Rep. Karl Rhoads won re-election in 2012 for Hawaii House of Representatives District 29, which includes Kalihi, Palama, Iwilei and Chinatown. He currently serves as the chair of the Labor and Public Employment Committee and vice-chair of the Judiciary Committee. He was the 2012 recipient of the Chinatown Heroes Award.

Three of the key issues that Rhoads has advocated since he was elected into the Hawaii House of Representatives of 2006 are lowering housing costs, reducing area crime and improving the education system.

In 2010, Rhoads introduced legislation to reduce unemployment insurance taxes by $241 million over two years. The bill was voted in unanimously and became the second bill passed during the 2010 session.

Other of his bills which passed in 2007 to provide $151 million in funding to allow the State to purchase half of the Kukui Gardens affordable housing complex and maintain 857 affordable housing units for working families in the 28th District.

Rhoads is a member of the Chinatown Citizens Patrol, Downtown Neighborhood Board, Honolulu Tower Board of Directors, Pacific Gateway Center Board of Directors and the Sheridan Citizens Patrol.

Rhoads was first elected in 2006 to represent District 28, which includes Palama, Downtown and Sheridan. He has worked as an attorney with Perkin and Hosada and served as an intern to U.S. Senator John F. Kerry.

In the August 11 Democratic primary, Rhoads defeated Daniel Holt and went on to run unopposed in the general election in 2012.

Rhoads graduated with honors from George Washington University law school and went on to receive his masters in Soviet and Eastern European Area Studies from the University of London. He received a bachelors in history and a minor in chemistry from Andrews University in 1986.

• Rep. Rhoads’s official website.
• House of Representatives’s biography.

Hawaii State Capitol, Room 326
415 South Beretania Street
Honolulu, HI 96813
phone 808-586-6180; fax 808-586-6189
e-mail reprhoads@Capitol.hawaii.gov