Anyone who thinks local candidate forums are boring did not attend the K\u012bhei Community Association\u2019s event on June 16 featuring nine of the 10 people running for mayor of Maui County.<\/p>\n One candidate, who said he is a former NASA engineer and passionate about wastewater, admitted with great pride that his nickname is \u201cTravi-poo.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m huggable and all I talk about is s\u2014,\u201d Travis Liggett said, drawing laughs from the capacity crowd in the ProArts Playhouse.<\/p>\n Another candidate, who said he spent 20 years with the Navy SEAL team, was asked how he would work with the state to solve the issue surrounding K\u012bhe\u02bbi\u2019s controversial roundabout with speedbumps, which was installed in front of the new K\u016blanih\u0101ko\u02bbi High School instead of an overpass or underpass that was mandated by the state Land Use Commission for the safety of children crossing the busy four-lane Pi\u02bbilani Highway. <\/p>\n \u201cYou ready for this?\u201d John Dunbar asked the crowd. \u201cThe kids will love it. A zip line.\u201d<\/p>\n As the United States celebrates its 250th birthday, one of the rights of its citizens is to run for office. <\/p>\n Most entry level jobs have a longer list of necessary skills, qualifications and education that those for Maui County Mayor, who is responsible for directing executive departments, managing day-to-day government operations, enforcing county laws, and overseeing a budget of $1.6 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n For Maui County, the qualifications for running for mayor<\/a> are one year of residency prior to filing and being a qualified voter of Maui County, which requires being a U.S. citizen, at least 18 years old and a county resident. That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n But any person sentenced for a felony<\/a>, from the time of the person\u2019s sentence until the person\u2019s final discharge, may not be a candidate in Hawai\u02bbi, including the period of probation or parole.<\/p>\n A mayoral candidate must also complete a nomination paper signed by at least 15 people who are registered voters in the county and pay a filing fee of $500, which can be discounted to $50 if a candidate abides by the state\u2019s voluntary campaign expenditure limits.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s one of my favorite aspects of politics is the fact that all of these folks get to run no matter how realistic their candidacies are,\u201d said political scientist Colin Moore, an associate professor with the University of Hawai\u02bbi Economic Research Organization. \u201cAnd sometimes they bring up really important issues, and sometimes they help shift the nature of what the mainstream candidates are talking about.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd sometimes it\u2019s just really entertaining.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of the candidates at the June forum provided much comedy relief from the line of questioning around some of the tough issues Maui is facing, including affordable housing, fire recovery, flooding and water supply. And, that was despite the absence of the 10th candidate, Callahan Welsh, who is a working stand-up comic and recently performed at the HaHa Comedy Club<\/a> in North Hollywood, Calif.<\/p>\n Others are resorting to pop culture and catchy graphics to send a message. Candidate Laurent Zahnd\u2019s official website features a cartoon figure of a man holding a machete and wearing what looks like Jason\u2019s hockey mask from the Friday the 13th movies. It says: \u201cWho GONNA cut thru ALL this political BS and do what\u2019s RIGHT & beneficial for ALL?\u201d<\/p>\n At the forum, Zahnd, who wore a red hat that said \u201cPreach\u201d and a blue shirt that said \u201cInvestigate Mayor Bissen\u201d said: \u201cI\u2019m running because we\u2019re facing some pretty intense evil\u201d that involves the \u201clongest series of genocidal crime in modern history.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo what are crimes of genocide? You would think like that\u2019s when we chop up people and we burn them in mass graves, right? But no, it\u2019s to suppress one people, to suppress their ability to be their own people. And that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing here in Hawai\u02bbi for more than 130 years.\u201d<\/p>\n After Zahnd provided his opening two minutes, John Laney, president of the community association and moderator of the forum, told the crowd: \u201cEveryone gets to have their opinion, their perspectives, and viewpoints. And so we\u2019re here to get to know who these people are, what they think, what they believe. And so that\u2019s what we\u2019re finding out, right?\u201d<\/p>\n One member of the audience responded: \u201cWe are so in trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n The Maui County race for mayor has two clear frontrunners<\/a>, current mayor Richard Bissen, who is Native Hawaiian, and longtime County Council member Yuki Lei Sugimura, with P. Denise La Costa<\/a>, owner of La Costa Realty Hawai\u02bbi and a former chair of the Maui Planning Commission, a long shot.<\/p>\n La Costa, who wants to repeal Bill 9, the short-term rental phase-out ordinance introduced by Bissen and passed by the County Council, has been hitting the campaign trail the hardest of any of the non-frontrunners, with a slew of attack ads against Bissen and Sugimura.<\/p>\n Of the other seven, past election results and some of the candidates\u2019 own acknowledgements indicate their likelihood of winning is slim.<\/p>\n In 2018, Zahnd ran for mayor for the first time. He garnered just 108 votes out of more than 34,000 cast in the primary.<\/p>\n Liggett told the crowd his goal as a candidate was not to win and run the county, but to advocate for action on wastewater and the harm it continues to cause the environment. <\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t plan on running, and I just am getting up here to appeal to whoever may win, or you could give me a job, if you please,\u201d said Liggett, aka \u201cTravi-Poo.\u201d<\/p>\n Sugimura responded: \u201cTravi-Poo, I like that name. I will tell you, he testifies often (in front of the County Council), so I get that.\u201d<\/p>\n Moore said he always has wanted to do a \u201creally deep investigation or just a long conversation with a bunch of the lesser-known candidates\u201d about why they are running and what they hope to gain.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that in some cases, you have candidates who genuinely believe that there\u2019s an opportunity here for someone who\u2019s not well-known connected to the establishment to break through,\u201d Moore said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of magical thinking in politics. And so I think that for some, there\u2019s an idea that maybe they\u2019ll surprise everyone and gather all this grassroots support.\u201d<\/p>\n Long shot candidates have taken on campaigns going as far as the country\u2019s highest office, as covered in the book The Presidential Fringe: Questing and Jesting for the Oval Office by Mark Stein.<\/a> The book documents the unlikely candidates who may not have had a chance at president but at times highlighted issues overlooked by mainstream candidates.<\/p>\n But some think Maui County\u2019s crowded candidate field is no help to voters.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like we had a huge gaggle of uninformed people that really had no business raising their hand and filing for mayor,\u201d said longtime Maui resident Michelle Del Rosario, who previously served as executive assistant to former Maui County Council Chair Kelly King. \u201cThey don\u2019t live here long enough. They don\u2019t know the culture. They don\u2019t know the issues. And I feel like there\u2019s more to running for office than just raising your hand.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, some of the candidates\u2019 ideas gave Del Rosario pause. When asked if she liked the zip line idea, she said: \u201cI actually would consider it if I thought it was viable because I\u2019m a person in our community who supports the Land Use Commission\u2019s decision that mandated an overpass pre-opening.\u201d<\/p>\n The primary is on Aug. 8, the same day as the three-year anniversary of the deadly and destructive Lahaina and Upcountry wildfires. In the mayor\u2019s race, which is nonpartisan, the top two vote-getters advance to the general election on Nov. 3. <\/p>\n That leaves one month for the mayoral candidates to get their messages out to the masses, with some trying harder and succeeding much more than others.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the smallness of Maui probably provides more of an opportunity for someone to rise,\u201d Moore said. But he added that he can\u2019t think of any super long shot that rose to office on the island.<\/p>\n Moore also said elections are serious.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t want to just provide a forum for people who are primarily doing this as a publicity stunt or just have no real chance of winning but want to hammer a single issue,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, I think that\u2019s the toughest balance for the reporting and even for nonprofits who host these candidate forums: Where do you draw the line?\u201d<\/p>\n He said there is a point where it no longer serves the public interest to give a lot of attention to candidates who have no realistic chance of winning.<\/p>\n For the primary mayoral race, the other Maui County candidates include Midwesterner Justin Herrmann, who touted his work with Hungry Heroes Hawai\u02bbi during the COVID-19 pandemic and the wildfires.<\/p>\n Joseph Moses, who describes himself as a Mr. Mom for 35 years and was not born in the United States, said: \u201cSo I\u2019m the voice of the people, and I can tell you one thing. The first thing we have to do, maybe we have to swallow some of us, we got to give this stolen land back to the Hawaiians, to the native people. You will be surprised how many problems will be solved.\u201d<\/p>\n Dunbar, who said he retired in 1993 after working with the SEAL team, explained his \u201cmission\u201d now is to get anybody that is interested to \u201cdo a walkabout with me throughout K\u012bhei in this area where you\u2019ve had significant problems. I would like to address those. I will put everything on record.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cIf I\u2019m not your next mayor, this will be passed to the person who is the mayor. So that we\u2019ve done some research with my input to show what I would do in remediation for floods or any other issues you might have. I actually call them not issues and problems, but responsibility for our government.\u201d<\/p>\n Dunbar said he also would form a youth government or youth council to get them involved, because \u201cthey\u2019re the future of Maui Nui.\u201d<\/p>\n And that brings us to the youngest candidate running for mayor, Amy Petterson<\/a>, who graduated from King Kekaulike High School in 2020. She said she is a fifth-generation Maui Nui resident who grew up in poverty and wants to make the island more affordable.<\/p>\n Her big idea is to implement a new system called Water Bunds \u201cor sometimes they\u2019re also called Earth Smiles<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n She said they are typically put on slanted pieces of land that are dry and hydrophobic, like above K\u012bhei.<\/p>\n \u201cIt collects excess water by basically going into this small, about like 5-foot wide smile, so the water actually absorbs into the soil,\u201d Petterson said. \u201cMany floods are caused by hydrophobic soil. By doing this, we can re-green the area so roots have more access to this water and less will go flowing over the soil. This is a system that is used in places like Kenya and Tanzania to re-green desertification areas.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Callahan](\"https:\/\/media.mauinow.com\/file\/mauinow\/2026\/07\/Welsh-Callahan-1.jpg\")
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