Hawaii House Speaker Scott Saiki will face a rematch against former Board of Education member Kim Coco Iwamoto in the August Democratic primary after defeating her by just 167 votes in 2020.
At stake is whether Kakaako and Ala Moana voters will return Saiki to the House after 28 years or whether the House will get a new speaker and new leadership team in 2023.
New redistricting maps mean Saiki’s old District 26 has now lost the McCully area. His new District 25 is centered around potential voters in high-rise condominiums, making it more difficult to campaign door-to- door, Saiki said.
Asked why the 2020 race was so close, Saiki said: “One of the largest factors was the last election was held during the coronavirus pandemic when the state was shut down. This year we’ll have more opportunities. It’ll be easier to campaign. We’ll make every effort to explain my accomplishments.”
With 6,619 votes cast in the 2020 primary for District 26, Saiki received 3,393 — or 46.6% — of the votes compared with 3,226 — or 44.3% — for Iwamoto.
Both Saiki and Iwamoto call themselves progressive Democrats, although Saiki is considered more moderate.
With a resurgence in state revenue, the Legislature last session funded record amounts for overdue proposals dear to progressives, including gradual increases to Hawaii’s current $10.10 hourly minimum wage to $18 an hour; restoring dental care for Medicaid recipients; and a $300 tax rebate this year for every taxpayer earning less than $100,000, along with $300 for every dependent, and $100 rebates for taxpayers earning more than $100,000.
In addition, the Legislature funded a record $600 million to the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands to help clear the backlog of 28,000 homelands beneficiaries waiting for DHHL housing, including mortgage down payments and rental assistance for the first time.
But Iwamoto said the Legislature killed meaningful ethics and anti-corruption reform following the federal political corruption guilty pleas by former state Sen. J. Kalani English and former state Rep. Ty J.K. Cullen at the start of the legislative session.
While many voters in 2020 told her they were “undecided,” Iwamoto said many now say they support her and have requested her campaign signs, giving her hope.
“The political analysts in 2020 kind of basically disregarded my candidacy,” she said. “It was an eye-opener for so many people that I came so close to taking out the most powerful person in the House.”
She said voters also tell her they are disappointed that House leaders continued Saiki’s ongoing feud with state Auditor Les Kondo, which resulted in a special House Investigative Committee holding hearings from September to January with no findings of criminal wrongdoing against Kondo or his office.
“They read what the media’s writing about the pettiness of leadership going after the state auditor and finding nothing,” Iwamoto said. “They see this kind of juxtaposition of spending all of this energy going after the state auditor and finding nothing, but can’t hold yourself accountable to following basic ethics.”
Iwamoto served on the state Board of Education from 2006 to 2011.
Asked if she would seek a House leadership position if elected, Iwamoto said she would focus on “decentralizing the power that Saiki holds over his colleagues right now. I wouldn’t want the current model of leadership to be replaced by that same model. I want more openness and transparency. I’m very much interested in holding whoever’s in leadership accountable to the body and not getting petty and vindictive. I want to get away from that petty schoolyard bullying.”
Colin Moore, director of the University of Hawaii’s Public Policy Center, expects the Aug. 13 primary race between Saiki and Iwamoto to once again be tight.
Their 2020 showdown “was one of the closest races,” Moore told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s “Spotlight Hawaii” livestream program on Monday. “I think it’s going to be very close again.”
The new redistricting maps will likely add to the competitiveness of the race between Saiki and Iwamoto, Moore said.
“That Kakaako district can be hard to predict because there’s a lot of new people who’ve moved in there who might not be familiar with Speaker Saiki,” Moore said. “So it’s going to be competitive again. How competitive? We’ll have to see.”
