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Editor’s note: The Civil Beat Editorial Board and several reporters spoke with Brian Schatz, Hawaii’s senior senator in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. The issues covered included government reform, Maui recovery, climate change, national politics and foreign policy. This interview has been edited for length and clarity, and with an eye toward future reporting.

The turnout of Hawaii voters for the Aug. 10 primary was the lowest in state history, 32.1%. What’s your reaction to that? And maybe even more important, your solution to that?

It’s bad news. But part of it was it really was one of the more boring primaries. There was not a significant challenge to (Honolulu Mayor) Rick Blangiardi. And I supported Rick Blangiardi, but it wasn’t an interesting mayoral race. The congressional races were foregone conclusions, and then a lot of the state House and Senate races were also pretty boring. Interestingly, where there was a challenge, turnout was reasonably high.

And so to me, the solution to any turnout problem is competition. People have to run. The Republican Party has to field viable candidates. But, you know, in the Scott Saiki-Kim Coco Iwamoto race, in the Trish La Chica and Ken Inouye race, in this Kaimuki race with Tina Grandinetti, turnout was not that bad.

And so the solution is straightforward. People have to run and give voters a choice. Because even in my state House district, there were very few choices to be made.

One of the arguments regarding voter apathy here is the sense that voting is not going to make any difference. It’s really only one party that runs things in the primary. And you have to specify which party you’re going to vote for. Your thoughts on that?

Well, again, I just think the solution is technical. People always want to kind of configure some new way to do the voting. And my judgment is that we get big turnout when it’s an exciting race and we get low turnout when it’s not an exciting race. And that is not something you can kind of engineer. There has to be a real competition of ideas and leaders. I’m sort of interested in runoff voting and I’m sort of interested in open primaries. But again, I think it’s sort of like almost lawyering up over a more basic problem, which is voters look at it and say, “Well, all this is a foregone conclusion. Why am I going to waste my time?”

Do you think that to make elections more exciting and to generate more turnout that a citizens initiative process would help by getting more stuff on the ballot?

I’m pretty wary of citizens initiatives because my judgment is that most of the time when there are things that get on the ballot, you’re talking about big corporate interests fighting over some sort of revenue stream. And it is very rarely a truly citizen, sort of grassroots movement that establishes something as a ballot question. It’s not completely impossible, but I think the majority of the time you’re talking about special interests sort of gaming a system and saying, “Hey, for $15 million, I can get this thing on the ballot, and then I’ll corner the market on online gambling” or whatever it may be. So consider me very hesitant about initiative, referendum and recall.

What about expanded public finance of campaigns?

I’m strongly for public financing of campaigns. I do think that is a reform that would make a real difference and has been demonstrated to make a real difference. I think the question always is which reforms would actually improve the process and which reforms could exacerbate the influence of special interests. And the reason I like public financing is that people like Janet Napolitano, who was the governor of Arizona, ran on full public financing, and then she became the secretary of Homeland Security.

“The campaign that’s having fun is usually the one that’s on the road to victory.”

So this is an example of a reform that actually made a difference where a candidate would not have been viable. She became viable because of this reform. So I support that one. But again, on the sort of ability to leapfrog over the legislative body and stick a particular public policy question on the ballot, I’m still quite skeptical.

Along those lines, what about legislative term limits?

If you look at the Legislature, people are churning, right? And I also think that, at least on the United States Senate side, that some of the newer members are the most awful. And so I am skeptical that just kicking out people with a lot of tenure and replacing them with a lot of people without tenure is automatically a public benefit. I think it absolutely depends. And I think also when you look at the Legislature, there’s a fair amount of turnover in the sort of natural way, which is voting.

Is it safe to assume that you’d feel the same way about congressional term limits?

I feel very strongly against congressional term limits for understandable reasons.

Okay, moving on to the, the national contest. We all know what’s going on right now. There is a buzz. Vice President Harris is actually taking the lead, in some key swing states and even nationally, depending on which poll. Former President Trump is crying foul, crying coup, constitutional crisis and so forth. What are you expecting in the less than 90 days ahead that we’re going to see? And how is your party going to be able to respond to someone who is notorious for being a pretty brutal opponent?

First of all, we’re having fun again. I can just feel it everywhere we go. The kids are excited. I was just with with my mother. Some of the people who live in her facility came up to me and said, “We’re very excited about Kamala.” One person I talked to had very good analysis and said, “You know, you got to get the Swifties on board because they can swing (some voters).” So I thought, “Well, this is pretty good stuff.”

Look, the campaign that’s having fun is usually the one that’s on the road to victory. That’s not always the case, but I remember (Barack) Obama’s first race (in 2008). He talked a lot about cultivating joy. And Kamala is expressing joy. And I think that’s not a trivial aspect of what has to happen.

And it’s a way in to talk about all the policy differences between Republicans and Democrats. If we lead with the policy and say, you know, “They want to give tax breaks to billionaires, and what about Jan. 6?” And it just was falling on deaf ears. But now you have someone who is not the same generation as some of these young voters, but she’s relatable enough. You can imagine hanging out with her.

And I don’t know if you saw Tim Walz and and Kamala talking about food just now . They’re having a lot of fun together, talking about tacos. And Tim Walz says, “Well, I like white people tacos.” And she goes, “Oh, well, that’s okay. Do you put any flavor on it?” And then he says, “No.” And then she kind of goes — anyway, you can tell they actually get along. And I think that’s not a trivial aspect of politics.

Now, on the policy, I think there will be time to kind of prosecute the case because there are voters who still vote on policy. But we were never even getting people’s ear because they saw in President Biden someone that they couldn’t relate to and who was, in my view, an extraordinary president and a person who’s delivered a body of work that’s comparable to any of our modern presidents but was becoming a less effective messenger on behalf of our values. And so I’m really excited. And I think the vibe on the convention side was there are a lot of colleagues who were going to sort of be there for 36 hours, get there for the vote, see their delegation, and get out. And now everyone’s trying to figure out all the tickets and all the fun stuff to do.

Winning and losing feels the same until the end. But this does feel a lot more like we’ve got a puncher’s chance. And I’m talking to my Senate colleagues in Nevada and Arizona and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and they’ve all got a spring in their step. So I’m just going to do whatever I can for them.

It’s very unusual to have a sitting president decide not to run for reelection. You have to go back to Lyndon Johnson in 1968. The president is expressing through reports some discomfort, some anger at Nancy Pelosi’s role. As you know, Biden’s a Senate man. That’s where he spent the bulk of his career. How much of a role did the Senate play in getting the president to step aside?

It’s hard for me to know. But my sense was that, when he would visit us in the caucus, he was still talking about it. He still considers himself a senator and that it was his home professionally from basically his first job. And so there were a lot of members of the Senate who were expressing reservations privately directly to the president and to the sort of high command of the campaign. And we were trying to give him decision space because, like most effective and successful chief executives, he can get stubborn, right? He doesn’t want to be jammed. And so there was a bit of a balance where we expressed our reservations but gave him enough decision space to come to the conclusion that the best thing for the Biden legacy was to pass the torch.

I have a quick follow to the previous question about doing what you can do to help in other states. Could you elaborate more specifically on what it is you can do?

I’m going to do the normal stuff. I’m going to raise money. But I’m trying to visit whichever states where I can be of use. In the past I’ve campaigned for Sherrod Brown (of Ohio). I plan to go to tribal reservations because I have some credibility now as the chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. And I’m going to try to campaign wherever I’m needed — Nevada, Arizona, certainly Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio.

Everyone who’s a Democrat is feeling the same thing, which is, “I don’t know how this is going to turn out, but I certainly want to be satisfied that I didn’t fail to do something that could have been a difference maker.” We lost Wisconsin (in 2016) by two votes per precinct. And so that gives people a sense of, “Well, if I just knocked on a few doors and a couple of my neighbors did it, history will get changed.” We have a spring in our step and we’re optimistic, but it’s still 80-odd days away. And bad things happen in campaigns. This thing’s very likely to be very, very close.

Are you at all concerned about the likelihood of fairly massive protests next week in Chicago?

From a security standpoint, no. I think they have that part of it established. But I think that to the extent that there is a coalition problem where there are people in the Democratic tent who lean toward pro-Israel positions, and there are people within the Democratic tent who are concerned about the suffering of Palestinians, that we have to acknowledge that we are a big tent party and that we have a diversity of views.

My own judgment is that Vice President Harris offers an opportunity for a pivot. Not a total abandonment of the Biden-Harris approach. But certainly the vice president and Bibi (Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel), for instance, do not go back 30 years. And I think sometimes just shaking up the personnel allows you to shake up the strategy and the tactics.

And so I’m hopeful, both primarily on the ground as it relates to the conflict itself, that there’s an opportunity for some change here, but also to your electoral point that we need to signal to those people who are worried about suffering and want peace, that as long as we draw bright lines about anti-Semitism and as long as we sort of play within the confines of the Democratic Party process, that anyone who’s pro-peace is also welcome in the coalition.

And frankly, there was some criticism of what the vice president did when people were chanting at her (). I thought she handled it pretty well because she addressed the thing substantively, but also reclaimed her time, if you will, and said, “Look, we’re doing this thing here and you’re welcome to be part of this coalition, but you have to be part of this coalition, right?” You don’t get to come and have, what they call on some campuses, a heckler’s veto, right? Where your issue gets to override everything else — (that) everybody who cares about, children in poverty, everybody who cares about climate action, everybody who cares about reproductive choice or LGBTQ rights, you know, has to be subsumed by people shouting at the vice president of the United States.

What’s happening in Israel is horrifying and legitimate to talk about, complain about, protest about. But disrupting the proceedings of a Democratic Party process is, to me, not the way to have influence. And I think Kamala has done an effective job of being a listener but not indulging people who just essentially want to be disruptive and create a mess. And so that’s my view. I don’t really know how Chicago is going to go, but I’m certainly more optimistic than I was six weeks ago.

Let’s segue to Maui. Mayor Bissen told one of our reporters leading up to the Aug. 8 anniversary of the fire that he’ll kind of see how good of a friend the county is with the feds based on reimbursements of costs. I wonder if you had any reaction to that or thoughts on what that might look like.

Well, my job is federal funds. And we’ve gotten billions of dollars, mostly through FEMA, to address the last year. FEMA will stay in the fight. And I’m happy about that. But the next step is to get Community Development Block Grant disaster recovery money. The president’s administration has proposed an emergency supplemental funding bill, about $1.2 billion of which would go to Maui County. And now I have to fight to get it on to some must-pass piece of legislation, whether that’s a continuing resolution at the end of September or maybe a continuing resolution or a full appropriations bill in the December range.

And those dollars are specifically to provide resources for what they call unmet need. FEMA does a bunch of stuff, but they’re prohibited from doing certain things. And so any expenditure that the county makes that is not paid for by FEMA goes into this ledger called unmet need. And that’s how they arrived at the $1.2 billion. So, I got to go get that money. I am confident that Maui will eventually have that money. I am not at all confident about the timing of things.

Hawaii has long been touted for the ambitious, carbon neutral — now, carbon negative — goal. But it seems like the consensus in recent years is that we are not on pace at the current levels and that we’re not aggressively moving fast enough to stay on pace for that goal. A lot of that has to do with transportation and the transportation sector. A lot of this talk started before the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and before the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. Is there anything in that legislation that can help push things along faster and more aggressively in the states?

Oh, all of it. I don’t mean that casually. The aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act just make clean energy way more profitable. And that’s why we’ve seen even the most optimistic projections about what the climate bill would do, being exceeded by two or three times. In fact, it was funny when the Republicans were complaining, “This thing is costing more!” It’s costing more because there’s more subscribing to the clean energy revolution than anybody had anticipated. And we basically got a manufacturing renaissance. Lots of politicians have talked for a long time about, you know, “We don’t build stuff in America anymore. We should do that.” And now we’re actually building stuff in America. So I think it’s all to the good.

To your point about specifically the transportation sector, it is one of the hardest nuts to crack. And I have two thoughts. The first is, I was very skeptical about sustainable aviation fuels and electrification of aviation. I’m less skeptical now. The numbers are starting to pencil (out) on sustainable aviation fuels, and I’m a little surprised that they can get these batteries to actually function for short-haul flights. So it’s not impossible to imagine in 10 or 20 years that whatever airline we have or whatever airlines we have, at least on the short haul could be running substantially on electrons rather than fuel. That’s a real thing.

The other thing I’d say is that, we are the most isolated populated place, heavily populated place, on the planet, and we’re one of the most expensive places on the planet. We should drive as fast as we can in the direction of the clean energy revolution. But to the extent that some of these problems are basically upstream from us, we don’t need to be on the bleeding edge of every darn thing, right? We don’t need to force people to pay two times what everyone else is paying, while the market sorts itself out. And I feel that way about gasoline, and I feel that way about JP-5 jet fuel. We should do everything that we can to move in that direction, but it is not our job to charge our residents more while the global markets are sorting themselves out. My job is to help those global markets to turn clean fuels into a more viable pathway. And then we can participate in this.

But this is different from our electricity generation transmission and distribution, which is totally under our control. And we do have ample solar, wind and geothermal energy resources available to us. This one, in my view, has to be solved at a kind of systems level. And I worry a little bit about punishing consumers locally. I’m trying to get there. I don’t want to say too fast, but I just do think that people are suffering and whatever we do has to actually work for people. And one of the things that we did that was real smart on the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative — which, as you know, is just about the electricity side, not the fuel and transportation side — was we wanted to push as hard as we can, but not to the point where consumers were suffering and therefore revolted. Right? Whatever you do has to actually work for people. And I have been able to look citizens in the eye in Hawaii.

I am able to say with a straight face, we are on our way. We are as aggressive as any other state, but we do it with a sensitivity toward people’s pocketbooks. And I want to keep that sensitivity, even though I’d love it if we could move faster.

More broadly, with climate change and increasingly chronic erosion, in Maui and recovery in Lahaina in particular, you’ve got tools and maps showing huge swaths of Front Street and Honoapiilani Highway underwater, even at a half a foot. As we turn to actually rebuilding, what are your thoughts on how the county should best do that?

Yeah, it’s a good question. I guess the first thing I should say, which just sounds like a lawyerly qualifier, is it’s actually not my call, right? The county gets to decide this. But I know that the county is thinking very carefully about whether or not it’s wise to go and rebuild sort of right on the water, as much as it’s a cool retail experience. I mean, we have an elementary school right on the water. That actually doesn’t make any sense.

And so it’s clear to me that whatever happens with the new Lahaina, there’s going to be some setback. And whether it’s complying with the current Special Management Area setback requirement or some sort of modification, we’re going to have to figure out how to move back from the ocean — frankly, everywhere. But Lahaina is different because there are essentially no incumbents left. But they still have land and there’s still a question of how to remunerate them if they’re not able to develop back to what they previously had.

“I think that this Supreme Court is operating with total impunity.”

But I also think there are some pretty exciting success stories on Maui. And as you mentioned it, Honoapiilani Highway, it’s a very cool project. It’s federal, state, county funding, and it is a full realignment of the highway. Now, they were kind of fortunate because they had county land so they could get the easement. But this is a story about climate adaptation — to make ingress and egress safer, to provide actually recreational opportunities for what will be the old road so people can bike and camp and still walk. And that’s the kind of thing that we’re going to have to do and sort of pencil out the price to do across the state of Hawaii. Again, depends how many homes you already have there.

This is a multi-decade process, if we’re going to be blunt with each other, but we’re going to have to do it. One of the challenges that the Office of State Planning and others have is that as much as in geological time, climate change is upon us and happening very fast. And so we have to be kind of on our front foot responding to circumstances, getting that extramural funding and then moving back key pieces of physical infrastructure, especially on the transportation side. But this is going to be hard. Also, a lot of our power generation facilities are right on the water as well, so we’ve got a lot of work to do.

Let’s shift to two final things, one national and the other international. President Biden proposed reforms to the U.S. Supreme Court that were based on a lot of things, including the apparent lack of an ethics code to adhere to. Should Vice President Harris get in — and if the House goes Democratic and the Senate stays Democratic — do you feel that reform needs to happen with the Supreme Court?

Well, I think the first thing is that this Supreme Court is operating with total impunity, and they have sort of refashioned their view of the separation of powers. There’s a reason that the legislative branch is the Article I branch and they’re the Article III branch (in the U.S. Constitution). And this is not just to be petty. The framers were intentional about that. And, although we’re not supposed to interfere with individual decisions and rulings, the question of the structure of the judiciary is subject to statute, like the number of circuits we have is all in federal law. And we could have more and we could have less, and we could have term limits, and we could have none of that as some sort of red line that one must not cross.

And the number of justices is not set in stone either.

The number of justices is also a question of federal statutory law. Now, I was relatively incremental in my thinking up until this last Supreme Court term. And I think they are completely out of control and that we now have to exercise our authorities. Certainly making these justices subject to an ethics code that every other judge in the judiciary is subject to, and members of the legislature are subject to, and members of the executive branch are subject to. The idea that these nine sort of clerics are immune from criticism, and any criticism of them is somehow some breach of the constitutional order, is just not true. I am also now open to term limits and even reconfiguration of the way the court works, because I think it has gotten to that point.

Now, I think the question will be, first, we have to win the trifecta. That’s no small thing. And frankly, although we’re doing better, we are not favored to win the House, the Senate and presidency at the same time. But if we did, then I think the question would become among my more moderate Democratic friends, “What will the market bear? What would they be willing to vote for?”

I’m quite confident imposing an ethics requirement would be a relatively easy vote. I think we could get there on term limits. I’m not sure changing the number of justices is something we would have 51 votes for, but I’m very open-minded to anything we can do in this space because, you know, they are so radical that I think the only reasonable response is to be slightly radicalized.

Which decision was it that pushed you over the edge of incrementalism?

I don’t know, it was a batch in like three weeks.

Maybe immunity for the president?

Yeah, the immunity one. And then just Clarence Thomas’ behavior.

You’re a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. There are really so many things going on internationally that appear to be at a totally different level. Related to Israel and Gaza, there is Iran and Hezbollah. There is the Russian-Ukraine situation, which just turned in a startling new direction with the incursion into Russia. And finally the Indo-Pacific situation, particularly Taiwan, and North Korea as well. Are things as scary as they appear to be from your perch?

I think there’s two ways to say this. Sure, all of these things are worth worrying about. I think in the Asia-Pacific region, we’ve got some arguably bigger ones than you previously mentioned in terms of geopolitics and the safety of our country. But they are not so immediate. The question of Taiwan is not going to be ripe, in my view, until the 2030s.

“On Israel and Gaza, it’s a horrifying situation.”

And I think the best way to persuade President Xi not to make a move on Taiwan is for Ukraine to win. There’s open source intelligence that indicates that President Xi is actually watching this conflict play out. And it’s not a question of how many carrier groups we have in the area of operations. All of that helps and our partnerships help, but in the end, he’s going to make a judgment about whether or not the cost will be too high. And if Ukraine succeeds, even partially, then I think the cost will be too high for President Xi, who in my judgment, is not interested in taking undue risks.

On Israel and Gaza, it’s a horrifying situation. I believe (Secretary of State) Tony Blinken when he says that they are very, very close to a ceasefire deal, which would also release the hostages. But the thing that gives me great anxiety, but also where I’m focusing most of my effort, is what is the day after? How do we have a governing structure where these people are allowed — forget the governments for the moment — people are allowed to pursue happiness, allowed to live side by side in peace.

And I think that it is not at all obvious. I don’t think it’s acceptable for Hamas to continue to be the government in Gaza. But I do not think anyone, including Israel, wants to have the Israel Defense Forces be an occupying force in Gaza. And we don’t really have a third option except this sort of rumination about a Saudi-backed military force.

And so that is what’s being worked on by Tony Blinken and (CIA Director) Bill Burns and others. But I think that’s where to the extent that only some of us can be involved in the ceasefire talks, a lot of us should be involved in the “what happens next” talks.