The latest tally of the last 18,000 votes cast Tuesday on Election Day flipped the results of a contentious West Oahu seat and now has incumbent Republican Rep. Elijah Pierick winning instead of losing, but that could change again depending on a recount of the nearly 10,000 votes.
Pierick (Royal Kunia-Waipahu-Honouliuli) originally was losing to Campbell High School teacher Corey Rosenlee by 71 votes in their second consecutive showdown, according to results released Wednesday morning.
But after counting the outstanding votes by Wednesday night, the results flipped to give Pierick a razor-thin victory over Rosenlee of just 20 votes. As of Wednesday night Pierick had 4,706 votes to Rosenlee’s 4,686.
A recount of the House 39 votes continued into Thursday night.
It was the only race that changed based on the final ballots, according to state Elections Chief Scott Nago.
By law a recount can be triggered only if the difference of votes is less than 100, or less than one-quarter of 1%, whichever is smaller.
Nago said the slim lead could still change following a mandatory recount, which requires the tedious task of going through each of the 320,999 ballots sent in by mail or dropped off in bins from all islands to find the nearly 10,000 ones specifically cast in House 39.
“Nothing else flipped and no other recounts were triggered,” Nago said.
The final overall ballot tabulations confirmed Republican hopes of adding three more Republicans to the House and a third to the Senate — all representing Oahu districts and most of them on the West side of Oahu, which continues to add Republican seats.
In the past legislative session with Pierick, Republicans had a minority caucus of six members in the 51-member House.
After the final ballots were counted, now they will have at least eight and possibly nine, depending on what happens with the House 39 recount.
The incoming Republican freshmen are Garner Musashi Shimizu to represent District 32, Moanalua-Aliamanu-Foster Village; Julie Reyes Oda for District 40, Ewa Beach-Iroquois Point; and Chris Muraoka, District 45, Waianae-Makaha.
In the 25-member Senate, there were only two Republicans for the past two legislative sessions, and Sens. Brenton Awa (R, Kaneohe-Laie-Mokuleia) and Kurt Fevella (R, Ewa Beach-Ocean Pointe-Iroquois Point) could not agree between them who should be minority leader.
With the election of Republican Sen. Samantha Decourt to represent Nanakuli- Waianae-Makaha, the addition of a third Republican enabled them to break the impasse.
Awa will now become minority leader, Decourt will serve as minority floor leader and Fevella will become assistant floor leader, Awa told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Becoming minority leader represents more than “just a title,” Awa said.
He will have control over what had been an underutilized Senate minority office and its staff with no one serving in the role of minority leader.
Awa, a former Hawaii television journalist who uses his video and storytelling skills to bring attention and change to his district, also will have an additional budget to hire a minority party communications director to communicate Republican priorities and positions to the public and the media.
Awa also plans to hire an attorney to pursue lawsuits over issues that the outgunned Republicans have been unable to address legislatively, Awa said.
Following this year’s election, Awa specifically plans to go to court to challenge the lack of so-called voter service centers on Election Day and the absence of mail-in ballot dropbox locations in the middle of the Windward portion of his district, where the most socially conservative residents live.
Residents who prefer to vote in person — and 22,714 did before and on Election Day — have to travel long, time-consuming distances to get to either Honolulu Hale or Kapolei Hale, the only voter service centers open on Election Day, Awa said.
He was the last person in Hawaii to vote in person on election night after standing in line for five hours at Kapolei Hale.
Becoming minority leader, Awa said, “It’s not about a title. They’ve given me a lot of weapons.”
GOP rifts
The lack of a floor leader for the past two sessions also meant there was no Senate Republican empowered to address Republican concerns and priorities before the full Senate on opening day of the Legislature.
When the 2025 session begins Jan. 15, Awa plans to unload a speech on the Senate floor that he’s been working on for a year.
He promised that “it will be like no other speech you’ve ever seen, I guarantee it.”
While the Republican Senate leadership question has been settled, the original rift has not and could flare up again, Awa said.
During two discussions over who should be the incoming minority leader, Awa characterized both meetings as “positive,” with Fevella pledging to work with the other two.
When he was first elected in 2022, Awa said Fevella wanted his vote to continue as minority leader after getting the title by default before Awa joined the Senate.
Awa withdrew his original vote of support for Fevella because “it was always about leverage and power, it was never about what’s right or what’s wrong,” he said.
Now that the leadership question has been answered, Awa said that it remains to be seen “whether we can mend this.”
“The air, so to say, will never be cleared,” Awa said. “Things could go south again.”
If so, as minority leader, Awa now has access to “levers in place that can be pulled,” he said, without going into specifics.
The original standoff had been part of Republican dysfunction in both chambers.
A simmering rift between Republican House Rep. Kanani Souza (R, Kapolei-Makakilo) and the other five Republicans went on full display on the House floor during the largely ceremonial last day of the session in May.
Souza had already removed herself from the Republican caucus when Republican minority leader Lauren Matsumoto (R, Mililani-Waipio Acres-Mililani Mauka) rose to address all of the representatives in a speech calling House Republicans unified.
Souza interrupted Matsumoto after Matsumoto said, “This is the most cohesive the caucus has been.”
Garcia then interrupted Souza for interrupting Matsumoto.
Asked at the time why she interrupted Matsumoto, Souza told the Star-Advertiser, “I found that to be a blatant lie.”
So with the addition of at least three incoming Republican House members, it remains to be seen what happens next within their caucus.
Longtime opponents
It would be hard to find a race anywhere in Hawaii where the choice between Pierick and Rosenlee could be more stark.
In the November 2022 general election, Rosenlee lost to Pierick by 704 votes, but the outcome this year has gone into overtime with the results so close.
Rosenlee teaches junior- and senior-level social studies and history at James Campbell High School and termed out after six years as head of the influential Hawaii State Teachers Association.
Rosenlee had been endorsed by some of Hawaii’s biggest public worker unions, representing thousands of unionized workers and voters, many of whom live on Oahu’s West side.
As a social studies and history teacher, he said he’s been especially outraged by many of the positions embraced by Pierick, often with what he says is no evidence.
Pierick said on TikTok that Democrats — incorrectly— “want to allow abortion 15 days after birth,” Rosenlee said, which would constitute murder, not abortion.
Pierick, an evangelical Christian, may be the most far-right member in either the House or Senate.
One of his positions in 2023 prompted Fevella — Pierick’s fellow West side Republican — to call on District 39 residents to vote Pierick out of office.
Pierick drew Fevella’s condemnation after Pierick visited ‘Ewa Makai Middle School — even though it’s outside his House district — where the school had LGBTQ flags on campus, including outside the principal’s office.
In an Instagram video, Pierick asked his Instagram followers to call or email Principal Kim Sanders with their thoughts and provided her phone number and email address.
“And you might be thinking to yourself, ‘What does that flag actually represent?’” Pierick asked in his video. “‘What is it conveying to our middle school students?’ This is what it means: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual plus. Are these the kinds of concepts and lifestyles we want to be conveying to our middle school students every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday all year round? Or should this be a conversation geared toward the home?”
In response, Fevella called Pierick “rubbish.”
“Elijah, I’m disappointed in you, big time,” Fevella said in a Facebook video in response to Pierick’s statement.
In his first legislative session, Pierick introduced an unsuccessful bill that would ban abortions if a fetal heartbeat can be detected.
Instead, Gov. Josh Green signed a bill into law that legalizes abortions and protects Hawaii health care workers who perform them and guards them from prosecution if they perform abortions on women from states where abortions are banned.
Pierick declined to speak to the Star-Advertiser ahead of Election Day about the race.
Before the general election, Rosenlee said Pierick’s “extreme, conspiratorial, crazy approach” helped inspire him to challenge Pierick two election cycles in a row.
Now the outcome will be decided by a rare, mandatory recount that goes down to the wire.
Stay updated on Hawaii and national elections coverage