Municipal elections in Honolulu, Hawaii (2016)

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The city of Honolulu, Hawaii, held elections for mayor and city council on November 8, 2016. A primary election took place on August 13, 2016. There were 11 candidates on the primary ballot running for mayor, including incumbent Kirk Caldwell. Caldwell was first elected to the position in 2012. The two candidates that were generally considered to be the mayor's biggest competition were Peter Carlisle, who previously served as Honolulu's mayor from 2010 to 2012, and Charles Djou, who served in the U.S. House from 2010 to 2011. Caldwell is a Democrat, Djou is a Republican, and Carlisle identifies as an Independent, although the race was technically nonpartisan. In the primary, Caldwell received about 44 percent of the vote and Djou got about 43 percent. The two faced each other in the general election. Major issues discussed by candidates during their campaigns were the transit rail system, cost of living, and homelessness. Read more about these issues below.

Five of the nine city council seats were also up for election. District 1 incumbent Kymberly Marcos Pine faced three opponents in the primary. She received 65 percent of the vote, winning re-election without having to run in the general. Ann Kobayashi (District 5), Joey Manahan, (District 7), and Ron Menor (District 9) each faced one challenger in November, and the District 3 councilman Ikaika Anderson ran unopposed. The filing deadline for candidates who wished to run in this election was June 7, 2016.

General election

Mayor

Note: Although elections in Honolulu are nonpartisan, Ballotpedia identified the partisan affiliation of the candidates in this race for informational purposes.
☑ Kirk Caldwell (i)
☐ Charles Djou

District 5

☐ Kimberly Case
☑ Ann Kobayashi (i)

District 7

☑ Joey Manahan (i)
☐ Chace Shigemasa

District 9

☑ Ron Menor (i)
☐ Emil Svrcina

Primary election

Mayor

☐ Kurt Baker
☐ Zachary Burd
☑ Kirk Caldwell (i)
☐ Ernest Caravalho
☐ Peter Carlisle
☑ Charles Djou
☐ Lawrence Friedman
☐ Tim Garry
☐ Ronald Hochuli
☐ Lillian Lai Lam Wang Hong
☐ Mike Powers

District 1

☐ Marc Anthony
☐ Tom Berg
☐ Kioni Dudley
☑ Kymberly Marcos Pine (i)

District 3

☑ Ikaika Anderson (i)

Elections results

Mayor of Honolulu, Primary Election, 2016
Candidate	Vote %	Votes
Kirk Caldwell Incumbent	44.61%	74,062
Charles Djou	43.69%	72,532
Peter Carlisle	9.36%	15,539
Lillian Lai Lam Wang Hong	0.69%	1,140
Ernest Caravalho	0.47%	781
Ronald Hochuli	0.38%	635
Kurt Baker	0.22%	360
Lawrence Friedman	0.21%	346
Mike Powers	0.19%	317
Tim Garry	0.13%	210
Zachary Burd	0.06%	97
Total Votes		166,019
Source: Hawaii.gov, "Primary Election Official Results," accessed November 28, 2016

Honolulu City Council District 1, Primary Election, 2016
Candidate	Vote %	Votes
Kymberly Marcos Pine Incumbent	65.16%	7,649
Kioni Dudley	16.94%	1,989
Tom Berg	13.67%	1,605
Marc Anthony	4.23%	496
Total Votes		11,739
Source: Hawaii.gov, "Primary Election Official Results," accessed November 28, 2016

Campaign finance

Candidates filed campaign finance reports in 2016 for the periods from January 1 to June 30, July 1 to July 29, and from July 30 to August 13. The first column in the chart below shows how much cash each candidate had on hand on the first of the year. Mayor Kirk Caldwell, the only candidate with an existing war chest, had $1,617,523. The next two columns are the combined amounts of contributions and expenditures from the two filing periods. The chart does not include candidates who did not file reports or whose reports showed that they had not raised nor spent any money.

As of August, Caldwell had spent far more money than any of the other candidates. His campaign spent over $500,000 in July alone. Charles Djou's campaign was busy as well, raising $255,507 during the month of July. This was more than the combined amounts of what Caldwell and Carlisle's campaigns raised during the month. By August 13, 2016, Caldwell's campaign had raised almost $3 million and had spent almost $2.5 million. His general election opponent, Djou, had raised about $650,000 and spent about $500,000.

Mayoral campaign finance amounts as of August 13, 2016
Candidate	Jan. 1, 2016	Contributions	Expenditures
Kirk Caldwell (i)	$1,617,523	$2,908,715	$2,432,886
Charles Djou	$0	$653,612	$506,923
Peter Carlisle	$0	$69,929	$52,796
Ernest Caravalho	$0	$100	$50
Ronald Hochuli	$0	$14,400	$11,025

Issues

Mayoral poll

According to a poll by the Honolulu Civil Beat published on August 3, Djou was leading the race with a 9-point lead over Caldwell. However, since a candidate would need to win over 50 percent of the vote in order to win the election outright in the primary, the poll suggested that two candidates (likely Djou and Caldwell) would have to face each other again in the general election.

The poll also asked participants to assign a level of importance to four different issues: the Honolulu Ethics Commission, homelessness, cost of living, and rail. Seventy-five percent gave rail a rating of 1, or "one of the most important" issues. Over 50 percent of respondents said homelessness and the cost of living were also some of the most important issues.

The poll surveyed 851 voters from July 25 to 27.

Rail system

The debate over a proposed rail system had begun several decades earlier by the time voters approved a city charter amendment in 2008 allowing the city to move forward with construction of a 20-mile elevated rail transit system. The city finally broke ground on the project in February 2011. The budget was initially projected to be $4.6 billion. By 2016, the budget had increased to $6.7 billion and the project was at least two years behind schedule. The increased timeline and budget, plus the city's congested traffic and high cost of living, put the rail issue at the center of the 2016 mayoral debate.

The initial plan was to have the rail run from Kapolei to Ala Moana. With the struggle to meet the increased costs, some officials raised the idea of stopping the rail at Middle Street, the 13th out of the 21 planned stops. According to a poll conducted in July 2016, 62 percent of respondents said the rail should go all the way to Ala Moana. Twenty-five percent said it should be ended immediately, and 10 percent thought it should end at Middle Street. Eighty-one percent said that property taxes should not be raised in order to build past Middle Street. When asked which mayoral candidate was best equipped to handle the project, 43 percent said Djou, 31 percent chose Caldwell, and 15 percent wanted Carlisle. The map below shows the route, with a marker at the Middle Street stop.

Caldwell expressed a desire to finish the rail all the way. He said he was looking for ways to cover the cost of the project. "I've talked with our state leaders -- both at the Legislature and in our business community. I've gone to the developers where rail has run asking how much would they be willing to pay to have stations built on their properties or through their properties," he said.

According to Carlisle's campaign website, he "has consistently supported an elevated rail project from Kapolei to Ala Moana and beyond as a key to Honolulu’s transportation future." As a way to work within the budget, Carlisle proposed finishing the rail with only the bare basics. He supported extending the General Excise Tax and said he would consider raising property taxes as a last resort.

Djou, however, said he would "veto any further tax increases for the rail system." He said he was open to various options for bringing the cost down, including converting some sections into bus rapid transit or bringing the rail cars down to street level. Bus rapid transit means running busses on the rail guideway and on dedicated bus lanes. In a debate, Caldwell and Carlisle accused Djou of having no plan at all for rail. "I just wish you would level with the people," said the mayor.

Housing and homelessness

According to 2015 statistics, Hawaii had the highest per capita rate of homelessness of all 50 states. Mayor Caldwell has used a strategy he calls "compassionate disruption" to address the problem. Compassionate disruption is a combination of trying to find housing for chronically homeless people and also enforcing laws that criminalize storing property, sitting, or lying on the sidewalk. Additionally, the city has used a Housing First program, where "you house someone first with their addictions, with their mental illness, and you help them get better," explained Caldwell.

Both Carlisle and Djou called Caldwell's efforts a failure, and pointed out that there was a one percent increase in homelessness from 2015 to 2016. The two agreed that the city should use a "personalized intervention and consequences" strategy, where each homeless person is assessed individually. "What we need to be doing is confronting them and getting counseling for them," said Djou. All three candidates, however, support laws that prevent people from sitting and lying on the sidewalks.

Djou proposed shifting money going to city initiatives towards nonprofits, while Carlisle proposed teaming up with the medical community to help address homelessness.

Closely related to the problem of homelessness is Honolulu's high cost of living and inadequate amount of affordable housing. According to the Honolulu Board of Realtors in November 2015, the median price of a single-family home on Oahu was $720,000. For those who rent, according to Rent Jungle, the average monthly rent as of July 2016 was $1,847 for a one bedroom and $2,771 for a two bedroom. The chart below shows the ten cities of the United States with the highest cost of living ranking. Honolulu, as of August 2016, was fourth after San Francisco, New York City, and Washington D.C. The website Expatistan explains how the cost of living index is calculated: "To calculate each cities' Cost of Living Index value, we start by assigning a value of 100 to a central reference city (that happens to be Prague). Once the reference point has been established, the Price Index value of every other city in the database is calculated by comparing their cost of living to the cost of living in Prague. Therefore, if a city has a Price Index of 134, that means that living there is 34% more expensive than living in Prague."

Mayor Caldwell said his efforts to increase affordable housing, including introducing and signing a bill allowing home owners to build small rental units on their property and waiving permitting fees in order to encourage development, was moving the city in the right direction. During his term, he proposed an affordable housing requirement for any large development. Djou and Carlisle said that too little progress was made during Caldwell's term. Both disapproved of the mayor's idea to establish an affordable housing requirement for developments. Carlisle said such a measure would push the cost of housing up. He supports using existing rules that require developers to subsidize affordable housing with the profits gained through luxury units. Djou proposed reforming the zoning code to allow more urban infill development. "If you look at the McCully-Moiliili area we have lots and lots of low-rises -- two-story and three-story low-rises -- that could easily accommodate more housing stock if it went from a two or three-story to ten or twelve or fifteen story housing stock," he said.

About the city

See also: Honolulu, Hawaii

Honolulu is a city in Hawaii. It is a consolidated city-county with Honolulu County. The city-county includes the city of Honolulu, the rest of the island of Oahu, and the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, with the exception of the Midway Islands which are controlled by the federal government. As of 2010, its population was 337,256.

City government

See also: Mayor-council government

The city of Honolulu uses a strong mayor and city council system. In this form of municipal government, the city council serves as the city's primary legislative body while the mayor serves as the city's chief executive.

Demographics

The following table displays demographic data provided by the United States Census Bureau.

Demographic Data for Honolulu, Hawaii
	Honolulu	Hawaii
Population	337,256	1,360,301
Land area (sq mi)	60	6,422
Race and ethnicity**
White	17.2%	25%
Black/African American	2%	1.8%
Asian	53.2%	37.8%
Native American	0.1%	0.3%
Pacific Islander	8%	10.1%
Two or more	18.4%	23.9%
Hispanic/Latino	7.3%	10.5%
Education
High school graduation rate	89%	92%
College graduation rate	37.2%	33%
Income
Median household income	$71,465	$81,275
Persons below poverty level	10.6%	9.4%
Source: population provided by U.S. Census Bureau, "Decennial Census" (2010). Other figures provided by U.S. Census Bureau, "American Community Survey" (5-year estimates 2014-2019).
**Note: Percentages for race and ethnicity may add up to more than 100 percent because respondents may report more than one race and the Hispanic/Latino ethnicity may be selected in conjunction with any race. Read more about race and ethnicity in the census here.

Recent news

The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms Honolulu Hawaii election. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.

Municipal elections in Honolulu, Hawaii (2016) - Google News

See also

Honolulu, Hawaii	Hawaii	Municipal government	Other local coverage
2014 Honolulu elections Honolulu, Hawaii Cities in Hawaii	2016 Hawaii elections Public policy in Hawaii Endorsers in Hawaii Hawaii	Top counties 100 largest cities Current mayors Current council officials	2016 municipal elections 2016 school board elections 2016 local ballot measure elections 2016 local judicial elections

External links

Suggest a link

• City of Honolulu
• Hawaii.gov, "2016 Candidates"