Next month, Sam Slom will be 74. He has been in the state Senate since 1996 when he first won his Hawaii Kai seat.
Slom’s uneasy claim to fame this year is that he is the only Republican in the state Senate, putting him both in the spotlight to give the dissenting view, but also without the power to do anything without forming coalitions with the majority Democrats.
Slom is drawing opposition from Stanley Chang, the 33-year-old former one-term Honolulu City Councilman.
Chang placed third in the 2014 Congressional Democratic primary, collecting 12,135 votes. He says he has been working as an attorney and consultant since then.
Slom had two health scares in the past year, both times on the Senate floor, where a combination of fatigue and low blood sugar resulted in hospital stays, according to fellow senator and emergency room physician Josh Green.
“It turns out I like the food at Kaiser Hospital,” joked Slom, who added that “I had an MRI and it shows I have a brain and it is functioning.”
Voters in Hawaii Kai will have a dramatic choice in political philosophies. Slom, the former chief economist for Bank of Hawaii, has been described as a libertarian Republican and is a strong supporter of economist Milton Friedman and the National Rifle Association.
Chang, in contrast, comes from the most liberal side of the Democratic Party.
During his congressional campaign, Chang said he supported the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which boasts Vermont’s Bernie Sanders as its only Senate member. Chang also said he supported Massachusetts Democrat U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s bank-reform legislation.
“We want to improve the schools, we want more affordable housing, bring better jobs. We need to get serious with some of the current crises, including homelessness,” said Chang.
Slom said he has a record of 20 years of demanding “smaller government, accountability, government transparency and less taxes.”
To that end, Slom has often been the lone voice complaining of what he says is excessive state spending without responsibility.
“My constituents don’t like tax and fee increases, they want the Hawaii Kai environment protected from development and they want something done about homelessness, which is now impacting East Honolulu,” Slom says.
Chang points to legislation to ban people from lying on sidewalks in Waikiki and prohibit smoking on public beaches and bus stops as legislation he supported during his four years on the Council.
The differences between the two could not be sharper. Slom, always ready with a speech decrying new legislation, stands in contrast with Chang, who often quietly backs new programs that are often as quixotic as measurably effective.
Both, however, know that a legislative race is a ground game, won by walking the district, not talking about Milton Friedman or Bernie Sanders.
Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
