. They'd call one of the Democratic leaders, and they'd say, oh, no comment or not now or something. They'd come to me. There were a couple of times when I said, no, I really don't know anything about that. Oh. But very few times. You usually had an opinion. You know, I had this communications director, great guy, Charles Chuck Friedman. Yes, I remember Chuck. And he used to explain his job to me. See, when I was lieutenant governor, his job was to try and get me an interview, which was difficult. And when I was governor, his job was to make sure nobody talked to me. Well, you were the type of person that, if I was going to be, if I was a reporter, I would go to. I would go to. Tell me, we ended talking about Republicans and Democrats. What, from your point of view, what can be done to increase Republican, but, uh, presence? Republicans. Republicans. Because I happen to really believe that a good Democratic party results from a strong opposition. Many of my Democratic colleagues believe that also. And it's true. What we have now is, it just lends itself to factions. Well, the short answer is Republicans here have to stand for something, and they have to be very consistent. They haven't stood for too much publicly, and they haven't been consistent. Look, you've got in the House, House Republicans who tell, first of all, they help put in Josuke, put him back as speaker. Right. And then they said, and we're not going to criticize you, Mr. Speaker, and we're not going to do this and we're not going to do that. Then why do you have a party? The other thing is, when, uh, during 2016, when you had 17 Republicans running for president, you had outspoken comments from leaders of our Hawaii Republican Party condemning Donald Trump. And now they're trying to make like, oh yeah, Trump's our guy and all that. You can't do that. And then you had the heads of the party. You had former Governor Lingle, who declared herself a bipartisan, not a Republican. You had Duke Iona when he ran for it. Yeah, she was there for eight years. That's great. And could have built up the party. Could have used patronage. Didn't do either. In fact, deconstructed the party. You had Duke Iona, wonderful guy. But he ran the last time as a grandfather, not as a Republican. I wouldn't have known he was a Republican had it not been for the radical Emily's List that said, that right-wing extremist who's going to take away rights from women and children and all that stuff, he's a Republican. Charles is you, my personal friend. He ran as a centrist. If you've got leaders of a party running away from the brand, why would you have been there? Why have a brand? Right. Well, let me ask you a question. But I am a Republican. I always have been. We'll die as one. And so was my mom. You know, I didn't actually know that. Here I am. I'm an elected governor, right? So was Martin Luther King. So was Prince Jonah Kohio Kalanianio, a Republican. But Jonah's brother. Jonah's brother, David Kwanakor, started the Democratic Party. You had these two brothers. Everybody has a brother. Makes a mistake. Black sheep. But like my mom, she got interviewed by the newspaper. I think it was the advertiser. And she told him, they asked her, you know, what are you, nobody ever did that. She says, well, don't tell my son. I'm a Republican. So they published it. Yeah. But I wanted to ask you, okay. So talk about standing for the brand. All right. One of the things that you are well known for is your opposition to mass transit. At least the current one. This program. Not mass transit. I'm all for mass transit. If it's done right. You mentioned I was previously an economist. I'm still an economist. From day one, the business plan for the Honolulu Rail never made sense. Never added up. And those of us that were on that bipartisan plaintiff's team, including former governor. Right. Right. And Judge Heen and all that. We said that. We said it. The numbers don't work. Let me ask you a question. Way back, well, you weren't in the legislature then when I proposed the rapid. No. No. Okay. Because I was going to ask you how you'd voted on that. Yeah. But what's interesting. But I voted no every time on the rail transit, on the extension of the GET, just like on Obamacare and Health Connect. I've been very consistent. Voted no on every tax increase. Voted no on the creation of every special fund. And now during the past week, right before the legislature starts, you notice that they were giving the University of Hawaii a hard time on the misuse of special funds and all those millions of dollars that are languishing there. Special funds. They're not so special. They're not so special. They're weeds. They're pockets. That's right. They keep money. And then when the level gets up, the legislature simply arranges it anyway. Yeah. But getting back to transit. Okay. So did you now run for mayor? Yeah. Charles. Yes. I think he's a very smart guy. He is. And he's a nice guy. And a nice guy. And I've been on shows with him. But he comes out and his position has actually changed because now he's saying, you elect me, I can complete it in the best way. At first he was saying he was opposed to the rail. Right. Then he said, then he got, he had that press conference with the five unions. Yeah. Remember that? Yeah. And then right after that, the unions were doing the commercials and then he said, we're going to complete it. And I told my friends and I told him, Charles, So that's what you're talking about. Yeah. That's what you're talking about. But you can't, you can't do that. No. Because, you know, you had no position in opposition to the rail, which is the biggest disaster we've ever had. I mean, now we're up to, you know, $10 billion, $11 billion. What is the end game other than to raise our property taxes, which Caldwell will do, make the GET surcharge permanent, probably raise that. But you know, it's still not going to work. Still won't work. Let me ask you a question about the GET surcharge. Sure. Don't you think that even if we didn't have the rail and even if we had funded it to, like it should have been funded and it was going to be, that there's a tendency, there's going to be a tendency for people and powerful politicians to not ever release a tax that they may have had. Absolutely. We're in agreement on that. Yeah. Because I can't, you know, frankly, personally, I don't think they're going to reduce their tax. Look, and we go, no, they're not going to raise it if anything else. And we go back to 2005 when Linda Lingle, Linda Lingle allowed this project to go forward. She had told many of us she was going to veto it. She was going to stop it. All she did was let it go through without her signature. But at that time when we first started having hearings and Dan and Oye was at the hearings and Neil Abacramby was at the hearings and I asked them several questions, including, wait a minute, tax department says they're going to take 10% off the top of the collection. Why? It's ridiculous. Yeah, of course it was. I said, show me that it costs 10% to collect the taxes. It's a good thing I wasn't wrong because I make sure that Hawaiians get 20. Yeah, there you go. There you go. There you go. There's this tendency to actually do that, to actually set up special taxes with special projects which is something that's been done in government for many years, but then to rate it. Yeah. And I think I'm in favor of rapid transit. Obviously, you know this. But I'm not in favor of the state taking 10% of any tax that's being made as a clear. Show me a good plan for rapid transit, which should not be steel on steel, elevated rail and all that, right? We probably would agree on this. I mean, I have no problem with something like Portland where, geez, it made so much sense. I've written it a couple of times. They stop guys with bicycles get on. They hang the bicycle up on the horizontal rack. You go on and all that. You don't disrupt traffic. You don't disrupt everything. You don't do anything like that. And look now, I was at the stadium a couple of weeks ago for the Hawaii Bowl. And you know, you got the thing coming right through there. It's so ugly. It just spoils the environment and all that stuff. I couldn't argue with Ben on these things, because he used to try. All right. We're going to move on to another controversy. Right now, one of the issues going on at the state legislature is this idea about whether the white tourism authority should release the information. Yes. What's your feeling about it? Easy. The answer is yes. Just like I said before at hearings where you had the elections commission, they went behind closed doors, UH border regions behind closed doors. There's too much of this. You know that we're probably better off with more transparency now than 20 years ago. Well, you know I wrote the law. I know you did. I mean, I'm all for transparency. That's what it should be. But it's not there. And this idea, you know, I can understand if you've got a personnel matter or a legal matter. Okay. You go behind closed doors. Right. But this idea of saying that we don't want the competition to see, I mean, I think that is so bogus. It's lame. It's lame. Yeah. So we're in agreement again. It's scary for you, isn't it? It is spooky. Oh, boy. But I'm going to declare right now I voted Democrat in the presidential election. Oh, good. I'm so happy for you. I voted Republican. I was the honorary Hawaii chairman for Dr. Ben Carson. And he dropped out and I went to Ted Cruz. He's a really interesting guy, by the way. Have you actually met him? No, I didn't. We held rallies for him, though, here in Fundraisers and all that. But I said from the beginning, as the 17 Republicans did, will you support the nominee? And I said, yeah, I will. And Donald Trump, you know, no matter what you think of him, people think he's stupid or they think he's smart as a fox. Well, he is a fox. Well, he is a fox. That's fine. And he's going to make changes. He's not a conservative. I don't know what he's going to do, but I do know that all the power brokers, Democrats, Republicans, the athletes, the artists... Well, what's amazing... They're scared to death. They're going to lose their privilege position. You know, what's amazing is how much the establishment in his own party... Yeah. ...don't... Well, the establishment. See that? The establishment, period. It's like here in Hawaii. We've got establishment Republicans who would rather keep the positions they've held for 20, 30, 40 years than go against the Democrats. Go against trying to win elections. And we've had good candidates. You know we've had good candidates. Yes, you're right. And they've campaigned hard and all that, but it's a lot easier to be a Democrat here. But when money starts running out, as it will, and the state doesn't have money to give to various groups and all that, then we're going to see change. Well, okay, real quickly. And as you know, I like change. What do you see as the biggest issue in the future? Real, just anything, just name. Well, homelessness is going to continue. It costs money. Unless we do something. Yeah, yeah. And this train. This train has got to be stopped. It's got to be stopped, and it can be stopped. My dad always taught me, you don't throw good money after bad. At some point, you say, enough is enough already. Why don't we privatize the train? Why don't they privatize it? Because nobody in the private sector would take this project. What if they would? Fine. I have no problem with that. Okay. Well, ladies and gentlemen, you know, it's been a... What? Don't we have two hours? John, you promised me two hours. No, no, but I have... I would just say this. When I first went into office, and people would call and say, well, how do we address Senator Sloan? You know, is it the honorable? Right, right. I said then, I came in as honorable, and I'm going out as honorable. Well, you were. I enjoyed it. I'm not done yet. I'm not... I didn't retire, John. Maybe you and I can do something. Maybe. Maybe. Oh, yes.