The winds were just about perfect.
As state Sen. Kai Kahele stood at the podium at Hilo’s historic Mooheau Bandstand to announce his campaign for the 2nd Congressional District, the American and Hawaii state flags behind him swelled and waved in the breeze as if in a slow-mo scene from a blockbuster movie. Live-streamed outdoor ceremonies so often suffer from listless flags on windless days or flags whipped into a frenzy of distraction by brisk gusts, but these flags were billowing almost on cue.
Kahele, a military and commercial pilot, is good at reading the winds.
It might seem like he timed the launch of his congressional campaign to take advantage of the political winds that suddenly made incumbent Tulsi Gabbard seem vulnerable. As soon as Gabbard announced her run for president, all the dirt from her years of virulent anti-gay activism and lack of focus on the district and the people she represents rose up again.
It might look like Kahele saw the opening and swooped in to target the seat Gabbard doesn’t seem to want anymore (though she can simultaneously run for re-election while trying for the nomination for president).
But Kahele said he’d been thinking about it for a while.
At the Mooheau Bandstand two months ago, during the Democratic Party Grand Rally in Hilo, Kahele gave a speech that in hindsight sure sounded like he was aiming for higher office.
He talked of universal preschool, debt-free college, health care for all and immigration reform, lamenting the treatment of immigrants at America’s southern border.
“I want to know what happened to the message ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free.’ What happened to that message? There is something profoundly wrong in American today. We are better than this,” he said.
Kahele makes a compelling candidate. He has more years in military combat than Gabbard. He has a real job — Hawaiian Airlines pilot — which makes his political aspirations seem more like a call to service than a hunger for power and status or a way to pay his bills. He speaks Hawaiian and set a goal together with his wife and children to be fluent in five years. He was on the winning UH men’s volleyball team in the 1990s, a bit of Hawaii cred that goes a long way with a lot of folks. His father, the late Sen. Gil Kahele, was a beloved leader who spent his life in public service. While Gabbard threw her father and his bigoted beliefs under the bus last week, Kahele’s father was a champion of same- sex marriage rights.
The night of his speech in November, Kahele had child-care duty while his wife, Maria, a flight attendant for Hawaiian Airlines, was off island. His two youngest daughters, ‘Iolana, 4, and Namaka, 2, came on stage with him. They tucked themselves into the base of the podium at their father’s legs and listened quietly as he spoke. A photo of that moment made the rounds on social media, the image of a modern political candidate balancing work and family.
Gabbard cruised to re-election this year without spending much time at home or deigning to debate her opponent. If she wants to keep her seat in Congress while she runs for president, she’s in for a rougher ride in 2020. She’s going to have to do more than give scripted interviews to CNN. She’s going to have to actually fly home and talk to real people and answer real questions and prove that she wants to represent the district, not just keep it as a fallback in case the presidential thing doesn’t pan out.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
