Longtime Republican state Sen. Sam Slom, who is the last remaining GOP member in the state Senate, faces his most formidable re-election challenge yet this year from Democrat and former Honolulu City Councilman Stanley Chang.

Slom, 74, points out Hawaii is already the only state where the Senate is so completely dominated by one party that there is just one Republican left. If Chang and the Democrats are able to eject him from office this year, Hawaii could become the only state in the nation where the entire state Senate is exclusively Democratic.

Slom, who is seeking his sixth term as senator representing East Honolulu from Hawaii Kai to Kahala and Diamond Head, said “it would be a loss for Hawaii” if the voters elect only Democrats to the Senate and discount or ignore the Republican perspective.

“Who’s going to speak up for the free-market economy, for lack of monopolies?” Slom asked. “If we had a Senate of all one party, I don’t think it would be a healthy system, and it certainly would deny the public access to different ideas and different theories.”

Chang said he respects Slom but contends that “it’s important for East Honolulu to have leadership that can both listen and deliver.” The 24-member Democratic caucus in the Senate today has ample “ideological diversity” with or without Slom, he said.

“No matter where one might fall on any given issue, whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, or pro-marriage equality or anti-marriage equality, or whatever the issue, I think you have pretty much the entire spectrum of views represented (in the Senate), and I think that is good for the lawmaking process,” Chang said.

Slom is a longtime small-business advocate and was president of the small-business advocacy group Small Business Hawaii from 1983 to 2014. He has also had a consulting business called SMS Consultants since the 1980s that assists small-business startups.

He grew up in Allentown, Pa., and moved to Honolulu to attend the University of Hawaii in 1960. He graduated with a dual major in government and economics, and also obtained a correspondence-course law degree from La Salle Extension University, although he never practiced law.

Chang, 34, grew up in the Kahala area and graduated from ‘Iolani School. He attended Harvard and Harvard Law School and went on to practice real estate law with the firm Cades Schutte in 2008 and 2009.

He served on the Honolulu City Council from 2011 to 2015 and left the Council to make an unsuccessful run for Congress in 2014 to represent urban Honolulu.

Chang now has his own law practice, which recently involved consulting work for Earthjustice as part of the successful effort to fend off the NextEra Energy Inc. takeover bid for Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. Chang said he is committed to the state’s goal of 100 percent renewable energy by 2045 and said he saw no plan from NextEra that showed the company was serious about meeting that goal.

Chang said he has knocked on at least 10,000 doors in East Honolulu, adding that elected officials have a duty to seek out their constituents’ views because not everyone has time to come to the Capitol to testify at hearings.

Chang also said he is proud of his record of delivering for his constituents, citing his efforts as a councilman to have the city borrow additional money to triple funding for road maintenance; to ban smoking at beach parks; and for leading efforts to obtain funding for a Niu Valley playground and to preserve a heiau complex in Aina Haina.

Slom said the record of state construction spending in East Honolulu shows he does deliver for his district, saying his positions on the issues represent the views of East Honolulu voters. He said the issues that distinguish him from Chang are strikingly clear.

“How can he say that he listens to the people when he consistently voted for the rail and consistently voted for higher taxes?” Slom said of Chang. “That’s not what our community is all about. That’s not what our neighborhood board is all about.”

Chang is a longtime supporter of the Honolulu rail project, while Slom has been so firmly opposed to rail that he once joined in a federal lawsuit to try to block the project. Slom predicts the rail line will never be completed and says government should cut its losses and stop spending money on the project.

“My position is, stop it. Stop it now,” he said.

Slom also charges that Chang voted “for almost every tax increase” while serving on the City Council, while Slom says he has opposed every tax increase that ever came before him in his 20 years in public office.

Taxes will dominate the debate at the Legislature next year, when the city is expected to ask state lawmakers to authorize an extension of Oahu’s half-percent excise tax surcharge to bail out the Honolulu rail project. That project is now over budget by an estimated $1.5 billion.

Gov. David Ige has also said he will ask lawmakers to approve increases in the state’s gasoline tax, vehicle weight tax and vehicle registration fees.

Slom rejects all of those proposed tax measures. Even if the state must abandon the half-built rail project, “it’s still better than continuing to call for increasing taxes, money that we don’t have and we’re not going to have,” he said.

Chang said he would consider voting for the excise tax surcharge extension and the gas tax or weight tax increases “as a last resort.”

Chang said he needs to hear the arguments for the tax increases from the administrations of Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell and Ige, and then consider whether there are any alternatives.

“It would be the administration’s job to present the case for why these particular increases are needed,” Chang said.

Although he declined to commit to a firm position on the tax proposals now, Chang said with some pride that he rejected proposals for gas and property tax increases when he was on the City Council because he felt the administration failed to make a compelling case.

“I would very much hope to do so this time around as well, but I haven’t heard the case yet, so I can’t say for certain,” Chang said. However, he said he is a longtime rail supporter and that “we started this project, we have to finish it.”

When asked if he ever voted to increase taxes while on the council, Chang said he is uncertain. “There are hundreds of measures that are proposed, and there are lots of pro forma things,” he said.

Chang said the most pressing issue for East Hawaii residents today is homelessness and the lack of affordable housing.

Chang said he wants to see more shelters open and wants more research done into approaches such as Housing First, which seeks to place the homeless in housing before attempting to cope with their underlying issues such as joblessness, mental illness or drug addiction.

In particular, Chang wants to expand mental health outreach as a way to cope with homelessness. He also advocates for public-private partnerships and public investment in infrastructure such as sewers to make it easier for private companies to develop affordable housing.

Slom said the top issue in the coming years will be the state’s finances, saying that he has been trying to get the attention of the public and the media about “how precarious our finances are.”

Although the state ended the last fiscal year with a $1 billion surplus, Slom notes that Ige’s administration expects that surplus will shrink next year.

“We are in a deficit position, our cash reserve is actually declining, we are not diversifying our economy, and what that means is (private, nonprofit organizations), they’re not going to get the subsidies, and they’re not going to get the handouts that they’ve gotten in the past,” Slom said.

With all of the state’s other obligations ranging from installing air conditioning in the schools to paying higher reimbursements to foster parents, “where are the additional funds going to come from?” Slom said. “We don’t want to get in a position like Puerto Rico, but it’s possible.”