Start at the end of the road in Ka’ena Point State Park and drive east, then south, passing Mākaha, Nānākuli, Kapolei and ʻEwa Beach. Republicans represent every neighborhood along your route in one chamber or the other, until you’re a few blocks into Waipahu. 

The break doesn’t last. Continue east on Farrington Highway, then north on Kamehameha Highway, and you’ve just driven through two Senate seats Republicans hope to win in November and the council district of a former House Republican leader. Once you reach Mililani, you’re in a community that has elected three of them. One of them was me.

Keep going north, and just past Whitmore Village, you’re in another Republican-held Senate district until you reach Heeia State Park. Republicans hold 13 seats in the House and Senate. Ten of them are in this corridor.

In November, that corridor will be the one to watch.

It’s hard to argue that Republicans will pick up seats in any local election. It’s especially difficult when the picture looks so bleak for the party nationally, with President Trump’s approval rating hovering below 40%. Besides, Hawai‘i Republicans have already reached their highest numbers since the early 2000s. Is there any possibility for growth in this year of all years? Probably more than you think.

Democrats Have Lost Their Share Of The Vote

As Kevin Dayton and Chad Blair reported in Civil Beat Sunday, Republicans have an opportunity to increase their influence in the Legislature this year. If they secure just one additional House seat, the House rules will allow them to force roll call votes on the floor, prompting public debate on issues that Democrats might want to avoid. West Oʻahu could provide the crucial margin.

The Republican share of the vote here has been climbing for years. I won my Mililani seat in 2012 against a Democratic incumbent. That same year, Lauren Matsumoto won a Central Oʻahu seat that took in part of Mililani, Bob McDermott won an open seat in ʻEwa Beach, and Richard Fale held a Republican district on the North Shore. Two years later, Andria Tupola was elected to the House in a district that ran from Nanakuli to ʻEwa.

In the last 10 years, the gains have come faster. In ‘Ewa Beach’s House District 41, the share of primary voters who pulled a Republican ballot tripled between 2018 and 2022, from 12% to 38%. Trump’s share of the vote in Waipahu rose nearly 20 points between 2016 and 2024, to 47%. Two years ago, Republicans picked up three House seats and a third senator, their largest caucus in 20 years. Samantha DeCorte flipped the Waianae Coast, and Chris Muraoka won an open House seat in Waianae. 

It’s fair to ask how much of that was Trump on the ballot. Some of it was. But turnout in 2024 was 60.7%, down from 69.7% in 2020, and Trump drew fewer votes in Hawai‘i than he had four years earlier, 193,661 to 196,864. What changed was on the Democratic side. Kamala Harris won 313,044 votes here, roughly 53,000 fewer than Joe Biden. 

Republicans didn’t grow their vote. Democrats just lost more of theirs. This year, with no presidential race and no competitive statewide contest to drive turnout, enthusiasm decides everything.

Nothing dampens enthusiasm like a corruption case, and this one belongs to Democrats. In July, five people were indicted in the Covid-19 testing bribery case: Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke, former Rep. Ryan Yamane, a state airports administrator, Luke’s former campaign treasurer, and lobbyist Tobi Solidum. Four have pleaded not guilty.

The case reaches straight into this corridor. Yamane represented Mililani and Waipio Gentry, next door to the seat the House Republican leader holds now. The case against him and Luke grew out of a 2022 dinner secretly recorded by former Rep. Ty Cullen, who represented Royal Kunia, Village Park, and part of Waipahu until he pleaded guilty in a separate federal bribery case and served 11 months in prison. 

That ground is Republican now. Both Senate seats Republicans hope to win this fall include those same neighborhoods.

Lessons From The Last Republican Wave

That’s not impossible. Hawai‘i has been here before. A year after the Bishop Estate scandal broke in 1997, Linda Lingle came within about 5,000 votes of beating Ben Cayetano. Republicans didn’t gain a single legislative seat that year, but two years later they won 19 House seats, their modern high, and Lingle took the governorship in 2002. 

Voters here rarely pick Republicans for the national party’s platform. They pick them when Democrats fail to live up to their own. That’s the same bet in a handful of Central and Leeward Oʻahu races this fall.

Two Senate seats in the area opened mid-term: Sen. Michelle Kidani retired in June, and Sen. Henry Aquino resigned last year. Gov. Josh Green appointed replacements in each, and both seats are on the November ballot for the rest of those terms. 

Republicans are contesting both, with Rep. Elijah Pierick running in District 19, covering Pearl City and Waipahu, and Kelly Kitashima in District 18, which runs from Mililani to Royal Kunia. Republicans will also be defending ‘Ewa Beach, where Sen. Kurt Fevella lost his primary to former Rep. Bob McDermott in a tiebreaker after the two finished in an exact tie. The other two Republican senators aren’t on the ballot this year.

In the House, Republican incumbents Lauren Matsumoto in Mililani and David Alcos in ʻEwa Beach, drew no Democratic opponent and have already won. A third seat, in Kapolei, stays Republican either way: the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court ordered a new Election Day contest between two Republicans following a tie. 

Ideas showcases stories, opinion and analysis about Hawaiʻi, from the state’s sharpest thinkers, to stretch our collective thinking about a problem or an issue. Email news@civilbeat.org to submit an idea or an essay.

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Three more Republican incumbents are defending against Democratic challengers: Diamond Garcia in ‘Ewa and Kapolei, Julie Reyes Oda in ‘Ewa Beach, and Chris Muraoka in Waianae. However, Pierick’s former seat is the most likely Democratic pick-up, with Corey Rosenlee, who lost it by 11 votes in 2024, back in the running. 

There’s also been some conversation about the GOP flipping House Majority Leader Sean Quinlan’s seat on the North Shore, but I doubt that one moves. His Republican opponent, at the time, more than quadrupled his primary vote in November 2024 and still lost by more than 1,200.

The real opportunities this year are in the Senate, and that’s largely because Republicans have already taken so much of this ground in the House.

None of that adds up to a wave. Hawaiʻi isn’t turning Republican. But one stretch of Oʻahu is no longer reliably Democratic, and it could become even less so in November. Enthusiasm, not persuasion, is what will decide these races. Improbably, the energy seems like it’s on the Republican side.