Kauai Mayor Derek Kawakami and state Rep. Della Au Belatti made their only joint appearance in a televised “conversation” last week in their race to become Hawaii’s next lieutenant governor.
Belatti then followed her appearance on Hawaii News Now’s “Spotlight” public affairs program by participating in a televised Common Cause debate on ‘Olelo Community Media in which all 10 lieutenant governor candidates — including Republicans and nonpartisans — were invited, Camron Hurt, state director of Common Cause Hawaii, told viewers.
Kawakami did not respond to the invitation and only Democrats John Choi and Ku L. (Bobby) Cuadra appeared, along with Belatti.
Tuesday’s “Spotlight” appearance by Kawakami and Belatti and Wednesday night’s Common Cause debate presented the only statewide efforts to present lieutenant governor candidates together before ballots for the Aug. 8 party primaries began arriving in homes across the state as early as this past weekend.
No other joint appearances are scheduled for the lieutenant governor front-runners — the mayor of Hawaii’s smallest county and the
20-year House veteran from Makiki-Punchbowl.
Choi is scheduled to make a separate appearance Tuesday on “Spotlight” as ballots continue to arrive.
During their joint appearance, Kawakami and Belatti shared the need for more affordable housing, reducing Hawaii’s high cost of living, and their overall support for Gov. Josh Green’s kauhale housing program expansion to create permanent, affordable homes for Hawaii’s homeless.
Both, however, said the lieutenant governor should remain independent from Green.
Belatti called Green’s handling of ongoing negotiations of military land leases “problematic.”
But, she also said, “What I love about Gov. Green is that as lieutenant governor, he kind of set the standard of being independent. I will bring that working family’s perspective every time to tables of power.”
Kawakami said his vision aligns with Green’s, particularly on “the cost of housing, cost of living, and improving our quality of life.”
“But I think I’ve shown the state and the world during COVID-19 when it comes to protecting my people, I will push back against the governor, the lieutenant governor, but I’ll always keep it diplomatic because Hawaii needs a leader that can bring people together and be a bridge,” Kawakami said. “People are tired of the divisiveness.”
The main disagreement between Belatti and Kawakami concerned how they have handled campaign donations.
During her campaign,
Belatti has highlighted a $15,000 donation Kawakami received from Honolulu businessman Milton Choy, who was sent to federal prison for bribing former state Senate Majority Leader J. Kalani English and then-state Rep. Ty J.K. Cullen, who were convicted separately in federal court in 2022.
“When it was addressed in 2022 when it came out, I was the only elected official that was straightforward with the public to say, ‘Hey, I’m not returning anything,’” Kawakami said. “It’s clear that the corruption was happening at the Legislature, at the Capitol. You know, Della, you were a majority leader when this was happening. And we checked our records as my time as mayor and every purchase that we had with Milton’s company went through procurement and went to the right process. And from the outside looking in, what it looked like is everybody looked like they got their hand caught in the cookie jar. So, I was very straightforward. It was covered extensively and it became a non-issue.
“But, you know, it’s unfortunate that they (Belatti’s campaign) want to revitalize this story like it’s new news,” Kawakami said. “But we addressed it and I addressed it straightforward as I always have been when it happened and it became a non-issue … until recently.”
Belatti countered, “Derek, you were in the Legislature even before serving as mayor and so I don’t know when the monies came in, but I think it was really important at that time that folks return the money. You have subsequently returned that money. I think it’s also important. It’s not just about that money, but it’s about the corrupting influence of private corporate PAC monies. And so, I’m a candidate who’s decided not to take corporate PAC monies.”
For viewers, “there were some moments when they clearly tried to go after each other a little bit, especially on campaign donations,” said Colin Moore, who teaches public policy at the University of Hawaii.
Belatti portrayed herself as being more independent from the governor, if elected, Moore said.
But she did not have a reply after Kawakami pointed out “that you’ve been in the Legislature for 20 years and it’s tough for her to run as an independent candidate outside the entrenched power interests in Hawaii when she’s been an elected official for so long — and the (former House) majority leader,” Moore said.
Kawakami emphasized his experience as Kauai’s chief executive with experience navigating the Garden Isle through the COVID-19 pandemic and developing more affordable housing.
Belatti, Moore said, “really wants to highlight her good government credentials, but I don’t see that as really being the central issue of this election. I think Kawakami’s right: Voters care about affordability, cost of living. It’s not that they don’t care about ethics, but that’s not the central issue of the
campaign.”
The election for Hawaii’s next lieutenant governor was thrown into disarray in April after Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke went on indefinite, unpaid leave after receiving a letter from the state attorney general that she was a target of an ongoing investigation into the mystery “influential state legislator” who had accepted $35,000 in a bag in 2022.
On Jan. 20, 2022, Luke, then-chair of the powerful House Finance Committee, had dinner with Cullen, her House Finance Committee vice chair at the time, along with lobbyist Tobi Solidum and Solidum’s daughter, Kristen Pae. Luke was running for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor while Cullen was acting as an FBI informant and recorded the meeting after he was caught by FBI agents taking bribes from Choy, a wastewater systems executive.
After Belatti criticized Kawakami during their “Spotlight” appearance for not immediately returning his Choy donations, UH’s Moore said, “Della went after Kawakami on the Milton Choy connection and he went after her on Solidum.”
During their “Spotlight” appearance, Kawakami told Belatti that he felt “compelled to push back a little bit. I mean, just more recently Tobi Solidum has been at the center of corruption and I believe that you received some campaign contributions. I’m not sure if you ever returned that campaign contribution and we talk about transparency. …
“As of today, we still haven’t seen you post a complete campaign spending report,” he said.
Belatti responded, “I was on the phone with the Campaign Spending Commission this morning … because when we filed there was a glitch and I asked them what do we need to do because I really don’t want to run afoul of any campaign violations.
“And so they told me, ‘Come in as soon as you can,’” she said. “There’s a glitch … and we just need to refile.”
Then on Thursday, Kawakami’s campaign called on Belatti to immediately file a complete campaign spending report to clarify whether she had returned contributions from Solidum.
“Della has spent this campaign attacking Derek and the people who have supported him and demanded transparency from everyone else,” Kawakami campaign manager Dan Giovanni said in a statement. “Yet she still has not disclosed who is funding her own campaign. … The hypocrisy is impossible to ignore.”
In a statement Friday
to the Honolulu Star-
Advertiser, Belatti wrote that she had received a $1,000 campaign donation from Solidum in 2016 but none during her current run for lieutenant governor.
She then chided Kawakami for how he disbursed his $15,000 donation from Choy.
Kawakami, Belatti wrote, “only gave $3,000 to the Hawai‘i Campaign Spending Commission, and the remaining $12,000 was given to the foundations of three Kaua‘i schools as charitable gifts.”
