This past Saturday, March 30, delegates from state House districts across Oahu gathered at Ilima Intermediate School in Ewa Beach to elect leadership of the Honolulu County Republican Party for the next two years. As the incumbent, Chairman Brett Kulbis won the party’s confidence in re-election to his post.

For the last two years, our County GOP leadership team led by Kulbis has focused on giving new life to an organization that had previously slipped into a coma-like silence. They trained grassroots party activists on data and technology applications to help assist our candidates, and continuously engaged over 22,000 residents via a new County Facebook page. Kulbis created “Anti-Rail Bailout” and “Wake Up Hawaii” videos reaching more than 55,000 residents. Interested readers can view these at OahuGOP.com.

Most importantly, leadership has revived a County Party that had grown woefully passive in its acceptance of 65 years of Democrat rule resulting in sky-high taxes and a cost of living driving record numbers to seek refuge on the mainland, out-of-control homelessness, and of course, the mother of all financial crises, the rail fiasco. It has successfully targeted hundreds of voters in Mililani, Waipio, Downtown, Kailua and Ewa Beach with anti- Democrat policy messaging through paid social media, paid advertising, and through tireless door-to-door distribution of eye-opening flyers to help persuade voters about the need for change.

With the election of the current County team, we now have the opportunity to expand on these efforts. Our sights are on 2020, and we will hit the ground running in coordinated efforts to recruit qualified and energized candidates along with necessary outreach and voter identification to get them elected.

We will continue to educate where common-sense solutions to the very real and daunting challenges that face all of the people of Hawaii are concerned. And we will accomplish all of this while ensuring that our voice is unified and strong within the Hawaii Republican Party as a whole.

As conservative Republicans, we are mainly concerned with the well-being of all of Hawaii’s residents, and have no interest in the trappings of holding public office. Our candidates will be motivated to serve their constituents rather than their donors and other special interests in ensuring that we all have the opportunity to achieve and to have equal access to the Hawaii dream of prosperity with aloha.

In their choice for leadership, Republicans on Oahu have spoken in favor of the direction in which their local Party has been taken, and of the proposed path forward in successfully gaining a voice in how our state is governed. It is now time to up the ante in a challenge to the grassroots — to district chairs and precinct officials — to roll up their sleeves and to get to work. The tools and support are there and a plan is in place. Execution is all that is left.

Stephen Hinton is a member of the Hawaii Republican Party, serving as chairman of House District 45.