Name on ballot:

Emil Svrcina

Running for:

State House – District 37

Political party:

Republican

Campaign website:

www.emilclearchoice.com

Current occupation:

Computer specialist, programmer, analyst at UH Cancer Center

Age:

58

Previous job history:

No answer submitted

Previous elected office, if any:

Neighborhood Board #25 for 6 years, candidate since 2008, City Council 9 2x, House D37 2x, Senate 18 1x

Please describe your qualifications to represent the people of Hawaii.

I’ve studied the issues affecting Hawaii for decades. I recognize that political insiders are ripping off taxpayers and making it nearly impossible for island residents to aspire to a life better than struggling from paycheck to paycheck. I’m not bought off by the Democrat Political Machine like most politicians. Unlike puppet politicians who dominate Hawaii’s electoral landscape, I don’t live in fear of rocking the boat, so I’m willing to pursue substantial changes and I’m willing to tackle the real problems. I’m not running for office to become a community celebrity. Instead, I’m running because my community like every other is hurting as the result of horrible leadership, pay-to-play scams, and extremely bad decision making. And that’s before coronavirus hit Hawaii. Now, things have gotten even worse than I imagined was possible. And because I have escaped communism 32 years ago things have gotten even worse than I imagined was possible in America. Heaving incumbent run unopposed was unconscionable to me.

What will be your top priority if elected?

Priority #1 is fixing Hawaii’s economy, which has been progressively destroyed by Hawaii’s Democrats. In addition to the soaring cost of living as the result of endless money grabs by Democrats to enrich their cronies, nearly everyone’s quality of life is rapidly declining thanks to job losses, business closures, and preventable economic uncertainty.

As Hawaii faces the COVID-19 pandemic, what more can be done to protect residents’ health?

After 66 years in control of Hawaii’s government, Democrats have had a long time to plan for a pandemic such as this without destroying our economy for years and years to come. What have they been doing all these years? Hawaii is an extremely vulnerable island state in the middle of the ocean, forever dependent upon tourism and government spending. Why weren’t Democrats planning for this? They’ve spent a fortune on a health department, a medical school, plus state-run hospitals and state-run healthcare. They have access to all the best research and the best contingency planning available. Yet, despite knowing that an infectious disease could make its way here, it seems clear to everybody that Hawaii’s Democrats have stumbled repeatedly over the past few months as if they hadn’t spent five minutes thinking intelligently about what to do. They could use so many preventive measures rather than killing jobs and businesses and causing food lines and economic calamity. Nearly everyone infected with coronavirus experiences little to no symptoms. As expected, just as with cold and flu season, the most vulnerable members of our community need extra protection. But virtually everyone else could have been working all this time. You don’t let fear of a few traffic accidents lead to a decision to close all streets and highways and freeways. And you don’t overreact to a virus with an extremely low hospitalization rate and extremely low death rate by destroying the entire economy for years and years to come. You protect the vulnerable and keep moving forward. Pretty soon, thanks to tanking the economy, Hawaii Democrats won’t have enough tax money to run state government and provide the actual protections we expect. They’ve killed the golden goose.

What more can be done to help residents who have been economically affected by the COVID-19 pandemic?

Let’s get the economy moving and get people back to work now, otherwise there won’t be enough tax money to even fix the potholes, let alone provide rent assistance or food assistance.

Should public worker furloughs, pay cuts or downsizing be used to help the state deal with lower tax revenues and higher expenses during the pandemic? Why or why not?

Hawaii’s state and county government have long been bloated, inefficient, ineffective and financially unsustainable thanks to generous pay raises, perks, pensions and horrible management. The current pandemic is an ideal time to put taxpayers first by returning the government to its core services by eliminating departments, agencies, and programs which consistently fleece the public in the name of “good intentions”. Forget temporary bandaids. Hawaii residents have been overtaxed for decades since politicians have been abusing taxpayers to line the pockets of politically well-connected special interests. My job will be to get maximum value for taxpayers for the least possible cost. While HGEA and UPW will surely attempt to preserve the bloated, overpriced nature of our state and county governments, downsizing, privatization and outsourcing of existing government services will benefit taxpayers tremendously in both the short run and the long run. Any government employees laid off during this process are invited to take advantage of the suddenly infamous and highly dysfunctional unemployment insurance system they’ve happily overseen all these years which has helped to destroy the public’s confidence in state government.

Hawaii’s tourism-dependent economy has suffered greatly due to the pandemic. If elected, what would you propose to support and diversify the state’s economy?

Step One on the road to economic diversification is to get the government out of the business of picking winners and losers. Clearly, Democrats have done a horrible job at this, following 66 long years of controlling Hawaii. We’re still dependent on tourism and government spending via income redistribution. Step Two is to stop the corrupt pay-to-play policymaking which is another way of picking winners and losers. Forcing taxpayers to fund wasteful projects like rail transit to keep certain politically-connected industries busy and paid is the very definition of creating busywork. Step Three is to make Hawaii more business friendly. Sadly, most Hawaii politicians have no more of an idea how an economy works than Bernie Sanders or Karl Marx. All they see when they look at businesses are taxes, regulations, and campaign donations. And these days, these same politicians expect a restaurant to succeed with only half as many customers. Ridiculous. We need to make it possible for every size of business, from sole entrepreneurs to corporations, to see potential in Hawaii. Clearly, when Hawaii’s #1 export is our garbage, we’re doing something wrong. We should be selling more to the world than just our hotels and beaches. Instead of empty Matson containers leaving Hawaii each day, those shipping containers should be filled with products made and grown in Hawaii. But with nearly every local politician bought off special interests like Matson the shipping monopoly, it’s not cost-effective to manufacture or even pursue agriculture here in Hawaii. So, we import 90%+ of everything we consume, while selling virtually nothing to the world. Tax cuts, competition in shipping, cutting regulations, and tort reform are great first steps to welcoming business and competition to the Aloha State.

Do you support reforms to policing in Hawaii? If yes, please explain what reforms you support.

In recent years, the people of Hawaii have endured a crisis in confidence in our law enforcement community. We found out that public corruption had taken root at the Honolulu Police Department and the Honolulu City Prosecutor’s office. Even worse, we found out that not a single police officer working for Louis Kealoha or a single employee working for Keith Kaneshiro and Katherine Kealoha stepped forward to report the corruption as a whistleblower. Ironically, the person who exposed the corruption and got the investigation launched was a public defender. Even the head of the SHOPO union had to go because he used his position to basically get paid for not working as a police officer. We cannot pretend that the handful of people prosecuted in recent years is the end of the story. We deserve to have a lot of sunshine shining down on all law enforcement agencies in Hawaii, county, state and federal. Unlike progressives across the nation who want to “reimagine policing”, I believe in law and order. I don’t believe communities want the burden or the responsibility of “policing themselves”. As with any other government department, agency, or program, I want to know that taxpayers are getting their money’s worth from all government employees. Yes, there have been abuses by HPD and other law enforcement agencies in Hawaii. Heck, they’ve been looking the other way at political corruption for decades. The only times that politicians or bureaucrats go to jail in Hawaii is when federal prosecutors and the FBI get involved, as with the Kealoha’s and others. We deserve to know about abuses in all law enforcement agencies. After all, any member of the public who is accused of a crime sees their name on government websites long before any conviction takes place. Even after being exonerated, names of the public are still seen online in arrest reports and the original charges filed. All government employees, including police, should be subject to the same scrutiny that the public lives with; especially after seeing how much corruption has existed for so long here in Hawaii’s law enforcement agencies. We also need to hold mayors and county councils responsible for the political cronies that they install on police commissions. Clearly, Louis Kealoha and his wife and their henchmen were manufacturing evidence to frame a relative at the exact same time that the Honolulu Police Commission was giving Kealoha a fantastic performance review. That commission needs better people than the Democrat Political Machine has been appointing to to it. And that commission needs far more explicit power than merely hiring and firing the chief if they hope to unroot more corruption and prevent more problems.

Do you support or oppose the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on the Big Island and why?

Like most people, I strongly support TMT because as scientist myself I support scientific advancement, economic investment, and because I don’t believe we should allow anti-American separatists to exploit TMT in order to dictate the future of the Aloha State. The desire to sell newspapers and pursue ratings has led Hawaii’s irresponsible news media to allow a small contingent of sovereignty activists to hijack Mauna Kea with phony religious and cultural and environmental arguments.

Is there anything more that you would like voters to know about you?

I will not put up with the failed policies of the ruling Democrat party. They remind me too much the ideology of socialism I had to escape from. I will not sit quietly while these politicians and their cronies make Hawaii so expensive that record numbers of local families continue to move away to the mainland. Hawaii is worth defending from the self-dealing Democrat occupation. If elected, I will fight 24/7 on behalf of the overtaxed, poorly-served people of Hawaii every single day until we turn our state around into reasonable, prosperous, and thriving state for all residents where their unalienable rights from God are not dismissed but protected again.