Column: Mayoral candidate wants well-heeled to do more for city

I first encountered Keith Amemiya in 1998 when the young lawyer hired to lead the Hawaii High School Athletic Association felt the newspaper unfairly hammered his inexperience.

Amemiya went on to prove his worth, resolving long bitterness between private and public schools, establishing true state championships and launching a Save Our Sports campaign to help fund prep athletics after state budget cuts.

He and his wife, Bonny, donated $25,000 for a new football scoreboard at Roosevelt High, helping to spur $500,000 in private contributions and renewed legislative help for a stadium renovation.

Now Amemiya, 53 and a senior executive at Island Holdings Inc., is the first officially announced candidate for Honolulu mayor next year, promising similar public-private partnerships to address city problems such as homelessness.

He’s talking partnerships different from those sought by the Caldwell administration for rail and a Blaisdell Center renovation, where the private partner’s incentive is profit.

He wants initiatives like his SOS and the highly regarded Kahauiki Village homeless housing project by businessman Duane Kurisu, one of his campaign supporters, where private partners are driven more by community betterment than profit.

“Although most families in Hawaii, and Oahu in particular, are struggling financially, there’s a fair amount of people who have done well,” Amemiya said in an interview. “They can’t stay in their own elite bubble and let everyone else suffer. They’ve profited on the backs of the rest, so it’s only fair they give back to the community.”

Amemiya, son of former state Attorney General Ron Amemiya, also pledges to “stop the scandals, cost overruns and corruption” in city government, which he attributes to “indifference and apathy … in general, people falling asleep at the switch.”

He said he wouldn’t follow Caldwell in doing outside work — in Caldwell’s case a bank directorship that’s paid up to $250,000 a year — while serving as mayor.

“I will focus on being the mayor and as the mayor only,” he said. “It’s too big a task for me personally to have any outside interests. It also eliminates any concerns about conflicts of interest.”

He bristles at suggestions he’d be an extension of the Caldwell administration, in which his cousin, Roy Amemiya Jr., is managing director, saying, “I’m my own person running my own campaign.”

He supports finishing rail to Ala Moana Center with more direct mayoral oversight, but not Caldwell’s $772 million plan for an immediate Blaisdell Center renovation.

“Until we get the rail project under control, we shouldn’t be diverting our attention to another big-ticket project that may burden our taxpayers even further,” he said.

His political inexperience will be tested by formidable likely opponents such as Councilwoman Kymberly Pine and former U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, but as he showed at HHSAA, it’s a mistake to take him lightly.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.