In South Maui council race, Cook declares victory, King waits for curing of ballots

Incumbent Tom Cook declared victory for the South Maui County Council seat on Thursday, two days after the extremely tight race fell just short of a recount. 

But challenger Kelly Takaya King still sees a chance, with the County Clerk’s Office still waiting on about 1,000 ballots with signature issues. Voters have until next week to fix the problem. 

Cook collected 26,315 votes, or 41.6%, while King received 26,198 votes, or 41.4% — a difference of 117 votes. There were also 10,688 blank votes and 56 over votes. 

Cook led by 756 votes when the first printout was released after midnight Wednesday, but that gap shrank to 117 votes by the third printout at around 6 a.m. Nearly 15,000 more ballots were added to the tally between the first printout and the third. 

On Thursday, Cook publicly thanked Maui County voters for reelecting him in a tough race. 

“I am honored and grateful to get this opportunity to serve on the County Council for another term and I look forward with humbleness to work with and for you, Maui County!” Cook posted on Facebook. 

But King felt it was too early to call. According to County Clerk Moana Lutey, 1,239 ballots had issues that needed to be “cured,” meaning their ballots either didn’t have signatures or didn’t match the signatures the county has on file.

State law calls for mandatory recounts when the difference in votes meets a certain threshold, but that only applies to the ballots confirmed valid as of 6 a.m. the day after the election. So even if the corrected ballots can help King meet that threshold, they could not trigger a recount, according to the County Clerk’s Office. To win, King would need to get enough votes from the corrected ballots to surpass Cook.

Voters have until 4:30 p.m. Nov. 13 to fix their ballots. Typically they are given five business days after the election, but this year they’ll get an extra day because Nov. 11 is a holiday. Deputy County Clerk Richelle Thomson said some ballots have already been corrected and that 1,069 were still deficient as of Thursday.

Lutey said her office has mailed a letter with an affidavit form and instructions to every voter with a deficient ballot envelope. The office followed up with emails and phone calls to non-responsive voters, depending on if they had that information on file.

Cook said he declared victory “because to date, I have not gotten any other message.”

“I’m not going to not accept the reelection because of a tentative question mark. I have a job to do,” he said Thursday. 

But, he added, whatever happens, “I will abide by the rules and judgments.” 

King’s camp, meanwhile, is “focusing on closing the gap” and surpassing Cook’s votes.

“There are hundreds of people in Maui working on getting folks to check their ballots and cure any rejected ballots before the deadline,” King said via text on Friday. “A lot of disappointment in the big money influence and how much luxury and high end development will be approved if the current council majority stands.”

The contest between Cook and King pitted two candidates with council experience against each other in a reverse of the 2020 general election when King was the winning incumbent and Cook was the challenger. Cook, a general contractor, won the open seat in 2022 when King, the co-founder and vice president of Pacific Biodiesel, ran unsuccessfully for mayor. 

It was a reflection of the overall battle for council control between candidates like King who are backed by environmental, anti-big money groups and candidates like Cook who are backed by labor unions, businesses and big donors.

Council members with similar support as Cook currently hold a majority on the 9-member council and were the top fundraisers among council candidates. Cook brought in the most campaign donations with more than $170,000, while King received nearly $35,000. 

That even topped Cook’s own totals in the 2022 general election. That year, Nohe U‘u-Hodgins raised the most with $161,000 and won the Makawao-Haʻikū-Pāʻia residency seat. Cook was the second-highest fundraiser with more than $142,000. Both were running for the only open seats on the council at the time. 

From Sept. 27 to Oct. 21 in the final stretch before the election, the super PAC For a Better Tomorrow poured close to $104,000 into advertising for Cook, according to campaign spending records, though it couldn’t coordinate directly with him under campaign law. Spending records filed late on the day before the election show it shelled out another $77,500 for advertising to support Cook.

Cook said he didn’t think the money made a difference in the election and that “maybe some people voted against me because of it.” He said that people are “hyper-focusing on the amount of money people raise in a campaign and the amount of advertising, as opposed to, what has this person done? What is this person like? What is this person’s reputation from somebody outside of my echo chamber?”

He pushed back against the notion that he was in favor of over-development, saying he wants to see regulations become “guardrails, and not hurdles,” so more affordable housing can be built.

Cook also recognized that this time he had the advantage of incumbency, noting that in 2020, King beat him as an incumbent. On Tuesday, every incumbent on the council won reelection, a rare year in which nobody stepped down or was unseated. Two of the nine seats — East Maui and Lānaʻi — were uncontested. 

“It’s always been difficult to beat an incumbent,” King said. “I do think the money made a difference, and also the misinformation it helped to spread. But I’m hopeful there are more in our country who see past the promises and know my record of real solutions I’ve already brought to our communities. We’ll see when the final results come in!” 

Political analyst Colin Moore, an associate professor with the University of Hawai‘i Economic Research Organization and the Matsunaga Institute for Peace, said the money made it clear how much of a priority the South Maui race and the overall council election was to donors. 

“I think that in part, this is a reaction to fears that … folks who are a little more skeptical of tourism, a little more skeptical of Maui’s traditional recipe for economic growth, tourism and construction, would take the council,” Moore said. “And this has gone back and forth over the years, as you know. But I think it shows that interest with money in Maui saw this as a very important election to win.”

Voters who have received notification that their ballot is deficient can contact the County Clerk’s Office at (808) 270-7749 or county.clerk@mauicounty.us. They can also check their ballot status at hawaii.ballottrax.net/voter/.