The race for Maui County mayor features a crowded field of 10 candidates, but two of three polls show County Council Vice Chair Yuki Sugimura with an early lead over incumbent Richard Bissen with two months to go before the August 8 primary election.

The contest is the most packed mayoral primary since the 11-candidate field in 2010 and has two more competitors than the 2022 primary when Bissen successfully challenged then-incumbent Mayor Michael Victorino. 

Now, with the primary election contests set, the other mayoral candidates are: John Dunbar, Justin Herrmann, P. Denise La Costa, Travis Liggett, Joseph Moses, Amy Petterson, Callahan Welsh and Laurent Zahnd.

Political observers and pollsters see Sugimura, the five-term council member from Upcountry, as the primary challenger to Bissen. Two polls show her with a lead of over 10 percentage points, though the Bissen campaign says its own polling shows him with a 6-point lead. All of the polls show enough undecided voters to swing the election either way, but none mention any of the other candidates.

“When there are polls like this showing two different leaders, at the very least, you can conclude that it is an extremely competitive race with no clear leader at the moment,” said political scientist Colin Moore, director of the Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution. 

Bissen said he looks forward to defending his seat.

“I’m excited to talk about our records that each of us has, talk about the progress and the momentum that we’ve made,” he said Friday.

But Moore said Bissen could be “in real trouble” if the results hold from two recent polls.

In one poll of 400 likely Maui County primary voters conducted by Tulchin Research from May 11-17, 47% of voters said they would choose Sugimura and 33% would go for Bissen, with 20% undecided. 

Sugimura’s position “has strengthened significantly” since Tulchin’s last poll in December when it tested the waters for a potential mayoral run by the council member. At the time, she had polled 37% to Bissen’s 33%, with 31% undecided. 

In the May poll, 62% of the participants said Maui County was headed in the wrong direction, with the cost of housing and rent, inflation and rising costs, and government corruption listed as the top three issues. Sixty-three percent said they disapproved of the job Bissen had done to make Maui more affordable, and 50% said they disapproved of his work to reduce corruption. 

Tulchin did not respond to an inquiry as to who had requested and paid for the poll, which was posted on the website For a Better Tomorrow, a super PAC that spent heavily on political ads for the 2024 Maui County races in favor of candidates including Sugimura. 

Sugimura said her campaign did not commission or fund the poll. 

Another poll by Honolulu-based Ward Research surveyed 407 registered adult Maui County voters from March 23 to April 23 and found that Sugimura led with 46% to Bissen’s 35%, with 15% undecided and 5% saying neither. 

Despite favoring Sugimura, 50% of the poll participants said they thought Bissen was doing a good job, with another 11% believing he’d done an excellent job. Another 32% said he was doing a poor or very poor job. 

They also generally approved of the nine-member council, with 48% saying it was doing a good job and 3% noting an excellent job. Another 38% felt the council had been doing a poor or very poor job. 

These voters were more split as to the direction of the county, with 42% saying it was headed in the wrong direction, 41% saying it was headed in the right direction and 17% unsure. Affordable housing, the cost of living and the economy were again the top issues. 

When asked who had requested the poll, Ward Research told the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative that it “does not disclose confidential client information” but that “neither the Bissen nor Sugimura campaigns commissioned or funded this poll.” 

The poll was sent to Pacific Media Group by Maui Nui Empowered, an advocacy group that supports the moderate council majority that includes Sugimura. Maui Nui Empowered did not immediately respond to an inquiry on Friday. 

The Bissen campaign’s poll, which was done by Lake Research Partners and paid for by the Bissen campaign, surveyed 406 likely general election voters in Maui County from May 12-18. 

Pollsters found that on an initial ballot with no information about the candidates, Bissen led Sugimura, “his most prominent opponent,” 41% to 34%, with 19% undecided. “After positive introductions to both candidates,” Bissen still led with 46% to Sugimura’s 40%, with 10% undecided, according to a portion of the report that the campaign shared with the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative. They declined to share the entire poll.

Moore said the differences in the polls may be due to the methods used and the voters who responded. But, it’s enough data to get a glimpse of where voters may be headed. 

“When you have Sugimura leading him pretty substantially in two separate polls … that gives me a lot of faith that this is an accurate reflection of public opinion,” Moore said. “And that’s pretty far behind to be for an incumbent mayor at this stage.”

However, Moore said there is still plenty of time for Bissen to close the gap through “sharp campaigning, trying to refocus the message of the campaign about what he’s done to improve the affordable housing position.” 

“This really seems to be much less about the fire than I would have expected,” Moore said. “Voters are much more concerned about the state of the economy and affordability than anything else.” 

Maui County voters have proved willing to unseat incumbent mayors. Since 1999, only Alan Arakawa has served two consecutive mayoral terms in Maui County, according to Office of Elections records. Three others — James “Kimo” Apana, Charmaine Tavares and Victorino — served one term before losing their reelection bid.

Sugimura could benefit from anti-incumbency sentiment, but the other candidates in the primary are more likely to take votes from her “because these are going to be people who aren’t backing Bissen,” Moore pointed out. Usually, “more candidates in a race hurts the challenger.”

But the primary only determines the top two vote-getters who then will go head-to-head in the general election on Nov. 3.

Now, to distance himself from Sugimura, Bissen said he plans to leverage his first-term record. Poll respondents took issue with his progress on housing and affordability, but Bissen said that his administration has delivered 880 affordable and workforce homes — an average of 293 a year since 2023 — with plans to deliver another 3,000 affordable and workforce homes by 2030. 

He’s adamant that the contentious Bill 9, which he had described as a “bold” measure to phase out thousands of vacation rentals in apartment districts, will create more housing for local families, pointing out that condo prices have already started to drop. A University of Hawai‘i report noted it could add more than 6,000 housing units to the local housing stock but also eliminate up to $60 million in annual tax revenues and many jobs. Sugimura was one of three dissenting votes when the council passed the bill last year, but with later implementation dates than initially proposed.

Bissen said in April that he knows not everyone is happy with the progress of the fire recovery but that the county is “working as hard as possible” to move forward. He says the county’s strong relationship with federal officials is the reason it landed a $1.6 billion disaster relief grant.

He pointed out that the county has invested in better emergency preparation, including more emergency management staff and firefighters, real-time emergency notifications and plans to open a new Emergency Operations Center in July. 

“That is the number one priority for me, is making sure that our neighborhoods are safe and our people are safe, and I know we’ve made great strides in that area,” Bissen said. 

As he heads to the primary, Bissen is not only facing nine other candidates but also a lawsuit filed in April by former chief of staff Leo Caires that the mayor says was politically motivated. Caires alleged he was fired for reporting fraudulent activity; Bissen has denied all of the allegations. One of the incidents Caires claims to have blown the whistle on was the improper use of grants by former Office of Economic Development Director Luana Mahi, who was fired and remains under investigation by the state Attorney General’s Office.

Responding to voters who felt he hadn’t done enough to root out corruption, Bissen said he couldn’t speak to the actions of certain individuals, but “when something came to our attention, we took action.” 

“I’ve spent a career as a prosecutor, as an AG (attorney general), as a judge not tolerating that,” he said. “And I don’t tolerate it now.”

Bissen said he and Sugimura spoke before she announced her candidacy for mayor in January and agreed to run clean races focused on “solutions instead of personal attacks.”

Sugimura sees Bill 9 and the lagging recovery for businesses in Lahaina as some of the issues that will distinguish her from Bissen. Bill 9 was a big driver behind her decision to run.

“I don’t think you build houses by taking somebody else’s house away,” she said Thursday. 

The concerns voters expressed in the polls for more economic development, jobs and housing are “the exact reasons why I’m running,” Sugimura said. She pointed out that from fiscal year 2018 to 2026, she has voted in support of affordable housing projects totaling more than 5,000 units. She pointed out the council can only approve projects, not create them, and one of the reason she wants to be mayor is so that she can have a more proactive role in getting housing built.

Sugimura, the budget chair, also is approaching her candidacy with an economic lens, pointing out she has experience revitalizing small towns from her work with the Office of Economic Development and expressing interest in investing in more job opportunities at the Maui Research and Technology Park, now known as Līpoa in Kīhei.

With the fire recovery in its third year, Sugimura thinks “more needs to get done,” especially for the businesses who feel left behind as the town takes shape. Bissen has publicly acknowledged that the priority is rebuilding homes. Sugimura said she would have pushed for businesses to develop alongside homes so jobs would be ready when people return.

Sugimura said she was “very grateful” to hear the results of the polls and said her campaign is ramping up now that budget season is over.

“We have a long road ahead of us,” she said.

Moore said Bissen and Sugimura are the likely frontrunners because they’re the most well known, but the rest of the field could impact the results depending on who they take votes away from.

La Costa, with her focus on repealing Bill 9, could dip into the same pool of disillusioned voters as Sugimura. The Launiupoko resident and real estate business owner has been campaigning to position herself as the primary change candidate to the incumbent politicians. She blames Sugimura for the shortage of affordable housing and Bissen for the delay in getting businesses back to Lahaina after the fire.

La Costa is running on a platform that includes cutting costs to save families up to $1,200 a year, transparent government and a repeal of Bill 9, which she said is worsening the housing crisis.

“Our mayor has chosen division as a political strategy,” La Costa said during a campaign event laying out her housing plan in March. “He has pitted local families against each other, against newcomers, against lifelong residents and transplant … and using the politics of resentment to build support for policies that hurt everyone.”

La Costa, who announced her candidacy in January, called the recent polls “disturbing in that the presumption is only those two are qualified or will be elected.” La Costa said her campaign’s own internal poll found that many voters would choose her. When asked for the full results and the number of people surveyed, La Costa said the campaign was not comfortable releasing the data “for competitive reasons.”

While it’s tough to beat established incumbents, Moore pointed out that Maui is a small enough community that “old-fashioned door-to-door campaigning, I think, still goes a long way.” Having a signature issue could also help a candidate stand out in a crowded field. 

Liggett, for example, is passionate about wastewater disinfection, especially in reducing pathogen levels from effluent that makes it to the ocean through injection wells. Liggett said he’s been working on a site called FlushAware.com to help people learn where their waste goes, and co-founded a nonprofit called Kai Action Institute aimed at funding reef-safe ultraviolet wastewater disinfection.

“To me, this cannot wait, so after almost five years of asking for change, I decided to elevate this important core human and ocean ecosystem health issue to the forefront of the public’s perception,” said Liggett, a former NASA research engineer who is also campaigning on housing security and watershed restoration.

Welsh, a Marine veteran, standup comedian and actor, is proposing a $100,000 annual living wage for critical workers such as first responders and teachers, part of his platform to protect “our resources, our land and the local workforce that keeps Maui running.”

“We cannot protect Maui if we keep pricing out the people who save our lives and educate our children,” Welsh said.

Welsh, who said he is running because of “too much development and overpopulation,” wants a cap on transplants moving to Maui so Hawaiians can get priority for affordable housing and a plan to prioritize water resources for residents.

Petterson, who evacuated during the 2023 Kula wildfire and helped with the initial Lahaina cleanup, said the county’s “insistence on focusing on reaction instead of proaction ended up being the last straw that finally pushed me into stepping forward.”

Still, the 2020 King Kekaulike High School graduate thinks other issues are getting lost in the focus on the wildfire cleanup and the housing and water crises. Her three-pronged platform includes improving permit processing, building another agricultural park to ease Maui’s dependence on imported food and taxing the ultra-wealthy who own second homes on Maui. 

“There is so much that needs to be done, that should have been handled long ago,” Petterson said Friday. “I want to properly address these problems that have gone ignored for years.”

Zahnd thinks Bissen should have resigned after the deadly 2023 blaze and is frustrated with the lag in getting aid to businesses and permits for rebuilding. He said if elected, he’d issue all building permits for Front Street and other fire-damaged structures in his first month in office. 

“I don’t care what amount of pressure or negotiation tactics it will require!” he said via email on Friday.

Helping unhoused people who want to work and making government more efficient are also priorities for Zahnd, who ran for mayor in 2018 and received 108 votes, or 0.3%. He said he decided to run this year because he “was already staggered by the magnitude of crimes endured by the Kama‘āina of these islands.”

Dunbar, Moses and Hermann did not respond to a request for comment. 

Moore said with an incumbent and popular challenger, it will be tough for any other candidate to gain ground.

“It’s extremely unlikely that any other candidates are going to emerge as even remotely competitive in this ‘cause it’s crowded,” he said. “You have an incumbent mayor, you have a popular challenger, so voters aren’t really looking for a third choice.”