Together, We Will Restore Trust and Confidence to the People of Honolulu

I am proud to call these Hawaiian Islands and the United States of America my adopted home. All around the world, America's reputation is of a place where hardworking people can be all that they desire to be. America’s people are unique in that throughout their history, no matter what challenges or setbacks have beset them, they have always overcome the challenges and continued their pursuit of the American Dream.


Since my arrival in the U.S in 1986, I too have come to believe in the American Dream, but most of all, I've come to believe in the people of Hawaii. In this election season, like so many other elections past, there are those who suggest that your choice is about the ten candidates for the office of Honolulu Mayor.


But I believe that the choice is not about us ten, neither is it a matter of left or right, Republican or Democrat, but about the 900,000-some Honolulu residents who have to live in this city and build a future for their children and their children to come. This election is about you, and because of that, I am not just running for mayor, I am running for you.


The first responsibility of a mayor is to the people of his city, not to economic interests, not to lands or trees or fish, and certainly not to aspirations of big government projects built on the bent backs of taxpayers.


Always in a mayor's mind must be the reminder that he represents Americans, a free people whose liberty was bought and purchased by the sacrifice of courageous souls: people like Wahiawa's Myla Maravillosa, a Filipina immigrant who joined the U.S. Army after graduating from high school and was killed in Iraq after her Humvee was hit multiple times by Iraqi insurgent rocket fire, or Dorie Miller, the brave African American cook who, during the frightening hours of the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, refused to run as bombs and machine gun fire rained down around him and instead manned a .50 caliber deck gun and fired back shooting down at least one Japanese attacker. Despite being the first African American in the Pacific War to win the Navy Cross, two years later, Dorie Miller was killed in action when a submarine torpedoed his aircraft carrier. These people are part of a lasting legacy to Honolulu's freedom, and their sacrifices are a reminder to me of just how worthy the people are that they lived and died for.



I refuse to believe that Myla and Dorie died for a Honolulu where Americans are overtaxed, overburdened, and overridden by their own local government. I refuse to believe that the best government has to offer is a city whose infrastructure is poorly planned and falling apart from lack of concern. I refuse to believe that the current wave of disappointment has to be the wave of the future.


I believe that it is time for a new revolution in Honolulu leadership, and upon the memory of all those who have sacrificed so much that we might be free, I pledge to you that we are going to restore trust and confidence to Oahu.


In the next few days to come, I will be visiting communities all across Oahu and I look forward to having the chance to meet with all of you and to hear your ideas for our future. I invite you to join with me in telling your neighbors that Honolulu has not seen her day come and go, but that working together, we can and will make a difference.


Every promise, every opportunity is still golden in Oahu, and there remains a golden door for which our keiki can walk into tomorrow with the knowledge that no one can be denied the promise that is America.