Hawaii’s 2014 in 25 Tweets

There were advances for minimum-wage workers, the cost of living kept climbing and a bit of football history — and the Twitteratti were there.

By /

As the end of the year approaches, we scoured the twittersphere in search of 25 particularly relevant comments on important issues in the islands over the last 12 months.

Milk and the Minimum Wage

A far-reaching law from the 2014 legislative sessions will put more money into the hands of low-salaried workers even as Hawaii’s high cost of living continued to rise. Lawmakers reached a deal to increase the state’s minimum wage to $10.10 by 2018.

For people earning the current minimum wage, an hour of work is barely equal to the cost of a gallon of milk. After taxes, it might not even be enough, depending on where people buy their milk. Forget the Big Mac Index. Hawaii’s milk is an easy reference point for high across-the-board prices.

https://twitter.com/kelsiehee/status/545801988642856961

A few supermarket prices might help to convince people like “Hollywood Q” that moving to Hawaii isn’t quite as easy as he thinks.

Fortunately @_maarrk offered a little big-picture context.

https://twitter.com/_maarrk/status/545494296590163968

Homeless in Paradise

Given the state’s rents, which cost 50 percent more than they do nationally, a lot of people can’t afford their own place, or even a shared one. Some mainlanders discovered as much when they read headlines highlighting the fact that Hawaii has the highest rate of homelessness in the country.

Over the course of the year, homelessness became one of the top issues, including during the 2014 elections, prompting community organizers to speak out against anti-homeless measures that Honolulu officials eventually passed.

Homeless advocates also tried to surmount some people’s lack of compassion and understanding, as embodied by this tweet.

https://twitter.com/kawikatakara/status/485018749465264128

University of Hawaii Woes

There have been problems at Hawaii’s only public college for a long time, but this year there were leadership woes that led to student protests, faculty censures and lots and lots of explaining.

David Lassner was hired as president of the University of Hawaii and the well-liked UH Manhoa Chancellor Tom Apple was later fired, which drove some students to protest.

The UH football program took a lot of hits, too, in a 4-9 season. It made the late-season Warrior wins all the more surprising.

https://twitter.com/edsbs/status/521200121589944320

https://twitter.com/ChadMoriyama/status/536432384049049600

The fans still have reservations about Chow, even after UH Athletic Director Ben Jay announced his resignation.

Hawaii’s First Heisman

There was some good news on the sports front for Hawaii. This year we cheered on one of the finer athletes from the islands, football star Marcus Moriota.

The Saint Louis school grad became the first college athlete from Hawaii to win the prized Heisman Trophy. And just this week, Moriota was named the Associated Press college football athlete of the year.

Natural Disasters

Honolulu’s most-searched terms on Google had little to do with Hawaii, except for Hurricane Iselle and Hurricane Ana.

The storms disrupted things on the Big Island — Iselle caused extensive damage just before the August primary elections. The lack of resources in areas of Puna where roads were blocked by falling trees, were striking. In some areas, ice and water were, for a time, troublingly rare.

President Barack Obama ultimately signed off on disaster declarations for Hawaii and Maui counties.

That was hardly the only challenge on the Big Island. An active lava flow from Kilauea cut a downhill path that, as of late December, was still slowly approaching an important shopping area for residents.

Elections

The biggest stories of 2014 may have involved the state’s elections. In some ways our political landscape changed and, in others, it didn’t.

Hawaii bucked the national trend by reenforcing Democratic control of the Legislature, executive office and congressional delegation.

https://twitter.com/cheltonjm/status/503692704102899713

Two factors added drama to the 2014 primary election. Hurricane Iselle closed polling stations on the Big Island and led to a make-up vote, and the U.S. Senate race between Brian Schatz and Colleen Hanabusa that was so close it couldn’t be called until some Puna voters went to the ballot box a week later.

Some mainland political observers and journalists stayed up nearly until dawn on Aug. 9, only to realize the results were inconclusive.

National media descended onto an evolving political story about Puna, even as it was in recovery mode. So did the Senate candidates, which sparked criticism about campaigning in the middle of a crisis.

Schatz seemed to win the public relations war, and he eked out an electoral victory. Some of the more indelible images of the Puna make-up primary election involved a sweaty Schatz delivering water and ice by hand to residents.

There were other troubling electoral quirks, including the 800 missing ballots from Maui that elections officials didn’t discover until a week later, in the midst of the hectic make-up primary in Puna.

Not surprisingly, plenty of criticism rained down on Scott Nago, the state elections chief.

Ige vs. Abercrombie

The most unlikely result involved a proper vote count. David Ige’s crushed the incumbent, Neil Abercrombie, in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. It was the worst primary defeat by a sitting governor in U.S. history.

To illustrate the enormity and magnitude of Ige’s victory, check out this tweet from Ryan Ozawa.

Civil Beat’s polls showed Ige as the likely winner over and over again before Election Day, but the momentum he later gained and the scale of his victory were remarkable.

Abercrombie was remarkably gracious in defeat, at the end of a 40-year political career that began when he was elected to the State Capitol as a representative.

How much of a long-shot campaign did David Ige run? In February jokes of “David Ige who?” were common. The previous month, his  campaign account contained just $76,508 cash on hand, and his campaign was widely believed to have no chance.

Gov. Ige defied the pundits and Hawaii’s traditional electoral logic, and won a remarkable victory.

What it means to support Civil Beat.

Supporting Civil Beat means you’re investing in a newsroom that can devote months to investigate corruption. It means we can cover vulnerable, overlooked communities because those stories matter. And, it means we serve you. And only you.

Donate today and help sustain the kind of journalism Hawaiʻi cannot afford to lose.

Donate

About the Author