Republican contenders for Hawaii governor offer differing viewpoints at debate

If there is one thing that Andria Tupola and John Carroll agree on it’s that Gov. David Ige did a poor job handling Hawaii’s now infamous false missile alert.

Beyond that, the two Republican contenders for governor diverged in their positions on a range of topics — including homelessness, the lava situation in Puna and Hawaii’s high cost of living — during a Wednesday night debate hosted by Hawaii News Now. They also differed on whether to legalize recreational marijuana. Tupola opposes it, Carroll, 88, supports it — and has since the 1970s.

Both candidates also reaffirmed their backing of President Donald Trump, lending support to some of his more controversial policies, including the separation of immigrant families at the border and his travel ban affecting a handful of mostly Muslim countries.

Navigating the politics of Trump has been particularly dicey for local Republican politicians who don’t want to lose party support, but are also trying to appeal to a broader swath of Hawaii’s more liberal population.

“I definitely support him in the fact that he has taken shots in a way that nobody had the courage to do,” said Tupola. “I think that it takes courage to stand up against things that have been broken for a long time.”

At the same time, she obliquely referred to Trump’s more controversial stances on minorities and immigrants as “issues that will be up for debate.”

Carroll, an attorney and former state legislator, called Trump “a remarkable president so far,” and said the separation of immigrant children and parents at the border was “absolutely necessary.” Trump has since abandoned the policy amid a political backlash.

However, Carroll said he wouldn’t vote for Trump again unless he got rid of the Jones Act, a post-World War I law that requires all shipping between U.S. ports be conducted with domestic vessels and crews. Carroll has led a crusade against the controversial law for years and repeatedly pivoted to the issue throughout the debate.

“The cost of doing business here is ludicrous — again because of the shipping restrictions,” he said in response to a question about how to help small businesses in Hawaii.

On the issue of homelessness, Carroll said he would bring back vagrancy laws so that people couldn’t sleep on Hawaii’s beaches and in other public places.

Tupola, 37, who currently represents the leeward side of Oahu in the state House of Representatives, was more expansive in her response. She spoke of the need to increase mental health services and the the complex challenges of having “ohana zones,” or temporary, outdoor spaces for homeless that were recently backed by the Legislature. She noted that these often don’t work and that such encampments need to have a leader, trust among those who live there, a plan for rehabilitation and rules.

Otherwise, “its the Wild West,” she said.

While Carroll said that he thought the governor was doing a good job handling the impacts of the volcanic eruption in Puna, Tupola said she thought there was more the state should be doing.

“Honestly, I feel like this hasn’t been treated like an emergency,” she said, noting that the Legislature had yet to convene a special session.

The Hawaii News Now debate was a chance for both candidates to make themselves better known to voters. Some 57 percent of voters didn’t know who Tupola was and 42 percent didn’t recognize Carroll in a March poll conducted by the Star-Advertiser of 800 registered voters statewide.

The poll also found Carroll leading Tupola 40 percent to 28 percent. However, 32 percent of voters were undecided at the time. Both candidates’ favorability rates stood at 16 percent.

Also running in the Republican primary is Ray L’Heureux, a retired Marine colonel who served as an assistant superintendent at the Hawaii Department of Education. Up until last year, he was the former CEO of Pacific Historic Parks, a nonprofit that supports the National Park Serv­ice’s operations in Pearl Harbor.

L’Heureux was not invited to the debate. Hawaii News Now’s news director Scott Humber said the news agency went with the two top contenders in the polls and said he didn’t think L’Heureux was staging a serious enough campaign.

L’Heureux criticized the decision on his Facebook page, saying that the media shouldn’t decide which candidates viewers are allowed to hear from. My “voice should be heard in the spirit of equality, inclusion and non-bias,” he wrote. He noted that the only poll taken in his race, that of the Star-Advertiser, was conducted before he announced his candidacy on April 7.