Billy D. DeCosta files to run for Kauai Council in 2026

The race is already unusually open. Four of the seven Kauai County Council seats are vacant this cycle, with three sitting members running for mayor and one member term-limited, a level of turnover seen only once before in the past 30 years. Roughly two dozen candidates had shown interest by March 31, and the top 14 vote-getters in the August 8 primary will advance to the November 3 general election. Candidate filing runs through June 2, so the field can still change before it locks.

DeCosta is not entering from the sidelines. The county’s council roster shows his recent service on the seven-member legislative body, and the 2024 general election left him one seat short, behind Ross Kagawa after Fern Holland captured the final position. That makes his 2026 filing less a new experiment than an attempt to reclaim a place in a council race that is still far from settled.

His public issue profile is already clear enough to matter to voters weighing the field. In a 2022 candidate profile, DeCosta emphasized agriculture, sustainable food production, property-tax fairness, landfill planning and affordable housing. He said the island’s landfill problem should have been addressed years earlier and that a new site needed to be found immediately. He also argued that county workforce housing should benefit middle-income residents as well as lower-income households. Those positions land squarely in a county where housing pressure remains intense, with a 2023 median single-family home price of $945,000 and a median condo price near $800,000, while out-of-state buyers accounted for roughly 37% of single-family sales and more than 60% of condo sales.