 Politics in Hawaii, with Dennis Isaki on Think Tech Hawaii. They will be speaking with Tyler Dos Santos-Tam, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Hawaii. Tyler graduated from Ponoho, but will not hold that against him. Actually, he was a classmate on my son Ian, and he graduated in 2006, I believe, which makes him a millennial. Ian studied engineering while Tyler went to Yale University to study political science in Portuguese. Maybe he can tell us why he had to go all the way to Yale to study that. He was with the Young Democrats, Construction Alliance. The neighborhood board was recognized as one of the 40 under 40 in Hawaii in his honorary council for Portugal in Hawaii, among other things. Tyler, welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. And perhaps you can start by telling us who you are and what you stand for. Tyler? Well, thank you, Dennis, and thank you to Think Tech Hawaii for this opportunity. As you mentioned, I'm the chair of the Democratic Party of Hawaii, which is the largest political party in our state. And of course, we're here to advance policy that will help Hawaii's people. The Democratic Party, of course, has been dominant in Hawaii politics since the revolution of 1954. And we've accomplished a lot, but there's still a lot of work to do. And looking forward to 2022, under my leadership as chairman, we're trying to encourage our members to get involved, to push issues forward that will help local families, whether that's on the cost of living here on the islands, our homelessness crisis, affordable housing, and more. When and why did you decide to get into politics? Well, I've always had a passion for helping people. My dad is a doctor. And so growing up, that was his way of helping the community, one-on-one doctor to patient. In my sphere of interest, I recognize that government has a big role in our lives and has the opportunity to actually be proactive and help people. And so being involved with different political organizations, whether it's a Democratic Party of Hawaii, the young Democrats, or even as a member of the neighborhood board, I was able to plug in and see how an individual through our government system can make a difference, whether that's, as a neighborhood board member, helping when one of our neighbors got hit by a car to make sure there was a flashing light beacon and more pedestrian safety in our neighborhood to big picture issues, like helping to advance some policies and affordable housing and more, and pushing for a higher minimum wage as chair of the Democratic Party. Some of your ancestors were Sakatas, immigrant, plantation workers, and some at different trades. How do you relate to those culture and how did that affect you? Yeah, well, the story of Hawaii is really a story of immigrants, whether it was that native wines coming here two millennia ago, or my ancestors who came from the Philippines and Portugal and China to work in the plantations, or folks who came after the plantation era to seek whatever it is that they wanted to find here and make their life here in the islands. And so having that background, I think, has really informed my desire to make Hawaii a better place for everybody who's here. My ancestors, like yours and like many of the viewers, worked hard to get me to where I am, get you to where you are. And I think the best way that we can honor them is by using our skills and talents to move the state forward and to make a better place. I mean, that's why they voyaged across the sea was to make a better place for themselves and their family. And to get any pressure to be a medical doctor yourself? I think every kid, right, they see what their parents do. At some point, they want to do it. And then they realize that in some cases, maybe it's not for them. So I definitely thought about it as a kid. But just like every other kid, I think I had a whole lot of other ambitions. I think at one point, I wanted to be an astronaut. That, of course, never happened. But we'll see what the future brings. For one, you're an executive director for the Hawaii Construction Alliance with the carpenters, laborers, masons, and operating engineers. Can you tell us a little bit about that? So from 2012 to 2018, I was the executive director of the Hawaii Construction Alliance, which is the group that represents five of the basic craft unions in the islands. So we had 15,000 members statewide. And it was really an eye-opening experience for me to be their executive director and to administer the programs that the Alliance did before someone like me who went to Yale and came back home to be working with folks in the blue collar industry was really eye-opening. I mean, we see how hard people have to work to make a living here in the islands, to pay for housing, for a roof over their head, to pay for childcare for their kids or tuition. And really, it gave me really a sense that we need to be doing more for our working families. Another thing that I learned when I was at the Construction Alliance and really worked on was our apprenticeship programs. We had a lot of people coming out of high school, people who had been working in a different field and maybe wanted to pivot to the construction industry, coming into the apprenticeship program. But a lot of them weren't, didn't quite have the math skills, kind of the STEM skills that we're teaching now to get into the trades and to kind of be workforce ready. And so that's another area that I really wanna work on is making sure that our workforce is ready for the jobs for the future. And our democratic party platform has a lot about STEM, has a lot about education, but we have to put that into action and make sure that our young people, millennials, Gen Z, and the next generation after that, do possess the skills necessary, whether that's working with computers or working with their hands to make a living in Hawaii that puts them in the middle class, that lets them get a roof over their head. We have to do a lot more. And that, my experience of the construction alliance really opened my eyes to that. I think there is a really need for training in this construction industry, especially now that they're all short-handed, like many industries. But you mentioned STEM, can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah, so STEM, as you might know, science, technology, engineering, and math. I mean, this is sort of an umbrella term and some people put A in there for the arts, so STEAM, but this really an umbrella term for the kind of skills that we recognize as being necessary for the jobs of the future. Hawaii for a long time was agricultural-based and of course now we're a service industry. And as we look for what that next set of industries, what the next chapter in Hawaii's economic future is, we need our workforce to be ready for whatever that's gonna be. And with the way that the world is going, definitely heavy on computers and technology, we don't even know what the next big thing might be, but Hawaii needs to be ready for that. And so going back to the Democratic Party, we're gonna be working on our platform over the next few months. And our platform talks a lot about STEM and STEAM, but we wanna make sure that it's clear and actionable. And so that means supporting the return of things like vocational programs in schools, making sure that we do have a path from preschool to college for people to be able to gain skills throughout their young lives, so their workforce ready. And that's something that's also being talked about in Congress right now, is with the Build Back Better Plan, making sure that there's preschool access that's high quality so kids have the skills like reading and understanding numbers all the way to college so that they're really ready to enter the workforce. Yeah, the early education is really important. I understand that some people, when they go to the community college and they get to take the pre-algebra class or something and not just to get to be able to qualify to take the test. And on agriculture, you mentioned this, I noticed we have politicians talk about agriculture in a way up a lot, but I see what we had to get most, either you get the big seed companies or you got a lot of immigrants and I think they're bad, but they're doing a good job, but when they go to the farmer's market, they're almost entirely recent immigrants and they're hard workers, kind of different. Perhaps the guys over here, I don't know if teaching them science technology or everybody wants to get into computers as well. Yeah, I think there's room definitely for what we have an amazing climate, fertile soil, but at the end of the day, it comes down to whether our agricultural industry is economically viable, right? I mean, if it's too expensive to farm, if the market isn't there to buy our Hawaii agricultural products, if there's not water, if the water's too expensive, if the plant's too expensive, if labor's too expensive, if shipping the goods here or out of Hawaii is too expensive, it's gonna be a challenge. And so all of these elements that go into agriculture, just like every other issue in Hawaii, we really need to break down what all of those inputs and factors are in order to make it happen. I mean, it's not as simple as waiting a magic wand to make something like agriculture happen. It's all of these little pieces and you have to be able to thread that needle in the same way. One of the issues that I've been working on fairly diligently over the past few years is affordable housing. Again, can't wave a magic wand and make affordable housing happen. You have to look at the economics of it, right? If the material is too expensive, if you can't get it onto the job site on time, if it's held up in court, if there's not the infrastructure like sewer and water and roads around a project, it's not going to happen. And so there's a lot of work that needs to go in in all of these areas in order to make things work. And I hope that the Democratic Party of Hawaii can be a venue for exploring these ideas and pushing them forward. We've got a few months left before the legislative session and I know that there's been discussions among our different committees, whether it's the legislative committee, platform committee, or among our elected officials as well, about really looking at all of these different inputs that go into all the different issues that Hawaii faces. Yep, you mentioned housing. Housing is a biggie, you know? Government, I keep saying, government say, you know, we gotta do more and then they concentrate on certain aspects of it, but there's a lot more government gotta do or not do. We gotta take housing, you know, like sometimes they're impeding the future of housing. So it's definitely a puzzle right to fit all these pieces together and make sure it works because if you pull on one lever, you know, maybe you complicate something on another end. So it's, you know, requires really listening to experts and understanding the big picture in order to make things happen. Yeah, and we got the touchy subject, the rail. Where does the party, if you will, stand on that? Well, like a lot of issues, there are things that divide, you know, Democrats and of course rail is one of them. There's people that believe that we need it in order to create housing, especially TOD, the type of housing that's gonna be affordable in Honolulu's urban core. And of course there's Democrats that support rail because of sort of environmental reasons, getting people out of their cars, reducing our carbon footprint. There's others who are concerned about, you know, just the seemingly endless spending that's going to this project and the lack of accountability there. And we even see that among our elected officials, right? And this is an issue that divides us. And so I think people perceive the Democratic Party as sort of monolith because it is very dominant in our legislature. I mean, it's 24 to one in the state Senate, but among Democrats, and we're also a good example of this, there's a wide variety of opinions and ideas. And so, you know, the party itself is an interesting venue for a lot of those ideas to be talked about. Yeah, exactly. It's, I could say it, but it's been dividing some of the group. And in some ways, I think that's healthy, right? I mean, if we all thought in lockstep and all agreed 100% of the time politics and whole, it wouldn't be very interesting. So having a diversity of ideas, well-thought-out ideas backed by, you know, good information, I think is helpful. And we actually need more of that kind of discussion out in the community. How do you see the shipping, what do they call it? The Jones Act, it's been in discussion right now all the way up to Congress. Does the party have any thoughts on that? Yeah, well, the Democratic Party of Hawaii has been a very, very strong supporter of the Jones Act. And of course there's people who, you know, disagree and don't think that we should have the Jones Act here. But I think from the party's perspective, protecting American jobs is really important, not only the jobs at our harbors here in Hawaii, but across the country in terms of shipbuilding. And national security is really important to make sure that we have American flagged vessels going between our ports and we aren't exposed to other countries carrying our, you know, goods. It's the same way with the airline industry. You know, we have American planes, American maintenance, American pilots flying, between our different airports within the country. We don't have, you know, Ryanair from Europe or Japan Airlines or any other airlines flying between LA and New York. And it's kind of the same thing here. It's that we want to make sure that there's high quality American jobs and we're not exposed to kind of the whims of some other country when it comes to our merchant marine and our shipping. But, you know, on the other side, we argue about the cost and, you know, the time delays and there's even, you know, discussion up in Congress on this. It's- Right, right. And I think going back to kind of our previous discussion about issues that divide Democrats and the need for more venues for discussion that's backed by evidence and data, you know, I think that while the Democratic Party of course has been very supportive of the Jones Act, I think the people who, you know, want to see that modified should come with, you know, strong evidence and data around the purported cost increases. One really important thing is, you know, the Jones Act only applies between U.S. ports, right? So Hawaii to Oakland or Hawaii to Seattle or Long Beach, nothing stopping, you know, a foreign carrier from shipping straight to Honolulu from Shanghai, but we really don't see that. And again, this goes back to the economics of, you know, why would a ship veer out of its normal path from Shanghai to California to stop off in Hawaii, drop off a few containers and then continue on? It makes a lot more sense for them to carry on an enormous ship to California and then, you know, break it down there. And until those economics, you know, change, and I really don't see the sort of anti-Jones argument, anti-Jones Act argument succeeding among Democrats here. Okay, thanks. We get so much talk about the halfway through. Can we take a short break? So Hawaii, the state of clean energy on Think Tech Hawaii. Hawaii, the state of clean energy is about following the many clean energy initiatives in Hawaii. Hawaii, the state of clean energy appears weekly on Think Tech Hawaii at 4 p.m. on Wednesdays. Thank you so much for watching our show. We'll see you then. Aloha. Politics in Hawaii with Dennis Isaki and Tyler Dos Santos Tam. Tyler, you're a millennial. You see things differently or, you know, how things were done in the past, the past politics and how do you see us going in the future? Yeah, well, I'm proud to be the first millennial chair of the Democratic Party for Hawaii and the youngest chair in quite some time. And I think that's provided a really, you know, different perspective coming in. And on our executive board, for our executive officers, four out of the six of our executive officers are millennials. We're all in our early 30s. And this is unheard of in the country. I mean, I'm the youngest chair in the country and our team is a very young chair, our very young team. And I think that this is to our benefit, you know, this is a time for, you know, new ideas to come in, bringing in folks who maybe haven't been involved in politics and or haven't seen politics or government as a way of actually making a positive difference. I think when people look at our team, I hope that they see that, you know, we're open to new ideas, doing things a little bit differently. And of course, you know, there's sometimes pushback or detractors said, well, we've always, you know, done it this way. You know, why are we pivoting? And that's fine. I think that's healthy. COVID definitely has changed how we do things. And I think having a young team that's a little more tech savvy and again, willing to try new things has helped us get through COVID and then continue to do activities that the party should be doing, right? We've moved a lot of our activities to be virtual. We've done virtual talk stories, education for, you know, our members and discussions online. And I hope that that continues even after COVID and we can look at how we do things hybrid or, you know, some events in person, some online, but it's really helped us to bring the state together because people have been able to join in online on the screens in picture of one of our in-person events. We just did a beach cleanup in Cacaco thanks to our representatives in urban Honolulu. But we've also done a number of online events and those have been really, really interesting. Yeah, in the old, old way, they had the big political rallies at the park, everybody gets together or in a personal contact, like you said, and with the pandemic, it kind of changed things a lot. Old timers, you know, had meetings every week with, you know, a whole bunch of their friends. You know, they had a mini party all the time. Right. Oh, well, another thing is with the computers now, it's changed a lot, but they see it, you know, not as personal, you know, with the way it was before, how do you see it from your perspective? You know, you're right. I mean, there's no substitute for getting together in person and that's why we're hoping to have our state convention as sort of a hybrid model where people can get together at a big hotel in Waikiki, but, you know, aren't obligated to and if people don't want to spend the money to fly to a walk, we get a hotel room for our neighbor islanders, they can still tune in. One consequence of the pandemic is when we've done in-person activities, they are limited to being smaller. And so, for example, you know, we usually would do a really big breakfast in Honolulu every year as our big signature fundraising event. Because we can't have 100 plus people in one place, you know, in Honolulu, what we said is, why don't we break this up and do four events statewide with, you know, 30 people in each island? So actually, the net effect is it's more people who are engaged and we have the opportunity to get to the neighbor islands and engage with our members on Kauai, Maui, on the big island, as well as here in Oahu. It can't be Oahu-centric and COVID has actually made it a little bit easier, thanks to technology, to really be a statewide party that's united through Zoom or WebEx or whatever other platform. But people can plug in from wherever it is in the state that they call home. That's, you know, some people look at younger people or if it's some millennial or some generation, it's the me generation, you know, like, what can you do for me? You know, it's supposed to, you know, what can we do for everybody? I think there's a little bit of that. Yeah, there is, and I think the message, you know, we do have to show as a political party, whether it's the Democratic Party or any other party, what we're doing for you as a voter, as well as what we're doing for everybody. And that of course is a balancing act because you want to help the most people that we can. And so that's something that we're always mindful of. Going back to sort of the party's operations as we move towards more technology, you know, there are some folks who, you know, maybe aren't as tech savvy and can't, you know, utilize technology as quickly or as deftly as others. And so one thing that our younger folks have been doing, especially on O'ahu County is we created a digital equity committee and O'ahu County through its volunteers have gone out there and the people who don't have access to, you know, the internet don't have, you know, an upgraded computer with a video camera and all of that. We've made sure that when we have online events that they need, that those folks need to participate in, that we lend them an iPad, you know, we'll set it up at their house or some other location, maybe their garage or, you know, somewhere else so that they can view it, they can participate and we have somebody there to answer their question. So even if we can't gather all together as a 50-person meeting, we're not gonna leave anyone behind. Okay, gonna change gears a little bit. The party has, you know, get lunch and learn and stuff like that. The different topics you've discussed, you know, there's some on one thing, particular best value and approach and procurement. I think the government leaders can learn as well as some other organizations would probably be kind of pushing for stuff like that. Yeah, so early on in the pandemic, during my chairmanship, we started this lunch and learn series so we could educate our members about different topics. And it's actually been wonderful because we've been able to have national experts join us over Zoom. So we've had folks from the East Coast, folks from the West Coast and of course people here in Hawaii who are experts in their fields educating our members. So we're always open to new topics. And the topics that we've selected have been ones that, you know, hopefully are on people's minds and are things that people wanna learn whether that's COVID or even, you know, different things like statehood for Washington DC, that was one of them. That was kind of a different one that maybe people wouldn't have otherwise thought about. And as you mentioned, you know, more detailed topics like procurement or, you know, other aspects of government operations, these things would also help our legislators. And so our lunch and learns have been targeted not only at our members, we've also been trying to loop in thought leaders and decision makers here in the islands to make sure that they have all the best information possible to make good decisions for all of us. And, you know, going back to the young leaders or, you know, like yourself and other islands, we got, you know, some council people too are on the state. Yeah. So, yeah. I really see that weighing in, you know, trying to kick out the old guys or whatever. You know, I think our government needs to be representative of the people. And that requires a diverse set of people, not only age, but, you know, different backgrounds, different life experiences. And so I'm excited to see, you know, young people step up to the plate. And we've seen a lot of them run. Some of them didn't win, but I hope that they keep trying because, you know, we do need that diversity of experiences and everything else. And here are two of our young legislators right after the 2020 election who joined us for sign-waving. And they're really an example of kind of the next generation stepping up. I think that's a good thing. Yeah, it's good to get a new perspective with, you know, keeping up with the times. Speaking of jobs, you know, I know some guys, they're telling the kids, why don't you get a real job? And then the kids on the play with their computers, and then they find out they can make, I don't know, what YouTube or whatever videos, they make thousands of rematches with the computers. I mean, it's what a lot of people want to get into now. The different jobs are on here. You know, there's a lot of opportunities. And like you said, you know, you got, you started a lot of programs and apprenticeship and all that is, but they're still necessary though in the basics. Yep, absolutely. I mean, while we look at what's ahead in the future, you know, whether that involves computers or different types of engineering or whatever the case may be, we can't forget about all the other jobs that exist here. And we want to make sure that those are well-paying, which is why, you know, the Democratic Party has been pushing for a higher minimum wage so that, you know, even folks who are in a minimum wage job can provide for their families and make it, you know, make a good quality living here in Hawaii. We can't forget about, you know, our construction workers, can't forget about our government employees. You know, it takes all of us to make our local economy work. We can't have an economy that only works for, you know, those at the top. And that's definitely a principle that the Democratic Party has been fighting for is making sure that everybody that calls what he home has a fighting chance to make it here in the islands. It's, well, one more thing I want to throw there. Like, even engineers, we got a shortage, you know, all the way up to the top engineers on Koi, the chief engineer at the public works, as well as water department. So what did they do? They reduced the standard to say, you don't have to be a licensed guy to be a head engineer, you know, but that's up for discussion. You know, anyway, we're out of time, so we'll have to wrap it up. I'm Dennis Yasaki. This is Politics in Hawaii on Think Tech, live streaming network series. We've been talking with Tyler Dos Santos-Tan, chairman of the Democratic Party of Hawaii. Thanks to you, Tyler, being here. Thanks, Kenneth. Thanks to all the publicity gather, including Michael O'Haley and J.F. Adele, our executive producer. And thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back in two weeks with the next show on Think Tech, live.