Maui County incumbents survive election despite voter frustration about Lahaina fire recovery, economy

WAILUKU — After losing his rental home in the Lahaina fire and living in his car for 3-1/2 months, Dennis Allen was so discouraged that he voted against every local government official who was in office at the time of the fire. 

“I can’t really say that they all deserved to lose their positions,” Allen said. “But people have to be held accountable.” 

Allen wasn’t the only voter who felt that way. But despite some misgivings with the current system and its leaders, Maui County voters sent all incumbents back into office at the federal, state and county level. The results held few surprises in a blue state as Maui County Democrats in both the Hawai’i House and Senate cruised to victory and Hawai’i voters in general backed Democrat Kamala Harris over eventual Republican victor Donald Trump for president.

The only Maui race in which a challenger garnered at least 40% of the vote was the District 14 West Maui contest that incumbent Democratic Rep. Elle Cochran won with 51.3% of the vote to Republican Kelly Armstrong’s 40.4%, according to the third printout of results around 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Most Maui County Council candidates also won handily, although incumbent Tom Cook only led Kelly Takaya King by 117 votes in the South Maui race. The Hawai’i Journalism Initiative has reached out to the County Clerk’s office to see how many more ballots are expected and if there will be a recount, which state law requires in certain close races.

Political analyst Colin Moore, an associate professor with the University of Hawai‘i Economic Research Organization and the Matsunaga Institute for Peace, said concerns about the economy after the fire could have played into the results. Recent UHERO reports show Maui’s recovery lagging and poverty rising in the face of job losses and the downturn in tourism.

“Some of the incumbents who got elected are more associated with economic growth, development, more pro-tourism,” Moore said. “I think part of what would explain their victory is that there’s a lot of people on Maui who are really worried about the state of the county’s economy.”

Frustration with the fire’s aftermath and the economy was palpable on Tuesday as hundreds of voters jammed the lines at the community center until late into the night.

Allen, a Libertarian who waited more than two hours to vote at the Velma McWayne Santos Community Center in Wailuku on Tuesday evening, said that the fire “influenced his vote greatly” in the local races. He said he didn’t hear any public warnings in his Kaalo Place neighborhood before a fast-moving wall of fire forced him to flee for his life on Aug. 8, 2023.

“It was just one failure after another by the leadership,” he said.

Allen added that the fire would have also affected how he voted in the national-level race if Joe Biden was still running for president. On both the local and national levels, he wants leaders who aren’t it just for their own personal advancement.

“The person that is best for the job is somebody that understands the needs of the people because they’ve lived paycheck to paycheck,” he said. “They know what it’s like to go to work from 9 to 5 and still be broke. … They’re all silver spooners, Ivy Leaguers. None of them fit into that category.” 

Wailuku resident Dannette Caires said she has a family member who was given notice to leave her Kahului home because the landlord was offered much higher rent from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to house fire survivors. 

“It’s just totally misguided and wasteful, and that represents a lot of things to me,” Caires said.

She lives on Social Security and struggles to pay the rising costs of food and housing on a fixed income. Her monthly maintenance fees at Iao Parkside recently increased by more than 50%. The government’s tendency to spend other people’s money “like drunken sailors” is part of why Caires voted for former president Trump. She felt he’d be better for the economy and has been frustrated with Democrats’ results. 

“I saw what the Democrats were saying didn’t match what they did during the time they were in office,” she said.

Other residents weren’t even sure they wanted to vote at all after last year’s devastation in Kula and Lahaina.  

Ingrid Cruz lost her Front Street home and car in the Lahaina fire and had to move her job as well. Housing and safety were among the top local issues for Cruz. She said she had no warning of what was happening on the day of the fire until she went outside and saw a nearby house ablaze. 

Cruz almost didn’t vote this year but ultimately decided to bring her ballot to the community center on Tuesday, motivated by her support for women’s rights.  

“I felt like I had a big tragedy happen but also, other than that, I just felt like, is it really going to make a difference?” she said. “And I was just like, you know what? Be optimistic that it will make a difference.” 

Moore said the election “could have gone two ways, really.”

“Given the tragedy in Lahaina, I could see people in some ways sticking with incumbents who they feel have experience,” Moore said. “In a different situation, I could imagine voters deciding that they really needed a radical change. But my sense is that people haven’t interpreted the work of the council after the fires as really negative.”

The economy, inflation and cost of living also likely weighed on the presidential race, though Hawai’i unsurprisingly gave its four electoral votes to Vice President Harris. Moore thinks her overall loss was partly because she struggled to distance herself from Biden’s policies and unpopularity.

“I don’t think that she made a lot of unforced errors in this campaign,” Moore said. “It just may not have been possible for the Democrats to win this election. … And look, Trump was able to represent himself as the change candidate, and that’s always a powerful thing when people are unhappy.”

After a contentious election cycle in which Trump has long been prepared to contest the final tally, Maui County voters on both sides said they’d accept the results of the election — albeit reluctantly — no matter how their candidate fared. 

Mark Conley, who brought his ballot to the Kīhei Community Center on Tuesday, said he was voting for Harris because honesty and integrity were the most important election issues for him, and he saw Trump as “the worst thing that’s ever happened to America.” 

Regardless of the result, he said, “I’m going to accept it because the vote is sacrosanct.”

Veronica Newman, who also stopped by the Kīhei Community Center, said she was voting for Trump because she didn’t think Harris had the skills to run the country, even though she didn’t have anything against her as a person. However, she said she wouldn’t protest if Trump lost.

“I mean, the decision is the decision,” Newman said. “I don’t get aggravated, I don’t get crazy, but it will be who it will be.”

*Reporter Rob Collias contributed to this report.