Improve people’s lives. Break down barriers. Raise the minimum wage. Amplify the voices of the working class. Give young people a reason to stay.

All of those are reasons for Christy MacPherson to run her first race for public office, the Senate District 14 seat that includes Kapālama, ‘Ālewa, Kalihi, Kalihi Valley, Ft. Shafter, Moanalua Gardens and Valley and Red Hill.

But the main reason MacPherson, a longtime community activist, is running in the Democratic primary is because she is angry.

“I’m angry at the fact that I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” she said as she drove a reporter around the heart of the district, Kalihi. “I have been doing advocacy and organizing and social work for 30 years, and I’ve just seen how people are just completely disregarded in that building.”

By “that building” MacPherson means the State Capitol. She explained that she does not think most people who run for office have the intention of quickly forgetting about the people who sent them there. But before they know it, she said, they have become career politicians, some with their eyes already on higher office.

“Whereas for me, I’m just here to serve my community for as much time as I can in an effective way, and then I’m going to know it’s time for me to step down,” she said.

There is, however, one very major obstacle to MacPherson finding her way into her own office in the Big Square Building On Beretania. Her name is Donna Kim.

First elected to the Legislature in 1982, Kim left after one term in the state House of Representatives to spend 16 years on the Honolulu City Council (there were no term limits at the time).

She then ran successfully for the state Senate in 2000 and has been there ever since (there are no term limits at the Legislature), including a stint as Senate president. Kim is part of the ruling clique and chairs what used to be two separate committees, one for higher education and the other for K-12. It’s now just the Senate Education Committee.

The Department of Education alone has a $2 billion budget and the University of Hawaiʻi system is a $1 billion enterprise. Kim is legendary for interrogating school officials on how they spend their funding.

So formidable is her political power that she ran unopposed in the 2020 and 2022 Democratic primaries. She defeated her Republican opponent in the 2022 general by a nearly 3-to-1 margin.

MacPherson is undaunted and took the unusual step of beginning her campaign well over a year ago.

“I’m running against a woman who’s been in office for 44 years,” she acknowledged. “People would look at me like I was absolutely crazy. They would look at me and say, ‘Whoa. Wow. Like, you have an uphill battle.’”

But MacPherson said she believes that running for this office at this time is meant to be a culmination of all that she has done and learned and the many people she has connected with.

“It just feels like a natural,” she said. “So, win or lose, I’m just really enjoying this. I’m enjoying this moment.”

A Pastor’s Daughter

MacPherson’s family goes back four generations in Hawaiʻi, with her maternal great-grandparents coming to the islands from Japan as early as the late 1800s.

“My great-grandpa Asahina was one of the first Japanese immigrants to Hawaiʻi,” she explained. MacPherson is her maiden name and her “haole side,” as she calls it, includes Scottish, English and Dutch.

Community service and social equity are in her DNA. Her father is the Rev. Neal MacPherson, who led Church of the Crossroads for 20 years. Christy is a licensed clinical social worker who serves as director of community engagement for Hawai‘i Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice.

The drive around Kalihi included stops at the YMCA where she got her first job at 21 as a substance abuse counselor. She worked with at-risk teens struggling with drugs and gangs at Farrington and McKinley high schools.

The work proved formative.

“I think I learned patience, patience for people, and just kind of a clear understanding of how people’s lives really have an impact on their behavior,” she said. ”And so we can’t be so quick to judge people because they all come from somewhere. I learned that they’re a product of their environment and they’re a product of the way they were raised, and sometimes there’s intergenerational trauma.”

MacPherson began learning how the Legislature works while employed with Faith Action for Community Equity, which she recalls as something of a legislative powerhouse in the 1990s but has since faded in influence.

“I mean, we worked with everyone,” she said, naming former legislators Suzanne Chun Oakland and Dennis Arakaki, former governors Ben Cayetano and Linda Lingle and former Honolulu mayors Mufi Hannemann and Jeremy Harris.

“That’s where I learned organizing,” said MacPherson “That’s where I learned the value of really coming together as a community and fighting for something that you all agree is what is needed. It wasn’t all this polarizing stuff today. It was just pure bread and butter stuff.”

A major focus was on public housing. The drive with MacPherson included Kalihi Valley Homes, known as Kam IV because its along Kamehameha IV Road. She pointed out a shuttered recreational center.

“That’s a perfectly good place for teenagers to convene and to play basketball, shoot hoops, whatever,” she remarked. “And look, it’s just dormant.”

Another stop was at Kūhiō Park Terrace, home to many newer immigrant populations. Like Kam IV, some parts of KPT appear well tended to. But it also under redevelopment, notably a section of low-rises that will mean some families are dislocated.

“It’s going to be mixed use, but you know the residents here were very against it, because they said ‘This is our home, you’re tearing down our homes,’” said MacPherson. “That’s why I’m running, because I see so many things. I’m not going to pretend I’m going to go in there and get money for this and that. It doesn’t work like that. But at least I can bring awareness.”

MacPherson continued: “These are the forgotten people. These are people who don’t have any political clout. Many of them can’t even vote because they’re not U.S. citizens. These are the kind of people I love to work with.”

Kim: People Want A ‘Strong Voice’

MacPherson has the support of three of Hawai‘i’s major labor unions: the Hawaii Government Employees Association, University of Hawaii Professional Assembly and Unite Here Local 5.

“She was on the frontlines of fighting for the historic minimum wage increase,” Randy Perreira, HGEA’s executive director, said in an email. “She’s quietly, effectively organizing for vulnerable populations in her community. And, unlike the incumbent, she listens to our concerns and doesn’t act like she knows better than the people doing the work.”

The HGEA, the state’s largest and one of its most influential unions, is focused heavily on taking down Donna Kim. That effort almost overshadow’s MacPherson’s candidacy.

“She berates public servants in her committee hearings,” Perreira said of Kim. “She tries to micromanage government employees by showing up unannounced at their schools. She crossed the line when she took to the Senate floor and called school employees ‘mob-like’ simply for exercising their free speech rights by testifying against her proposal to change how principals are selected and evaluated. And she tried to claw back telework for public employees, even as our members report working harder and longer when they are given more flexibility.”

In an interview with Civil Beat, Kim declined to say much about HGEA.

“I don’t want to be distracted by some of these attacks because I’m paying attention to the district and what the people in the district want and expect from me,” she said.

What constituents are telling her, Kim said, is they very much want her to stay in office.

“People tell me when I keep saying that it’s getting time to pass the baton and get the younger people involved — which is why Micah Aiu, my son, is running (for the House) — and they tell me ‘No, no, we need you there,” she said. “So I’m very much encouraged by people saying we really need you to stay in. So that’s part of it.”

Another reason, said Kim, is her mission to hold government accountable and to be a voice for the people.

“They want a strong voice,” she said.

Kim described Senate District 14 as diverse: many seniors in Moanalua and longtime residents, public housing and transient communities in Kalihi, and ‘Ālewa, which is somewhere in between.

“And so they have all different needs within the community themselves,” said Kim. “But you know, most of them want me to fight for them. They want me to to speak out and ask these questions. There used to be a time — and probably before your time, Chad — where the media loved it when I asked these questions, because that’s where they write these stories. But now they’re like, ‘OK,’she’s being a bully by asking these questions.'”

Does Kim think she is intimidating?

“I always tell this to people: I’m 5-foot-3. I mean, am I going to shoot them? I don’t know why I’m so intimidating. The questions I ask — and you know that because you sit in the hearing — are basic questions, right? It’s not like I’m asking them for an equation or some scientific formula. I ask them, ‘OK, how much money did you guys spend? How much do you have left? Why? How come you didn’t do that? So I don’t know how I intimidate people.”

As a veteran lawmaker in a powerful post, Kim does not have difficulty raising campaign money. Her latest filing with the state shows her having easily out-raised and outspent MacPherson.

Befitting her position, Kim’s recent contributors include a who’s who of the donor class in Hawaiʻi politics: the Hawaiʻi State Teachers Association, ILWU Local 142 PAC, the Hawaii Regional Council of Carpenters PAC Fund, Patsy T. Mink PAC, Alexander & Baldwin Inc. HIPAC, Hawaiian Electric CEG, business executives such as Mark Fukunaga, Mark Mugiishi and Patrick Sullivan and lobbyists like Ross Yamasaki, Mitchell Imanaka and Jennifer Sabas.

Kim argues that she deserves another term because she brings money into her district for work at area schools. She can also get just about anyone on the phone and get things done. But it takes time to get to that position.

‘Relationships are really important in the legislative process,” Kim explained. “It’s being able to get your colleagues to understand what’s going on in your district and to support you and to support your district. Because you cannot do it by yourself. Things don’t get done, bills don’t get passed.”

“And it’s not just my colleagues and in the building,” Kim continued,”it’s in the agencies and the departments and in the city. I have a lot of contacts because I was on the City Council. I can pick up the phone and talk to Roger Morton (Honolulu Department of Transportation Services director) when I have a problem with the city’s streets and stuff like that. And they come to my town meetings and they take the time out. But those kinds of relationships take a while to develop, and of course times change. But some of them are there for a long time, and having that relationship benefits the community.”