In over 30 years of watching Hawaiʻi electoral politics by this blogger, one thing has become increasingly apparent: sometimes the election doesn’t end when the votes are counted.

Few political rivalries demonstrate that better than Trevor Ozawa and Tommy Waters.

For over 12 years, the two have fought three election battles that ended up before the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court.

In political terms, it has become something of our own Ali-Frazier trilogy. And with the third “bout” just concluding at the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court, it seems like a good time to look back at how we got here.

And just for fun, let’s portray it as bouts…keeping with the boxing analogy.

Bout I: 2014 — 41 votes

The first bout between Trevor Ozawa and Tommy Waters came in 2014, when the two faced off for the Honolulu City Council District IV seat.

And going into the general election, Waters appeared to have the advantage.

Waters finished first in the August primary with 10,110 votes, or 32.8 percent. Ozawa came in second with 8,012 votes, or 26 percent. Neither received the majority needed to win outright, sending both into the November general election.

If this were boxing, Waters won the opening round.

But November would be a different fight.

The race was close — although, in hindsight, not nearly as close as their next one would be. Waters led through much of election night, but when the final returns came in, Ozawa had pulled ahead.

After the votes were audited and reconciled, the final count stood at:

Trevor Ozawa — 16,374.

Tommy Waters — 16,333.

Forty-one votes.

More than 32,000 people had voted for the two candidates, and just 41 votes separated the winner from the loser.

Waters, however, wasn’t ready to hear the final bell. On November 24, he took the fight to the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court, challenging the election results and pointing to discrepancies in the vote count.

Among the issues raised were 11 overages and 39 underages in election records, along with questions about ballots recorded as blank. Waters argued that 74 of those blank ballots may actually have contained valid votes for either candidate.

In a race decided by only 41 votes, 74 ballots mattered. Waters wanted the blank ballots manually reviewed. If the actual winner could not be determined from that examination, he wanted a new election.

Ozawa argued that the election system had done its job. The votes had been checked, the auditing process had been completed, and the result should stand.

Then, on Christmas Eve, the decision came down. The Hawaiʻi Supreme Court ruled that Waters had not provided sufficient evidence of errors or irregularities that could change the outcome of the election. Therefore, the 41-vote victory stood. Trevor Ozawa took the District 4 seat.

And bout I went to Ozawa.

Bout II: 2018–19 — The Rematch

Ozawa was again declared the winner, receiving 18,358 votes to Waters’ 18,336. This time, the difference was only 22 votes, compared to 41 votes separating them in 2014.

Four years later, Tommy Waters and Trevor Ozawa were back at it again. Same two candidates. Same City Council District 4 seat. And somehow, an even closer result.

And just like 2014, Waters went to court. This time, however, he had a much stronger case.

The issue centered on 350 absentee ballots picked up from the Honolulu Airport post office after the 6 p.m. deadline on Election Day. The ballots were picked up in two batches, one around 6:30 p.m. and another around 7:30 p.m.

They were then mixed in and counted with the other ballots. That created a pretty obvious problem — 350 ballots that arrived after the deadline had been counted in an election decided by only 22 votes. Worse, once those ballots were mixed with the other ballots, there was no way to separate them and figure out who actually won.

On January 25, 2019, the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court invalidated the election. For the second time, Waters had taken his fight with Ozawa to the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court. Unlike 2014, this time he won.

But that didn’t make Waters the new councilmember. The court couldn’t determine who actually won the election, so District 4 voters had to go back and vote again.

And in a rarity in electoral politics overall, even more so in Hawaiʻi, the rematch needed a rematch.

So on April 13, 2019, voters went back to the polls for a special election between Ozawa and Waters. This time there was no 41-vote margin. There was no 22-vote margin. And there was no court challenge needed to figure out who won. Waters received 51.4 percent of the vote to Ozawa’s 48.5 percent.

Tommy Waters finally beat Trevor Ozawa. And bout II went to Waters.

After two rounds of this political fight, the score was even. Ozawa 1. Waters 1. For the next several years, it looked like that might be where the story ended.

It wasn’t.

Bout III: 2026 — The Final Round?

After the second bout, most observers probably thought the Ozawa-Waters fights were over. After all, seven years would pass before the two would face each other again.

During those seven years, Waters would easily win reelection, rise to become Council Chair, and even generate some talk in political circles — which this blogger heard more than once — about a possible run for Mayor in 2028.

But Waters also attracted his share of controversy, from allowing a 64% Council pay raise to go forward to a Council leadership reorganization following his 5-4 loss on a sewer-fee vote that immediately raised questions about political retaliation.

So by the time the 2026 election came around, another question was hanging over Waters: Could he even run again?

After Waters filed to run, Christian Butt, a friend and former law school classmate of Waters, submitted a question about his eligibility to the Honolulu City Clerk. Acting City Clerk Chadd Kadota determined that Waters could run because his time in office began with the April 2019 special election and therefore did not amount to a full four-year term.

With the City Clerk declaring Waters eligible, it looked like he was going to run and would be difficult to beat.

Then, near the filing deadline, Ozawa reappeared.

There had been some movement to put forward a serious challenger to Waters, and Ozawa certainly fit that bill. But this time Ozawa wasn’t going to challenge Waters only at the ballot box. After the City Clerk responded to Ozawa’s challenge by saying that “no further action will be taken by this Office,” Ozawa went to court to ask whether Waters was actually eligible to run again.

His argument essentially came down to how the courts would define just one word:

Elected.

In July 2026, Circuit Court Judge James Ashford agreed with Ozawa and ruled that Waters was not eligible to run for another term. By then, however, there was a problem. The election was already happening. Ballots had been mailed, people were voting, and Waters was still on the ballot while the court fight played out.

When the votes were counted, Ozawa finished first, and Waters finished second. Normally, that would have meant both were headed to the general election. Except Waters had already been ruled ineligible.

And so, for the third time in their political rivalry, Ozawa and Waters were headed back to the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court.

On August 28, the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court finally weighed in. And like just about everything else involving Ozawa and Waters, there was a twist. The court threw out the earlier Circuit Court decision against Waters, finding that Ozawa’s challenge should not have been decided that way.

But Waters still lost.

A separate challenge before the Supreme Court allowed the justices to answer the question that really mattered: Did Waters’ 2019 election count as his first term?

By a 3-2 vote, they said yes.

The majority essentially said that the April 2019 special election finished what the disputed 2018 election had started — deciding who was elected to the 2019–2023 term.

And once again, it came down to that one word: Elected.

Waters had been elected to the 2019–2023 term and then elected again to the 2023–2027 term. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t served all four years of the first one: Two elections, two consecutive terms. Waters had reached the term limit and could not legally run for what would have been a third term.

Two dissenting justices saw the 2019 election differently. To them, Waters came into a term already underway and served only what was left of it. They didn’t think that should count against Waters as one of his two allowed terms and believed that, given the uncertainty, the voters should have been allowed to decide.

With the Supreme Court ruling, at least for now, the final score stands at Ozawa 2, Waters 1.

Waters could still emerge as a candidate for Mayor in 2028, while Ozawa still has a general election ahead of him before he can reclaim his old Council seat. On paper, there doesn’t appear to be an obvious reason for these two to meet in the political ring again.

But anyone who has watched Hawaiʻi politics long enough knows better than to assume anything. After all, Ali and Frazier called it a day after three.

Who knows about Ozawa and Waters?

One of the more interesting side stories that emerged from Hawaiʻi’s 2026 Primary Election was the number of former elected officials who decided they wanted back in.

At first glance, this blogger counted four familiar names — people who had held elected office before and were now asking voters to give them another shot.

But after digging a little deeper into the candidate list, four became 11.

And these weren’t all former legislators looking to get back into the State Capitol. The comeback attempts stretched from the State House and Senate to county councils and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

Which brings up an interesting question before we get into who ran and how they did: Why would someone who has already served in elected office want to get back in?

There probably isn’t one answer to that question.

For some, it may simply be unfinished business. You spend years in the office working on issues, building relationships, and learning how government actually works, and then suddenly you are on the outside looking in.

For others, after having a seat at the table, they may realize they still want to be part of the conversation. There is also the simple fact that former officeholders aren’t necessarily starting from scratch. They have a name people recognize, supporters who voted for them before, relationships they built while in office, and, perhaps most importantly, the experience of having actually won an election.

There is also the fact that some of the veterans who ran in this primary still had money in the bank and may have figured that, with a proper effort and those resources, they could get back in.

Whether it was to satisfy the political bug that some politicians get after first serving, unfinished business, or simply someone asking them to run again, the fact that so many former officeholders decided to give elected office another shot in 2026 is worth taking a look at.

One quick note on who we are counting as a “comeback.” There were other former officeholders on the ballot this year, but for this article, we are looking at those who were actually out of elected office and decided they wanted back in.

That means people like former Kauaʻi Mayor Bernard Carvalho and Mel Rapozo don’t make this particular list. Both may have been looking for another office, but neither was really making a comeback — they were already serving on the Kauaʻi County Council when they decided to run.

So who ran, and how did they do? To give it more context, weʻll batch them into categories.

In the “I want my old seat back” category, there are five candidates.

• John Mizuno — House District 29
  He left the House in 2024 to work for the Governor’s Office and decided to come back two years later, seeking his former seat, now held by Ikaika Hussey.
• Trevor Ozawa — Honolulu City Council District 4
  Taking another shot at the seat, he went up against current Councilmember Tommy Waters and also filed suit challenging Waters’ eligibility to run for another term.
• Eileen O’Hara — Hawaiʻi County Council District 4
  A former Hawaiʻi County Council member who previously represented the district.
• Guy Enriques — Hawaiʻi County Council District 6
  Enriques previously served one term on the Hawaiʻi County Council in 2008 and ran again in 2026 for District 6, covering Kaʻū and portions of South Kona.
• Brendon Kaleiʻāina Lee — OHA At-Large
  Lee previously served as an OHA at-large trustee and attempted to return to the same board.

Four more candidates are categorized as “Back to the Legislature.” They were not trying to reclaim their exact old districts, but they had previously been legislators and wanted back into the building.

• Michael Kahikina — House District 44
  A former House member and Housing Committee chair, Kahikina’s legislative career ended in 2006 when Republican Karen Awana defeated him for the District 44 seat.
• Lei Ahu Isa — Senate District 13
  A former House member who subsequently served in other elected positions (OHA) and made a bid to return to the Legislature, this time as a state senator.
• Bob McDermott — Senate District 20
  A former House member seeking a return to the Legislature through the Senate.
• Rida Cabanilla Arakawa — Senate District 20
  Another former House member seeking a Senate seat, this time making her attempt as a member of a different political party, switching from the Democrats to the Republicans.

For this group, apparently once you’ve spent enough time walking the halls of the State Capitol, sometimes you decide you want your parking space back.

In the third and fourth categories, there is one candidate in each.

Ikaika Anderson, former Honolulu City Councilmember and former City Council Chair, who last ran as Lieutenant Governor against Sylvia Luke and Keith Amemiya in 2022, put his name into the burgeoning list of Office of Hawaiian Affairs At-Large candidates. He is in the category of “A different seat at the table”; his candidacy asks whether political skills learned in one body can be transferred to another elected position.

And in the final category of “You Can’t Keep a Politician Down,” we go to Kauai where Billy DeCosta, who lost his council seat in 2024, has chosen to run again, asking the voters, “you really sure that you didnʻt want me?” Because Kauaʻi elects its seven councilmembers at-large, his ask may have been even more impassioned… do you reaaaaaaly not like me?

So, did these efforts turn into a “veterans wave” whose names we will see on the General Election ballot in November?

Well, not quite. Here is a snapshot of each of the candidates and the official outcome of the vote.

The results show that the veterans running for county council seats were all successful in making it through the primary — so DeCosta may get a “yeah, we like you” answer in the General.

OHA looks like a 50/50 split, with Lee losing but Anderson being one of the six candidates to advance for the three at-large OHA seats.

As for legislative (State House/Senate) races, the outcomes look less optimistic. Bob McDermott was the lone veteran to survive, but just barely. After tying incumbent Kurt Fevella at 1,212 votes apiece, McDermott won the August 15 drawing by lot and will advance to the General Election. All the other legislative veterans lost.

With the losses, there was considerable variation in how the legislative veterans performed. Mizuno came within 37 votes of taking back his old seat, while Kahikina received only about 11 percent of the vote against incumbent Darius Kila. Cabanilla Arakawa, who jumped into the Senate District 20 Republican primary, also finished well behind both McDermott and incumbent Kurt Fevella.

So, what happened?

One theory offered to this blogger was that some of these candidates campaigned like it was still 1990 — that having a familiar name, having served before, and reminding people of what you did while in office would be enough to get you elected again.

That obviously didn’t work.

Another theory had to do with messaging. What worked five, 10, or even 20 years ago may not work today. Voters change, campaigning changes, and the people now holding those seats have had time to build political bases of their own.

Still, being a veteran counted for something. Mizuno came within 37 votes of getting his old job back; McDermott fought an incumbent senator to a tie and, through the luck of the draw, made it through to November.

Perhaps that is the lesson from the comeback class of 2026. Having won before may help, but it isn’t enough by itself. You still have to give voters a reason to vote for you today, rather than reminding them why they voted for you years ago.

And for those who didn’t make it this time? Considering this whole article is about politicians trying to come back, I wouldn’t necessarily count on them staying gone.

When the news broke on July 24 that Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke and four others had been indicted in a public corruption case, much of the attention understandably centered on Luke.

But among the other names in the indictment was one that immediately perked the interest of this blogger: Ford Fuchigami. As an aviation person, his name was well known as being part of the State of Hawai‘i Department of Transportation’s Airports Division.

However, relatively little attention was paid to Fuchigami. That struck this blogger as odd. Unlike some of the other names in the indictment, Fuchigami had quietly spent the better part of fifteen years moving through some of the most influential positions in Hawaiʻi government. Yet remarkably little has been written about how he got there.

Let’s first spell out his path, which is circuitous, to say the least

IN 2011, Neil Abercrombie won and became Hawai‘iʻs seventh governor. With his pick of who he wanted to be in influential positions, he recruited Fuchigami to become Deputy Director of Airports. Keep in mind that, before this appointment, there was no record of Fuchigami having held a significant government position at any level.

In research done about his background before government, Fuchigami was involved with a variety of industries: hospitality management, healthcare operations, commercial laundry services (including senior leadership with United Laundry), and general executive management.

Nothing there would suggest that he had any experience in aviation or transportation. Which raises the obvious question: What did Neil Abercrombie see in Ford Fuchigami that caused him to entrust him with one of the state’s largest public enterprises?

There is no definitive answer to that question, yet he was picked, and his first job was that of Deputy Director of Airports.

His job, according to research, included the management of one of the state’s largest and most important infrastructure operations. Keep in mind that the State, and not individual counties in Hawai‘i, runs all the airports across all the islands.

BY THE TIME NEIL ABERCROMBIE was defeated for re-election by Hawaiʻi’s eighth governor, David Ige, Ford Fuchigami had already climbed the ranks of the Department of Transportation. In just four years, he had gone from Deputy Director of Airports to Interim Director, and then Director of Transportation.

And with the eventual win of David Ige in November 2014, that should have been the end of the story. With a new governor coming in, they usually bring in their own people. The old team packs its boxes and heads home.

However, not for Fuchigami. What happened instead was something approaching a bidding war for his talents.

The bidding started in October 2014 when Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell announced that he had selected Fuchigami to become Director of the City’s Department of Enterprise Services. It looked as though Fuchigami’s career in state government had come to an end and he was moving across the street to Honolulu Hale.

Except it hadn’t.

Before Fuchigami could even make the move to the City, now Governor-elect Ige stepped in and announced that he wanted him to stay right where he was—as Director of Transportation. Caldwell publicly supported the decision, calling Fuchigami “a hard worker and a man of great integrity.” With Ige’s announcement, the competition was over, and Fuchigami stayed right where he was.

Only four years earlier, Fuchigami had walked into state government as someone with no established government résumé. Now, both the incoming governor and the mayor of Honolulu wanted him on their team.

It is perhaps the clearest demonstration of just how quickly Fuchigami’s stock had risen within Hawaiʻi government. In a remarkably short period of time, he had gone from being a newcomer to someone actively sought after at multiple levels of government. And, as it would turn out, his climb through Hawaiʻi government was only beginning.

Three years later, in 2017, Ige brought him directly into the Governor’s Office. As Administrative Director, Fuchigami became the liaison between the governor, department heads, and outside interests, while handling management initiatives and representing the administration before lawmakers.

In January 2019, Ige added another title: Chief of Staff. It didnʻt last long – only a few months before Ige would replace him with Linda Chu Takayama as his permanent Chief of Staff.

And then it was back to Airports – this time as the head of the Administrative Services Office. The Administrative Services Office serves as the central hub for fiscal and procurement matters, including department budget and fiscal regulatory alignment. Again, it was a position that required a deft administrative hand, which Fuchigami had definitely grown into by the time the saga got to 2022.

But there is one more stop along the way that is worth mentioning.

When Fuchigami returned to the Airports Division in 2019, his responsibilities did not end there. Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell tapped him to serve on the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) Board, one of the most politically visible and consequential boards in the state. It wasn’t the first time Fuchigami had served there—he had previously been a member by virtue of serving as Director of Transportation—but this time Caldwell selected him as one of the mayor’s own appointees.

By the time the next chapter of his curious career began, Ford Fuchigami had become a sought-after administrator at both the county and state levels of government. His rise had been steady, and each move seemed to bring greater responsibility and influence.

But it would be this next chapter—his move to the Legislature—that would ultimately alter the trajectory of his career in ways that continue to play out today.

TO UNDERSTAND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FUCHIGAMIʻS NEXT MOVE, which occurred in January, 2022, one first has to understand the Senate Committee on Ways and Means — better known around the Capitol simply as WAM.

For people outside of government, a legislative committee assignment may not sound particularly remarkable. WAM in Hawai‘i is vastly different. It is one of the places where decisions are made on what the State is going to spend money on. Bills that require state funding frequently have to pass through WAM, while the committee also plays a central role in shaping the state budget and capital improvement program.

In other words, policy ideas may begin somewhere else in the Legislature, but if they require money, sooner or later the question becomes whether the people controlling the purse strings are willing to pay for them.

This is where Fuchigami next landed.

His role at WAM, as introduced by its chair – Senator Donovan Dela Cruz – was as part of a team of budget analyst staff. Later on, Dela Cruz would describe him as a WAM budget adviser. Outside of being an elected official in WAM, the role that Fuchigami held there was about as close to one of the centers of fiscal decision-making in Hawai‘i government as a non-elected official can get. Everything from executive budgeting, transportation, airport finances, procurement, capital projects, and the internal workings of the Ige administration – Fuchigami had at least knowledge of it.

Once again, Fuchigami found himself operating near the center of where Hawaiʻi’s largest fiscal decisions were made.

By then, though Fuchigami was not a bit player in Hawai‘iʻs political landscape, by 2022 he had spent more than a decade inside it. He had run the Department of Transportation, overseen Airports, served as Administrative Director in the Governor’s Office and, briefly, as Gov. David Ige’s Chief of Staff. He had worked with department heads, dealt with the Legislature, understood executive budgets and knew firsthand how decisions made at the Capitol translated into action inside state agencies.

So his knowledge, with proximity to the key decision makers that make big decisions in Hawai‘i, and one can surmise that Fuchigami by this time had reached a career high.

BUT THEN CAME JANUARY 30, 2022

If January 2022 represented another step upward in Fuchigami’s remarkable government career, January 30 may ultimately be remembered as the day that trajectory changed.

That day, according to prosecutors, Tobi Solidum wrote Ford Fuchigami a check for $7,000.

The amount itself almost seems incongruous with the résumé of the man receiving it. Fuchigami had operated around state budgets measured in billions, overseen major transportation operations and worked at the highest levels of the executive branch. Now he was sitting inside Senate Ways and Means.

Yet prosecutors allege that a $7,000 payment would become part of the evidence tying him to an alleged corruption scheme that has changed the trajectory of a number of political figures in Hawai‘I over a relatively short period of time.

The charges that Fuchigami faces because of this are outlined in both other media reports as well as in copies of the July 24^th indictment.

But at that time, on that date and the significance of that action – taking a check and then cashing it – nothing much happened, and definitely nothing to impede his status inside the halls of power in the State of Hawai‘i.

Fuchigami would continue to serve at the Legislature, at WAM for at least that legislative period – 2022, and was identified in the Senate journals as a staffer in the 2023 session. And on May 5, 2023, one day after sine die of the 2023 Legislature on the 4^th, Governor Josh Green again picked up Fuchigami and reinstated him at the Department of Transportation, Airports Division, as its Deputy Director.

And once again, Fuchigami was on the move, this time back to the John Rodgers Terminal complex at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport.

ON MONDAY, JULY 27, the Hawai‘i Department of Transportation announced that the department was placing Fuchigami on paid administrative leave for 30 days, effective that day.

The department stated the move would allow the department to evaluate the situation.

On Thursday the 30^th, he, along with the other co-defendants, appeared in court to plead not guilty to the charges levied on them. It is not lost on this blogger that, already, there are a number of legal voices out there that are questioning whether the charges are really going to stick or not.

DURING THE COURSE of researching this article, this blogger kept coming back to the same question. Not whether Ford Fuchigami is guilty or innocent—that will be decided in court—but who exactly Ford Fuchigami is.

For fifteen years he quietly occupied some of the most influential administrative positions in Hawaiʻi government while attracting remarkably little public attention. Now, because of one indictment, everyone suddenly knows his name.

Ironically, after all of those years, the public may know less about the man than about the allegations against him.

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Research Note

This article was prepared using publicly available government records, legislative journals, court filings, official press releases, and contemporaneous news reporting. Analysis and conclusions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.

Sources

Government Records & Official Documents

• Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation. Official Statement: State of Hawaiʻi Airport System Revenue Bonds, Series 2015A and 2015B. Honolulu: State of Hawaiʻi, 2015. Biography of Ford Fuchigami documenting his private-sector career, including management positions with Sheraton Hotels & Resorts and United Laundry Service prior to entering state government. Accessed via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. https://web.archive.org/web/20220308073721/https://dwuconsulting.com/images/OS/HAW%202015AB%20OS.pdf
• Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation. “New Transportation Deputy Directors Appointed for Airports and Highways Divisions.” Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation, December 29, 2014. https://hidot.hawaii.gov/administration/new-transportation-deputy-directors-appointed-for-airports-and-highways-divisions/
• Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation. “HDOT Leadership Team Finalized.” Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation, May 5, 2023. https://hidot.hawaii.gov/administration/hdot-leadership-team-finalized/
• Hawaiʻi State Senate. Senate Journal, 2022 Regular Session. Committee records and staff listings. https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session/
• Hawaiʻi State Senate. Senate Journal, 2023 Regular Session. Committee records and staff listings. https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session/
• Office of Governor David Ige. Archived press releases announcing Ford Fuchigami’s appointments as Director of Transportation (2014), Administrative Director (2017), and Chief of Staff (2019). https://governor.hawaii.gov/newsroom/
• United States District Court for the District of Hawaiʻi. United States v. Sylvia Luke, et al. Federal Indictment, filed July 24, 2026.
• News & Background Sources
• Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “Fuchigami Leaving DOT for City Post.” October 14, 2014. https://www.staradvertiser.com/2014/10/14/breaking-news/fuchigami-leaving-dot-for-city-post-2/
• Hawaiʻi News Now. “Ige Appoints Ford Fuchigami as Head of DOT.” November 19, 2014. https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/27419036/ige-appoints-ford-fuchigami-as-head-of-dot/
• Honolulu Civil Beat. “HART Has a New Board Member: Ford Fuchigami.” July 19, 2019. https://www.civilbeat.org/beat/hart-has-a-new-board-member-ford-fuchigami/
• Honolulu Civil Beat. Archived reporting concerning Ford Fuchigami’s appointments and public service. https://www.civilbeat.org/
• Contemporary reporting by Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Honolulu Civil Beat, Hawaiʻi News Now, KITV4, KHON2, and the Associated Press regarding the July 2026 federal public corruption indictment.