KAILUA-KONA — One of these races is not like the others.
The contest for the Big Island’s 3rd District Senate seat, West Hawaii’s only state-level campaign absent an incumbent, features two Democrats heavy with county experience. However, neither has ever governed in Oahu.
Councilman Dru Kanuha, who represents portions of North and South Kona from Hawaii County’s 7th District, has held that position for six years. Former councilwoman Brenda Ford, who represented portions of Kona and Ka‘u, spent eight years from 2006-14 working for West Hawaii before being term-limited.
Having served common constituencies for a similar duration, and doing so for two years together as part of the same council, Ford and Kanuha unsurprisingly share a similar outlook on the challenges of an initial jump to state government — wielding influence for West Hawaii amid a larger, more geographically diverse political body in the Senate.
However, the primary candidates deviated on precisely how they’d acquire the ears of their new cohorts if elected.
“I believe that education of (my) colleagues … is the most important thing we’ll be doing,” Ford said. “You have to be able to influence all, or at least the majority of them, to get legislation approved. I’ve been able to do that at the county level, and I believe I can do that at the state level, as well.”
Kanuha said he’d rely on interpersonal skills to shine a light on the unique needs of West Hawaii’s 3rd District, which encompasses large swaths of Kona and Ka‘u.
“My ability to work with everybody, to build those relationships to get the desperately needed services for your district, I did that on the council, and I believe I can do that as a state legislator,” Kanuha said.
Michael Last is also in the race for the Senate seat in District 3. He will run unopposed in the primary on the Libertarian ticket.
What have you done for me lately?
Beyond his relationships within politics, Kanuha believes his connection to the senses of place and person in West Hawaii make him most suited for the Senate position.
“I’m born and raised here in the district I want to represent. My family has been here for many, many generations, hundreds of years,” Kanuha said. “I’m really in tune, understanding the land and people of these places. I think that’s really important.”
He said he believes his relationships across the board, with his colleagues, his constituency and the land have manifested in meaningful change for West Hawaii and the island as a whole.
“Public safety is our number one thing we have to think about as government,” he said.
Kanuha included in his efforts to protect the public a successful push to raise the tobacco purchasing age in the county to 21 along with the opening of the Laaloa Avenue extension from Alii Drive to Kuakini Highway, a mauka-makai connector and an evacuation route for those living ocean-side in Kona.
Ford said it’s been her ability to move meaningful legislation across the goal line in a sometimes adversarial county climate that qualifies her for the Senate seat over her opponents.
“When I entered the county, there was a lot of opposition on the council because I wasn’t born and raised here, and I believe I got past it and my counterparts got past it because I got a lot of legislation passed, even when it was somewhat controversial,” she said.
By controversial, Ford explained she means that the legislation wasn’t always in the best interest of county factions looking to hoard control for themselves through an imbalance of power. She said a primary example of that was the legal redistricting bill she authored and finally passed in 2011 after three attempts.
The bill stemmed from a 2001 lawsuit, of which Ford was a part, against what was then called the county reapportionment commission. The action attempted to transition a third county district from Hilo to a second district for Puna.
“The lawsuit set a precedent that you couldn’t include non-residents into our population base,” Ford said. “The commission had put non-resident military, their dependents and non-resident students into the base.”
Ford’s legislation, passed 10 years later closed the book on the matter, redistricting the island based on different population data.
Issues of the day
Ford and Kanuha are aligned what they see as the most pressing concerns facing West Hawaii, and what they’re respective priorities would be were they to win the primary on Aug. 11 and then the general election in November.
The county, with financial support from state and federal coffers, needs to build, own and rent affordable apartments and condos, Ford said. She added the open market is too volatile from a pricing standpoint to believe rents will ever remain affordable once they enter it.
“We don’t have housing for our own people,” Ford said. “We can not depend on developers to put in affordable housing. All they want to build is high-income, high-cost housing because that’s their profit.”
Kanuha, for the most part, agreed, although he included the concept of public/private partnerships as a viable option to procuring more state land for affordable housing projects. He added he also wants the development of housing and wrap-around services for the homeless to be tied to affordable housing initiatives in West Hawaii.
He noted health care as another top concern for the district and said the immediate answer is to build more community health clinics with mobile elements to service a heavily rural area.
“Part of that is the need for a new hospital in West Hawaii. I think it’s been long overdue, but it’s going to take a long time for it to happen,” Kanuha said. “So in the meantime, we have to work with our community health centers and providers to get that desperately needed access to health care.”
Ford shares Kanuha’s concern over health services in West Hawaii and said she’d focus primarily on bringing a new hospital to the district.
She added she’d like to see a residency element established in the new facility, making it a teaching hospital, and would push to repurpose Kona Community Hospital for use as a drug rehabilitation center, a long-term care facility or possibly a homeless shelter.