2/7/22 #kihei #elections #mayor

Shortly after he publicly announced his candidacy for Maui County Mayor, retired Judge Richard Bissen offered to meet with KCA board directors to introduce himself and hear from us with any questions or comments.  As he of course came from the judiciary, not the administration or legislature branch, we welcomed the opportunity to communicate with him at this early stage of the election campaigns. The other two declared candidates so far have been part of county government for over a decade, so our board and our community are familiar with them. 

As we have done for decades, our plan for this year’s membership meetings is to have candidate forums for as many races as reasonably possible; we know we can’t do them all. This year we have all nine councilors, both of our state regional legislators for both the Senate and House as well as the Mayoral races. We expect the Mayoral contest will be part of the series of forums.

There is still more time for candidates to pull and file papers, so we do not yet know the number of contested races and respective candidates, so we all will be watching and waiting. While March 1 was to be the first day to formally file to run as a candidate, the date has been pushed out due to legal questions about this year’s census-based redistricting. Stay tuned.