The power and campaign contributions from A&B, along with agrochemical giant Monsanto, remain so influential that despite an overwhelmingly democratic electorate (70% for Clinton over Trump), they have been able to exercise power through a Republican Mayor, Alan Arakawa, who has used their money to win re-election three times. And as recently as 2014, only two of the nine members of Maui’s County Council were willing to support a GMO Moratorium that won the approval of 51% of Maui voters.
But, as I wrote about here, a major shift in Maui County’s political landscape began in this November’s at-large County Council election, when a transformative grassroots coalition of parents, native Hawaiians, environmentalists, organic farmers, housing advocates and Bernie Sanders supporters voted in record numbers to support a group of reformist candidates committed to responsive government for the public interest.
Intent upon ending the “plantation mentality” among corporate-corrupted politicians willing to subjugate public health and the island world famous ecosystem for the profits of A&B and Monsanto (whose toxic pesticide-drenching GMO test “farms” pollute the soil and aquifer), the nine reformist candidates received nearly 10% more votes than the nine candidates running to represent the “old guard” of Maui’s power establishment.
Two of the reformist candidates, incumbent Elle Cochran and Don Guzman, were by far the most popular candidates in the election. Cochran won 60% of the vote (31,968) and Guzman, incumbent Vice Chair of the Council, won 58%, (30,762 votes). Cochran and Guzman won 20% more votes than the leaders of the old guard, Council Chair incumbent Mike White (25, 769) and incumbent Bob Carroll (25,271). Two other newcomers, organic farmer and Native Hawaiian water protector Alika Atay, as well as Kelly King, were the fifth and sixth highest vote winners of the nine candidates elected.
In a fair and transparent democracy, one of the two top vote getters in the election would have become the powerful new Chair of Maui’s County Council. At the very least, they would share power by one of them being named Vice Chair. In addition, majority control of the important Council Committees would have been divided between the old guard and reformist members.
But Maui’s old guard had other ideas.
Because the four elected Maui Ohana-supported candidates did not constitute a five person majority, Mike White and the backroom power brokers who supported him, immediately went to work to do whatever was necessary, legal or not, to cement a council majority.
“The old guard is panicking,” a political insider told me. “They don’t know how to deal with this change. Instead of embracing it, they’re fighting it.”
Three steps in the legally questionable rigging process have already taken place: the pre-election of the Council Chair position, the offering and accepting of political bribes in return for those chairmanship votes, and the sudden firing of three of the four County Council veteran legislative aides.
The fourth step, the rigging of every Council Committee to ensure that the old guard will have majority control of every one of them, will be determined on January 16 at 1 p.m. during the second meeting of the Council’s new term in the County building at 200 South High Street in Wailuku.
This Committee rigging was delayed by the outpouring of oppositional public testimony during the first meeting of the new Council’s term on January 2. It was the longest, most contentious public meeting (13 hours) in the County’s history. All but three of the more than 60 citizens who testified spoke out against backroom politics and Mike White’s pre-election rigging of the Council Chairmanship.
As part of the transparency-building work that my public interest communications company, Progressive Source, is doing in Hawaii, I made the 12 minute video below, which summarizes the historic public uprising that was the January 2, 2017 Maui Council meeting.
Despite the public outcry, the fix was in for confirming Mike White’s illegal pre-election by a late night five to four vote on January 2. As I described a few weeks ago, the rigging of the Chair election was a clear violation of the Maui County Charter (Section 3.5 here) which states that a vote for the powerful position of Council Chair must be determined during a public election by all new Council members on January 2.
Yet it was on November 11, seven weeks before the legal election, that Mike White issued a press release on the Council’s website that he would “continue to serve as chair of the Maui County Council and Robert Carroll will serve as vice-chair during the 2017-2019 Council term, which begins January 2.”
A resolution to certify a predetermined outcome, especially one publically announced seven weeks in advance by the very person being named the new Chair, is not by any objective legal assessment an “election.” As Lucienne de Naie said during public testimony on January 2, “I have never seen a meeting like this in 25 years. I serve on nine boards. We do not elect our people in advance. I guess times are a changing. “
“It feels like you’re in a dictatorship; not a democracy. You take a vote for what’s already been voted on? “
White had orchestrated his backroom coup by gathering four votes from other Council members and offering political bribes to those who would support him. Council Member Bob Carroll, for example, accepted Mike White’s illegal offer of exchanging his vote to support White in exchange for the Council Vice Chairmanship position and chair of its coveted Land Use Committee.
In naming himself chairman seven weeks before the County’s legally mandated Council Chair election, White’s actions have led to an ethics violation charge and calls for his impeachment. The promise or acceptance of political appointments in exchange for votes is expressly forbidden in Section 10-4.1.a of the County charter, which allows for imprisonment of up to one year for violations of its provisions.
Mike White’s response to his critics was to provide a classic this is the way things are always done excuse. In an email to local media, White argued that “announcing leadership positions prior to a term is nothing new. Indeed, it is a fairly common practice among legislative bodies in Hawaiʻi.”
Mike White’s legal defense that election rigging is “nothing new” struck some Maui citizens of Native Hawaiian and Asian ancestry as a reminder of their historic disenfranchisement. It was 130 years ago, in the aptly named “Bayonet Constitution of 1887,” that the game of white men fixing Hawaii government majorities to benefit powerful corporate interests began. That rigged constitution stole all real power from Hawaii’s last king by restricting the vote to men who could prove income of more than $600 per year or assets exceeding $3,000. This immediately disenfranchised two-thirds of Native Hawaiians, while the region’s many Asians were expressly denied the vote based on their race.
During heated public testimony on January 2,, Tiare Lawrence, a rising Native Hawaiian leader, referred to the devastating “100 year storm” that hit Maui during the week before the Council meeting and noted,
“The rains that have happened this past week is a clear indication that Maui needs cleansing. Here in Hawaii there is a history of insider backroom dealings that people are clearly frustrated with. The number of people here make it clear that the people of Maui are disappointed with business as usual.”
Resistance to a rigged system and calls for good government was the common thread among the many residents who spoke on January 2. “Two of our council candidate received more votes in this past election than anyone else by running on a platform of change, of transparency and accountability,” Sam Small stated. ”Those council members deserve to be put into a position of authority, not to be marginalized and stripped of all power. Gaming the system the way that as Mr. White is attempting to do is an insult to Maui voters. You need to function as representatives of the people, not corporations.”
Longtime resident Sean Lester spoke to the widely shared concern that the reason for the County Council’s backroom coup was to nail down long term contracts for the future of Maui’s land, and water, especially on A&B’s closed sugar plantation, before a majority pro-transparency government can take power.
“A lot of people are afraid,” Lester explained. “They see what’s happening when Monsanto is talking about taking 16,000 acres of the 30,000 acres at the heart of our island.”
During the explosive January 2 meeting, newly elected Council Member Kelly King, who has extensive organizational experience serving on non-profit Boards and representing Maui on the State Board of Education, questioned the legality of the rigging of the Council, and made a compelling case against Mike White’s chairmanship. “All I am looking at is the facts,” she said. “You can be hard and fast in your opinion and say that everyone else is wrong, but the facts are the facts. You look at the committee structure. Two years ago committee the chairs got to choose their vice chairs. When I mentioned it to Mr. White he said we’re not doing it this way. We need to find someone who is not going to dole out appointments according to who supported him; but according to their expertise.”
At the second full meeting of the new term’s Maui council on January 16, King will be introducing her own Committee structure resolution with a fairer balance of chairs and vice chairs, one better suited to the experience of the Council members.
King was also deeply concerned about the legally questionable firing, right before the new term began, of three legislative aides, and the replacement of the highly experienced head of Counsel services by the Republican Mayor’s budget chief. During the January 2 hearing, King revealed to the public insight into Mike White’s backroom power grab. “I had to go and ask for a resume for two very important positions that had already been hired that I’m going to be asked to approve at this meeting. “
“I was told, we don’t need a resume, we know who he is. This is the whole basis of cronyism that the community is coming out and fighting against.”
Late in the night of the January 2 meeting, after most of the hundreds of concerned citizens had left the Council hearing chambers, the so-called “Gang of Five” old guard loyalists voted five to four to appoint the mayor’s budget crony to supervise all council requested legislative services requests. They also voted to make Mike White the powerful Chair of the Council for the next two years.
This term would be cut short if Mike White is impeached. If Maui’s grassroots activists, who succeeded in getting the 20,000 petition signatures to place a successful GMO moratorium on the ballot three years ago, can get the 4,700 votes needed to bring impeachment charges to a State Court, then a judge will determine Mike White’s future. If White is impeached before October, then his Council seat will be filled during an island-wide special election. The result would likely bring a reformist candidate and a new Chair to the Council, and change the course of Maui history.
In her public comments during the January 2 hearing, Kelly King observed, “There is more going on then just the question of whether or not the Sunshine Law was violated,” she said. “I’m looking at the previous agenda from two years ago and it says electing the Chair of the Council. I’m looking at this year’s agenda and it says “Electing Mike White as Chair of the Council.” Don’t tell me these decisions have not already been made: they are in writing on the agenda.”
“It makes me really sad,” King continued, “because I see my colleagues here following through on the vote they said they’d make. I know there is a county ordinance that prohibits negotiating appointments for votes. That may be another violation.”
Alika Atay, the charismatic Native Hawaiian water protector and organic farmer who was elected to the Council in a startling upset this November, believes that the drama being played out in the County Council is “about collusion, corruption, greed and power.“
But Atay remains optimistic. “I am very encouraged,” he reflects. “Although January 2 was a long drawn out meeting, it allowed voters to see the true colors of their politicians.”