Maui County Council Vice Chair Sugimura to challenge incumbent Bissen in 2026 election for mayor

Maui County Council Vice Chairperson Yuki Lei Sugimura said she will announce Friday morning that she is launching a bid for mayor against incumbent Richard Bissen. 

Sugimura, who described a run for mayor as part of her “life dream,” said her decision was spurred by years of working in government, including five terms on the County Council, and the recent passage of a bill proposed by Bissen to phase out thousands of vacation rentals in apartment districts. Sugimura holds the council’s Upcountry seat and was one of three dissenting members in the 5-3 vote in December. 

“I’m sure you feel the rumblings of what Bill 9 has done to our community,” Sugimura said in an interview with the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative on Thursday. “And that to me, I think, was probably the one thing that made me realize that it’s time.”

Bissen announced in November that he would seek reelection this year. When asked what he thought of Bill 9 spurring Sugimura’s run, he told the Hawaiʻi Journalism Initiative via email on Thursday: “I respect anyone who chooses to step forward and participate in the democratic process, and people run for office for different reasons — that’s part of a healthy public dialogue.” 

Bissen and Sugimura are two of the earliest candidates to throw their hat in the ring for the Maui County mayoral race. Feb. 2 will be the first day for candidates to pick up nomination papers, with June 2 the deadline to file, according to the County Clerk’s Office. The primarily election is set for Aug. 8 and the general election for Nov. 3.

Over the past year, the two candidates have been on opposite sides of one of the most sweeping measures to come before the council in years. 

In May 2024, flanked by Lahaina advocates and one of Sugimura’s council colleagues, Bissen proposed a bill that would phase out more than 7,000 short-term rentals in apartment districts. The hope was that the bill would create additional housing for the thousands of families displaced by the 2023 fires that destroyed over 2,200 structures in Lahaina and 26 in Kula. 

After months of passionate community debate during committee and full council meetings, the bill passed 5-3 by a council that was shorthanded after the death of Council Member Tasha Kama of Kahului in October.

Sugimura, the council’s vice chair and budget committee chair, opposed the bill. She said she was concerned about the economic impacts of a measure that was expected to slash property tax revenues — the county’s biggest source of income — by up to $60 million annually by 2029, and cut revenues from general excise taxes and transient accommodations taxes by a total of $15 million each year, according to an analysis by the University of Hawai‘i Economic Research Organization. 

She said she wasn’t satisfied by the administration’s solutions to address the shortfall and said that raising taxes and building already approved housing projects wouldn’t solve the problem.

“Those are the little things that became big things for me that set me in motion to think, ʻI’m going to do this,’” said Sugimura, adding that people had been urging her a year ago to run for mayor and she had turned them down at the time. 

Bissen maintains his support of the bill, which he signed into law last month. He said it would impact units mostly owned by off-island folks and serve as “part of a broader strategy to address Maui’s housing crisis, not a standalone solution.” He pointed out that while UHERO’s report assumes over 6,000 units would be impacted, the council’s Temporary Investigative Group has been working to lessen the potential economic ripples of the bill.

Bissen added that Bill 9 has already started to rebalance the housing market for residents with condo prices dropping in a show of “increased supply and downward pressure on costs.” 

“Bill 9 is a necessary first step in a long-overdue shift toward prioritizing housing for local residents,” Bissen said. 

Housing and cost of living are also part of what’s driving Sugimura to run. She said one of her top priorities will be the infrastructure issues that hold back affordable housing, calling it “pipes, permits and pavement.” The average building permit takes 300 days to process in Maui County, and Sugimura said she wants to cut that wait time down.

She said open government and turning policy into action are her other two focuses, as well as finding ways to efficiently spend the $1.6 billion in federal aid meant to help with Maui’s recovery from the 2023 wildfires.

While she lives in an Upcountry community that is still rebuilding homes and restoring the landscape after the fires, Sugimura said the Bissen administration’s handling of the wildfires was not what spurred her to run for office. In fact, she said, “I think everybody dealt with it in the best way that we could, including the administration. Never before — right? — have any of us experienced anything quite like this.”

As council members, Sugimura said she and her colleagues are able to set the policy, but it’s the administration who takes action to make it a reality. She hopes to do that if elected mayor, recalling the work she did under Mayor Kimo Apana’s administration in the late 1990s and early 2000s to help revitalize Wailuku town by holding cultural festivals and boosting small businesses. 

Sugimura was born and raised in a “vibrant” Wailuku where her father was a physician and made house calls that often resulted in gifts of chickens, mangos and in one instance, a cow. She said her dad’s work and her time as senior class president at Baldwin High School instilled in her the importance of community and public service. 

“My whole life, I’ve always been involved in helping people … and I knew that one day I wanted to go along this path,” Sugimura said. 

Her involvement in politics stretches back to the 1980s, when she worked on the campaign of former Hawai‘i Gov. George Ariyoshi. She also served as a field representative for former Hawai‘i Congressman Daniel Akaka, and current U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, and worked with former U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye as the Maui coordinator for a school repair program.

In 2016, she ran for and won the Upcountry council seat vacated by former Council Member Gladys Baisa, who had reached term limits.

While Bissen and Sugimura are both longtime public servants with deep Maui ties, Bissen said, “I don’t view this as a matchup between two comparable political figures,” pointing to his background in law. Bissen retired as chief judge of Maui’s 2nd Circuit Court in 2021 after a three-decade career as a prosecutor and judge. He ousted then-incumbent Mayor Michael Victorino in 2022. 

“I remain true to the approach I took in my first election: I am not running against anyone — I am running for the people of Maui,” Bissen said. “I chose to seek public office four years ago because, after decades of service as a prosecutor and judge, I felt a responsibility to continue serving our community and to help build a better future for our residents. That commitment has not changed.”

In addition to testing the sentiment of voters on Bill 9 and the recovery from the fire, the mayoral race will also test the voting base of the two candidates, who have previously both been backed by powerful labor unions. Last month, the Hawai‘i Government Employees Association, the state’s biggest public worker union, endorsed Bissen for mayor. The union also endorsed Sugimura for the council in 2024.

Sugimura, who is in her fifth council term, she said she’s looking forward to a matchup against Bissen. The Maui County Charter was amended in 2020 to limit council members to five terms, but the clock was reset for council members already serving at the time, so Sugimura could still serve two more terms.

“I think we both have our dreams of what we want to do … and I want to put it into action,” Sugimura said. “It’ll be tough, right? I’m running against an incumbent, but I hear those voices of people who come to testify in the chambers. I hear the voices of the people who came and visited me at the Upcountry Farmers Market.”