Rep. Andria Tupola, a 37-year-old music teacher-turned-legislator campaigning to be Hawaii’s governor, talked about how she would run state government during a livestreamed interview with Civil Beat on Thursday night.

Tupola said her vision includes a more responsive, town hall-style government with a more transparent state budget trimmed of waste. She also promised to reform the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands to do more to help Native Hawaiians.

Tupola called for people to take ownership of their communities and not simply rely on the government to fix problems.

Her infectious energy was on display throughout an hourlong interview with Civil Beat’s Chad Blair at Hawaii Pacific University’s Aloha Tower Marketplace campus. About 50 people came to hear Tupola speak in person at the fifth and final “Know Your Candidates” event, which was livestreamed on Facebook.

Tupola, who has served four years in the state House of Representatives, has emerged as the front-runner for the Republican nomination to face either Gov. David Ige or U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, who are locked in a fierce fight for the Democratic nomination.

A recent Civil Beat poll showed Tupola with a strong lead over former legislator John Carroll, an 88-year-old perennial candidate. She had 39 percent support among likely Republican primary voters compared to 22 percent for Carroll. Ray L’Heureux, a former state Department of Education assistant superintendent, trailed with 4 percent. Nearly 22 percent of respondents were undecided.

A graduate of Brigham Young University in Utah, Tupola did missionary work in Venezuela during the regime of socialist President Hugo Chavez.

The experience, she said, provided a cautionary example of what can happen when people start to rely too much on the government, only to have it fail to deliver on its promises. Her conviction that people needed to be more independent drew her to the small-government ethos expressed by the GOP, she said.

“I wanted smaller government,” she said. “I wanted less government in our lives.”

At the same time, she said, taking ownership of the government by getting involved in politics is something average citizens can do. The House minority leader said that during her short time in the House, she’s learned about government from generous, more experienced colleagues, including many Democrats.

“I always tell people, ‘If I can do it, so can you,’” she said. “I don’t have a law degree; I have a music degree.”

Tupola said many people fail to realize how much taxes contribute to the high cost of living in Hawaii.

“We need to cut taxes,” Tupola said. “We absolutely need to address the cost of living here.”

She said the government has too many assets that are not being used: vacant buildings, unused schools, airplane hangars; agricultural land going fallow; and antiquated special funds that merely hold tax dollars in accounts.

The Department of Education sucks up about half of the state’s budget she said, and a big portion of that goes to pay about 76,000 employees who are serving 150,000 students.

“At the end of the day,” she said, “people just want to see more money go to the students.”

A Kamehameha Schools graduate, Tupola said the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands has been failing in its mission. DHHL needs to look at its broad purpose under its enabling statute, the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, which she said is to enable Native Hawaiians to “thrive.”

The act, which was adopted in 1920, 39 years before statehood, calls for not just putting people into homes but also to “fully support self-sufficiency for native Hawaiians and the self-determination of native Hawaiians” and “the preservation of the values, traditions, and culture of native Hawaiians.”

Tupola said this means using money to build infrastructure not just for residential development, but also for irrigation for agriculture and other economic activities for Native Hawaiians.

“Why are we making a list (of qualified beneficiaries) if we don’t intend to make houses?” Tupola said. “We have to really see the vision clearly.”

She criticized Gov. David Ige for a lack of vision. She pointed to one of his signature achievements, bringing air-conditioning to 1,300 public school classrooms, and said that, while the accomplishment was worthy, it wasn’t all that impressive.

“If I had said ‘air-con’ as the governor I would have cooled every single school,” she said. “It would have been done in the first year.”

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