Since the 1950s, Hawaii’s working-class voting majority has overwhelmingly supported Democrats and the values outlined in their party platform, such as equal justice and economic opportunity for all, environmental protection and respect for people from all walks of life.
Despite the nearly undisrupted support that Hawaii’s Democratic Party enjoys, this supermajority of legislators routinely prevents the progression of these values, let alone sustaining them.
Last year, the party passed dozens of resolutions that urged the Legislature to enact policies to strengthen these values. The majority of current Democratic legislators also indicated support for most of these resolutions during the 2018 campaign season.
The Democratic Party made some of these policies a priority for the 2019 legislative session. These include: providing fully publicly financed elections, increasing public education funding, installing video conferencing for neighbor islands, increasing the minimum wage to a living wage, and recognizing the legality of a graduate student union, among others.
Unfortunately, however, most of these policies are already dead.
In order for these policies to be enacted, the bills must make it to a final floor vote, but most aren’t granted that chance. The decision makers in each chamber neither want the bills to pass, nor want their members to have to publicly vote the bills down after the legislators had voiced support for these policies. Thus, the legislators prevent the bills from making it to the floor at all.
Fully public-financed elections was not given a single hearing in either chamber. Increasing public education funding died at the hands of Reps. Justin Woodson and Sylvia Luke in the Education and Finance committees, respectively. Statewide video conferencing met its fate by Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz in Ways and Means.
There are living wage bills alive, but the House passed a bill that only moves all workers to at least $12.50 per hour, with the Senate settling on $15 an hour. The graduate student union bill is the lone priority that remains alive and fully intact.
This laundry list of “Democratic Party values” being ignored by Hawaii’s Democratic legislators is nothing new. That is why the Democratic Party passed a 2018 resolution that sought to “hold the Hawaiʻi State Legislative Committee Chairs, who are members of the Democratic Party of Hawaiʻi, accountable when they table legislation supported by the Democratic Party of Hawaiʻi platform.”
Just as we attempt to hold Donald Trump and the Republicans accountable for stopping progress at the national level, it is time we do the same for local Democrats that stop progress here in Hawaii.
We say that we are a democracy, but “democracy” is simply a title. To be a democracy requires acting as one. Although we vote for people to represent us and our values, too often they decline, as evidenced by their refusal to pass most policies the people want year after year.
Further, when the people actually “win” the policies they want (or succeed at getting the policies they don’t want voted down), it frequently takes monumental community organizing efforts to achieve such feats. This simply should not be. If you were voted into office while saying you support specific policies and ideals, it is incumbent upon you to vote that way once in office.
The 2019 legislative session ends in a few weeks. With most Democratic priorities eliminated already, legislators must find it within themselves to pass into law the few surviving Democratic priorities they claim to support. This would shed a glimmer of light to those of us hoping that our democracy can be revived.
Kimiko LaHaela Walter is State Central Committee representative (Environmental Caucus) in the Democratic Party of Hawaii.
