When Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen’s former chief of staff filed a whistleblower lawsuit against him in April, Bissen called it “100 percent” politically motivated ahead of the Aug. 8 general election. 

Despite the looming lawsuit that alleged misconduct within his administration, Bissen went on to win all precincts and finish first in a field of 10 candidates, advancing to the Nov. 3 general election against Maui County Council Vice Chair Yuki Lei Sugimura.

Now, as Bissen seeks to secure a second term as mayor, he is facing a fresh round of allegations, this time from Maui Police Chief John Pelletier.

The chief has accused Bissen of being the target of two criminal investigations, which Bissen and the county’s prosecuting attorney have denied. 

Pelletier did not provide details about the investigations. But the chief claimed they were the reason that Bissen had pressured the Police Commission to put him on paid leave while the commission digs into Pelletier’s oversight of a now-disbanded unit in which the lead lieutenant was arrested by federal authorities.

Bissen, who has also denied pressuring the commission, said he had “no idea” if Pelletier’s motivations were political or how it could impact the election. But the renewed pressure will test the incumbent mayor’s campaign just as mail-in ballots are arriving at voters’ homes.

“It’s up to voters to decide what the truth is,” Bissen told the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative earlier this week. “I think I stand for the truth. I stand on my record, my history of serving the public for the many years I’ve been involved. And I have my own reputation and my own word.”

Although Sugimura is battling from behind after finishing second in the primary by 13 percentage points, she isn’t using the allegations to attack frontrunner Bissen.

She declined to comment on the chief’s claims and instead is focusing on what she sees as lagging progress in the Lahaina fire recovery, one of the key issues in the race, and dissatisfaction with the direction of the county. 

“I believe that the most important thing … is really looking at the people of Maui County and understanding that there’s hurt out there,” she said. “Cost of living is a challenge, housing is a challenge, and our economy is challenging families. … We see people leaving, and it’s all tied to just the instability of our community.”

The incumbent mayor and council vice chair are making one last appeal to voters, investing much of their post-primary spending into advertising and focus groups that Bissen said would help his campaign understand what undecided voters are looking for.

In the primary, Bissen beat Sugimura by just over 4,200 votes. But the blank votes and ballots that went to the eight other candidates are enough for Sugimura to cover the margin, if she can woo them to her side. General elections also tend to attract more voters than primaries, so “you’ve got to be careful about reading too much into those primary results,” pointed out Hawaiʻi political analyst Colin Moore.

Moore thinks the race will be much more heated than it was in the primary, especially after the “October surprise” of the chief’s allegations against Bissen.

“Not every minor scandal rises to the level that most voters are paying attention to, but this one certainly does,” Moore said. “Among people who paid even passing attention to politics in the county, I bet 100% of them are very aware of this.”

Moore says the scenario this time around is different from when Bissen was heading into the primary following the lawsuit by his former chief of staff Leo Caires, who claimed he was fired for reporting fraudulent activity by a high-ranking official in Bissen’s administration. The lawsuit was filed more than three months before the Aug. 8 primary, and based on the election results, it didn’t appear to have derailed Bissen’s campaign.

But Pelletier is a higher profile figure, and his allegations came shortly before voters received their ballots.

“This is the thing about an accusation like this coming in so late,” Moore said. “There’s no time for the Bissen campaign to really develop a counter narrative or for people to have time to reflect on everything or for there to be further developments that will seem to indicate that one side is correct.”

Moore added that Bissen and Pelletier are “both respected figures.”

“The thing is, the chief isn’t running for election, and so it doesn’t really matter,” Moore said. “It matters for Bissen, and he’s in a tight race.”

Sugimura also chose not to go on the attack when Caires filed the lawsuit before the primary, saying she preferred to let the legal process run its course.

Bissen, for his part, has pushed back against the notion that the lawsuit and ongoing investigation into a former member of his administration is indicative of wider corruption.

“Anybody can file a lawsuit. … That’s their right,” he said. “But there is absolutely no place for corruption in my administration and … if anything has been brought to our attention, we’ve addressed it, and I think that’s what’s important to know.”

For Bissen to hold on to his lead and Sugimura to close the gap, “there’s only two fundamental strategies in any campaign: turnout and persuasion,” Moore said.

“I think for Bissen, they’re going to concentrate on turnout and how they can turn out people who already agree with and largely support him, but may not be inclined to mail in their ballot,” Moore said. “The people who didn’t support him in the first round are probably going to be more attracted to the change candidate.”

The election comes shortly after the three-year mark of the August 2023 wildfires, which struck just eight months into Bissen’s first term and could serve as one of the central issues that could sway voters one way or another.

The two candidates view the fire recovery very differently. In the three years since the disaster, Bissen sees progress in the debris that’s been moved and the homes that have been built; Sugimura sees delays in the businesses that have struggled to return. 

Over the last three years, Lahaina has morphed from a flattened landscape of smoking gray ash and rubble to a bustling construction zone of rebuilding and finished homes. As of the latest data available on the Maui County recovery dashboard, 614 homes have been completed in the burn zones, including 301 single-family and 313 multifamily units. Another 415 were under construction as of Oct. 2.

Bissen says he remembers standing in a Lahaina gymnasium in September 2023, telling a crowd of residents that it could take two to three years to start rebuilding their homes, based on the recovery of wildfire-ravaged communities in places like Northern California.

Just over a year later, in November 2024, he stood in the driveways of the first two homes to be rebuilt in Kula and Lahaina. Bissen noted that this was faster than in many other rebuilding towns, but said that speed shouldn’t be the only metric to measure the recovery by.

“We’re trying to go back safer, and we’re trying to go back better,” he said. “I know there’s people who just want to go faster. But that could be dangerous.”

He reported that as of Oct. 1, 2,423 of the 2,745 housing units lost in the 2023 wildfires (88%) have a “clear pathway” toward rebuilding, “whether through completed construction, active construction or advancement through the permitting process.” 

Bissen has long said that rebuilding residential has been the county’s priority over commercial in the recovery. The county partnered with the firm 4LEAF to expedite the permitting process, and it has rolled out multiple programs to fund rebuilding homes and help renters afford to buy places of their own. 

But Bissen said that doesn’t mean businesses weren’t allowed to apply for permits. He pointed out that several factors have prevented businesses from moving forward, and that many people “do not understand the complexity of the commercial rebuild in Lahaina.” It’s not as simple as putting up a structure, he said. There were roads to repave, damaged infrastructure to replace and access issues to resolve. 

Not everyone was ready to rebuild all at once. Each property owner faced a different challenge with financing and insurance, especially those who wanted to build on the ocean side of Front Street. Many uncertainties “have nothing to do with the county” and “everything to do with a personal decision,” he said.

Business owners have said they understood the need to rebuild housing, but they’ve also struggled with lost revenue and the uncertainty of the county’s plans in the first couple of years of the recovery.

This year, the county has started to ramp up permitting on the commercial side and launched an expedited permitting process earlier this month for certain properties on the ocean side of Front Street. This week, a blessing was held for 612 Front Street, the first commercial property to start rebuilding on the iconic road.

But Sugimura thinks the efforts to expedite commercial rebuilding should have happened sooner. Three years in, no commercial buildings have been rebuilt, and less than half of people affected by the wildfires were employed full time as of May, according to an ongoing University of Hawai‘i survey. 

Rather than rebuilding businesses, Sugimura said the administration has been emphasizing things like new railings and a new playground. She said “we can pretend that Lahaina looks good,” but walking down Front Street where the sidewalk is brand new and the properties are completely empty shows there is still a lot of work to do.

“There are many frustrated commercial businesses,” Sugimura said. “It should have come back simultaneously, right? Because you need a place for these working families to work. And all these businesses, they’re standing by, waiting patiently.”

Sugimura said the county needs to just let people build back what they had before instead of trying to recreate the town. For example, the county is offering 10 makai property owners, some with multiple lots, the option of a buyout in hopes of building a connected greenway that could create a buffer from sea level rise or storms. Part of the reason the county is doing so is because current local and state regulations will not allow all of the properties to rebuild as they were.

But, Sugimura said: “What’s happening with the administration is that we’re using the fire as a way of reenvisioning what Lahaina should look like. We need Front Street to be back the way it was.”

Sugimura said she would speed up commercial recovery by expediting outstanding permits, rebuilding “like for like” and working with state officials to expand or adjust emergency proclamations to accelerate permitting and rebuilding.

Sugimura, who spent part of her career helping to revitalize Wailuku town and organize the monthly First Friday party, disagreed with sentiments that Front Street wasn’t working for Lahaina before the fire, noting that it brought jobs and much-needed tourism dollars. She grew up on Maui with a version of Front Street where local business owners sold their wares on the first floor and lived on the second, and she wants to see that version return once more.

“That’s a character of the town that we want to capture again, and it provided jobs and opportunities for working families, wherever they lived,” she said.

Bissen said it’s unrealistic to think the recovery should be fully completed three years later. He said what Lahaina looks like and how it is rebuilt should be determined by the community. 

“You can look at the donut or you can look at the hole,” he said. “We prefer to look at what we have done. Look at what is there and not what’s not there.”

Moore said there’s “no doubt” that some people are frustrated with the rebuilding in Lahaina, but he noted that the primary election “showed that people seem to be more satisfied than some feared.”

“I think that’s why there was so much uncertainty about the primary, because it was a little hard to tell whether people were giving Bissen credit for the good work that had been done, or was there just a lot of people kind of simmering with this quiet fury about the performance of the administration,” Moore said. “The primary showed that on balance, people seem to evaluate his performance reasonably well.”

Before the chief’s allegations, Moore said he would be predicting another decisive victory for Bissen in November. Now, he said, “I’m not so sure.” He added that it was “smart” of Sugimura not to jump into the fray over the allegations against Bissen because there was no need for her to pile on, given how negative the claims are on their own.

“The story we tell about this election a year from now is either going to be how this accusation sunk the Bissen campaign or how he managed to still win despite this, although I think it’s going to be closer than it would have been before for sure,” Moore said.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of two stories looking at the stakes and the issues shaping the Maui County mayor’s race. Tomorrow’s story will feature a look at more top issues dividing the candidates.