Powerful PAC Endorses Kawakami Over Luke in Kauai Race

A political action committee funded by the Hawaii Regional Council of Carpenters has spent roughly $75,000 on television ads backing term-limited Kauai Mayor Derek Kawakami in the Hawaii lieutenant governor's race, deploying a $12 million war chest against an incumbent it tried and failed to unseat four years ago.

The PAC, named "For a Better Tomorrow" and co-founded by the Pacific Resource Partnership, reported its cash balance with Hawaii's Campaign Spending Commission. It aired a 30-second commercial built around Kawakami's own words from his State of the County address. The group's treasury is roughly 50 times the size of Kawakami's entire campaign fund: disclosure filings through the end of 2025 show Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke with $641,350 in campaign funds against Kawakami's $236,521.

Luke did not soften her response. "It almost feels like we're running against not a specific opponent, we're running against PRP again," she said, calling the group's involvement "unconscionable" and "gross" and urging Kawakami to renounce the support.

Her use of "again" carries a specific history. In 2022, the same carpenters-and-PRP political operation, then called "Be Change Now," spent more than $1 million in negative ads attacking Luke and another $3 million backing her opponent, Ikaika Anderson. Luke won anyway, and the result was widely read as a direct rejection of the PAC's tactics. The group has since rebranded, but its core funding source has not changed: the Hawaii Carpenters Market Recovery Program Fund contributed more than $2 million to "For a Better Tomorrow" in the final months of 2025.

University of Hawaii political science professor and Hawaii News Now analyst Colin Moore called the PAC's involvement "significant," particularly its capacity to introduce a neighbor-island candidate to statewide voters who may not know Kawakami's record.

Kawakami announced his lieutenant governor bid on March 17 in front of roughly 80 supporters at Kilohana Plantation in Līhuʻe. A Kauai High School and Chaminade University graduate whose family founded and operated the Big Save grocery chain on the island until its 2011 sale, he was first elected mayor in 2018 after serving on the Kauai County Council and framed his campaign around seven years of executive work on housing affordability, cost of living, and homelessness. Term limits prevent him from seeking another mayoral term.

The PAC's decision to spend early reflects Luke's political vulnerability. She has faced sustained scrutiny as a possible unnamed "influential state legislator" who allegedly accepted $35,000 in a paper bag in January 2022, tied to the same Honolulu bribery investigation that resulted in the conviction of former state Rep. Ty Cullen. Luke has denied accepting any money and has not been charged. A voluntary audit of her campaign finances disclosed $7,870 in previously unreported 2022 donations and $3,882 in unreported expenditures, which she called an "innocent mistake." Her campaign subsequently donated $25,100 in Choy-related contributions to the state election fund and returned $10,000 to another donor.

Former Kauai state senator and county council member Gary Hooser, who ran for lieutenant governor himself in 2010, said Kawakami "has avoided being painted by the corruption and ugliness that currently wraps around Sylvia Luke." Gov. Josh Green called Kawakami a strong candidate but stopped short of endorsing him.

The Democratic primary is set for August 2026, with ballots dropping in July. The carpenters union and PRP represent sectors, including construction labor and real estate development, that sit directly in the path of state housing and labor decisions. The last time they spent $4 million on this race, they lost. This time they are arriving earlier, with more money, and a Kauai candidate who has never lost an election.