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After serving nearly two terms in the state House of Representatives, Rep. Matthew LoPresti has his sights set on the Senate seat representing Ewa and Ewa Beach.
LoPresti (D, Ewa Villages-Ocean Pointe-Ewa Beach), who was first elected to office in 2014, plans to run for the seat being vacated by Sen. Will Espero, who is running for lieutenant governor in the 2018 election.
LoPresti, 43, is an associate professor of philosophy and humanities at Hawaii Pacific University, where he serves as chairman of the school’s Asian Studies program. He previously served on the Ewa Neighborhood Board and as vice chairman of the Sierra Club-Oahu group’s executive committee.
LoPresti ran for the Ewa Beach House seat in 2012, but lost to then-incumbent Rida Cabanilla before defeating her the following election cycle.
“I was just a citizen who was upset and wanted to get involved,” he recalled. “I was upset at how education policy decisions were being made largely by people with little to no background in education, because I’m an educator and my wife’s a public schoolteacher. … I knew we could do better than that. That was one of the biggest motivating factors for me.”
LoPresti says education remains a top priority. He says his record includes helping secure funding to cool public school classrooms as part of a $100 million effort to install air conditioning in the state’s hottest classrooms — many of them in Ewa Beach schools.
He said that as a member of the House Finance Committee, he also helped secure funding to address serious capacity issues at schools in his district, which continues to see population growth.
“Most of the needs for Ewa schools are now on the other side of the road. The help that is urgently needed now is outside of my district — on the east side of Fort Weaver Road,” he said. “I’ve been a champion for the schools and I want to take that fight now to the larger district, in the Senate district.”
LoPresti grew up in Cleveland and earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees at the University of Toledo. He holds a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Local comedian Augie Tulba, an Ewa resident, is said to also be considering a run for the Senate seat. He told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser this week he had no comment on his political plans at this time.
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