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House Speaker Scott Saiki, a veteran lawmaker and one of the most powerful politicians in Hawaii, again faces a Democratic primary challenge from community activist Kim Coco Iwamoto. She almost beat Saiki twice before, and hopes this year is her year.

More than any other local contest this season, that primary race for the urban District 25 House seat that includes Ala Moana, Kakaako and downtown has the potential to redistribute political power in Hawaii and redirect the Legislature.

Saiki has been a fixture of the House leadership for more than a decade, rising from outsider status as a political dissident in the House to the job of Democratic majority leader there in 2013, and then seizing control of the speaker’s office in 2017.

He has a reputation for keeping a firm grip on the direction of the House — too firm, some of his fellow lawmakers would say — and has famously insisted the House assume a more prominent leadership role in state affairs.

Saiki was thought to represent a politically “safe” district, and when Iwamoto first ran against him in 2020 it marked the first time Saiki had a primary election challenger in that district since 2012.

But Iwamoto’s close losses to Saiki may have already influenced state policy.

One longtime observer of Hawaii politics described Saiki as a “centrist with liberal tendencies,” and suggests he has deliberately tacked to the left to protect himself politically from the more liberal Iwamoto since she made her first run against him in 2020.

Iwamoto, 56, agrees. She argues her primary election challenges influenced Saiki’s approach to issues such as the state minimum wage.

She attacked Saiki’s position on the minimum wage in the 2020 campaign, and lawmakers approved a measure in 2022 to increase the state minimum in a series of steps until it reaches $18 per hour in 2026.

That dramatic increase in the wage floor came after years of what critics characterized as political foot-dragging on the issue.

A Political Trailblazer

Iwamoto was already known to many voters a decade ago for her two terms on the Hawaii Board of Education, where she became the first openly transgender official to win statewide office. She served on the board from 2006 to 2011.

She went on to make unsuccessful runs for the state Senate in 2016 and for lieutenant governor in 2018, finishing fourth in the Democratic primary that year. Then-state Sen. Josh Green won that primary election to become the new lieutenant governor.

Iwamoto turned her attention to Saiki two years later, and self-funded her campaign almost entirely that year. Her campaign spent nearly $100,000 on that race, and Iwamoto lost by just 167 votes out of a total of 6,619 marked ballots.

An earlier version of this story noted Iwamoto’s campaign spending report for the 2020 primary shows expenditures of more than $620,000. However, more than $520,000 of that amount was used to repay loans that she made to her campaign and to refund donations from the 2018 primary.

In 2022 she spent $180,000 on the primary race against Saiki in a district with newly drawn boundaries, which is a sizable sum for a state House race. Winners in House races that year spent on average just $41,000.

But Iwamoto lost that year by just 161 votes out of a total of 5,199 marked ballots. Saiki spent more than $386,000 on the primary race that year.

Iwamoto, a self-described community organizer and a lawyer by training, said she is challenging Saiki again because her two close primary contests with Saiki were “an affirmation that a lot of people want change.”

If she is elected, Iwamoto said she hopes to convince other newcomers to the Legislature to join her in promoting greater transparency in government by drafting and adopting a good government platform, and changing current procedures in the House.

For example, she wants House leadership to hold hearings on all bills that have been co-introduced by a majority of the House members, and wants public testimony to be made publicly available for review before the hearings.

She also wants to strip away power from the House Finance Committee by ending the current House practice of giving that committee the final say over the most important measures each session even when the bills have no financial implications.

Planning For Change

Iwamoto hopes to force those changes by joining with a majority of at least 25 like-minded House members to demand them. Once the legislative procedures are opened up at the state Capitol, “then I feel like we can attack or address more of the substantive issues” that affect people’s lives, she said.

“What I’m hoping is that there are enough of us who affirmatively proclaim that we are good government stewards,” she said. “That’s how big of a game changer I hope this election will be.”

She also supports a statewide citizen initiative process and term limits for state lawmakers. Hawaii has neither today.

Saiki, 60, said he opposes initiatives arguing the initiative process “would allow a majority to extinguish the rights of minorities.”

He said he has introduced measures to establish term limits, but said even progressive Democrats are divided over that idea. Saiki observed that states that have lower term limits seem to have “no continuity or depth of experience, resulting in a diminished, transient Legislature.”

On the hot issue of publicly funded elections, Iwamoto supports public financing along with a per-person donation limit of $100 per candidate. She points out that Saiki benefits greatly from large contributions from monied donors.

In fact, Saiki raised more money than any other candidate in a competitive legislative race this year, collecting more than $300,000 as of June 30. About three dozen of his donors gave the maximum allowed contribution of $2,000 this year.

However, Saiki because he said the idea deserves “further consideration.” But the House Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee killed the Senate publicly funded elections measure in March, and the issue died for the session.

Iwamoto blames Saiki for that outcome and suspects Saiki maneuvered behind the scenes to ensure the bill died so he could continue to collect campaign cash.

But Saiki, who is also a lawyer, said that bill failed because it was not viable as it emerged from the Senate. It included no funding and no staff to operate the new public funding program, he said.

Saiki Wants House To Be Assertive

When a bribery scandal erupted with the arrests of House Finance Committee Vice Chairman Ty Cullen and Senate Majority Leader J. Kalani English in 2022, Saiki appointed the Commission to Improve Standards of Conduct to try to restore some faith in local politics.

When disaster struck with the Lahaina fire that killed at least 101 people last year, Saiki established interim House working groups to , and what to do to prevent similar disasters.

That willingness to plunge the House into crises in recent years has been a striking pattern in Saiki’s tenure as speaker.

Critics including Iwamoto cite shortcomings in some of those efforts, but Saiki’s willingness to direct the House to dive into difficult issues contrasts with previous speakers. It has also put Saiki out in front of some of Hawaii’s most controversial issues.

Saiki and the House formed another working group to sort through tangled issues surrounding the Thirty Meter Telescope after the 2019 protests, and helped organize the last year to address the water contamination crisis after the spill of jet fuel from the U.S. Navy’s Red Hill facility.

Another example was the 26-member Select House Committee on Covid-19 Economic and Financial Preparedness, which Saiki appointed early in the pandemic.

“I want to exercise the full authority of this office in a way that will help us solve problems. I’m not afraid, I’m not hesitant to do that” for issues that rise to the level of statewide importance, Saiki said.

Saiki said he wants the House to be assertive, but also act inclusively. “We’ve included the community in these important task forces, and they’ve all resulted in really significant proposals,” he said.

The commission on standards of conduct in particular prompted criticism from other lawmakers who were concerned it might produce recommendations that the Legislature would not agree with, Saiki said.

“In hindsight, if we did not create that commission I don’t know if we would have had any legislative proposals to improve standards of conduct that year,” Saiki said.

‘Right Down The Middle’

Saiki describes his personal politics as mostly “right down the middle,” but said the Legislature during his tenure has advanced many issues that are generally considered “progressive.”

Specifically, he cites moves to promote solar energy, to modernize Hawaii’s abortion statute and legalize same-sex marriage. Saiki was a very early supporter of same-sex unions, and played a key role as House majority leader when the Legislature voted in 2013 to legalize same-sex marriage.

Saiki also introduced the bill that established mail-in voting as the norm in Hawaii, and points to his tax reform efforts as part of his push to try to make Hawaii more affordable for residents.

He said the out-migration of Hawaii residents is the top issue in the state, and those departures are being driven in large part by the cost of living here.

He cites the passage of a generous earned income tax credit for Hawaii’s low-income working families as a key accomplishment during his tenure, along with the adoption of the largest tax cut in state history this year.

Saiki said the speaker’s job is to facilitate the wishes of the entire House, which often means the speaker will not personally agree with the end result. “It’s not as easy as saying the speaker should stand up and dictate all of these specific proposals.”

He added: “In this day and age, with what’s happening nationally, the public doesn’t want a dictator.”

Reporter Blaze Lovell will host a discussion with Iwamoto on Friday from 5 to 7:30 p.m. in Kakaako at Box Jelly as part of Civil Beat’s election-themed pop-up newsroom event series. Saiki declined Civil Beat’s invitation to attend the session.