At the Ali‘i Agriculture Farms in Wahiawā on a recent Monday morning, Nani Brown pointed me toward an area just beyond three ponds where several families are fishing for tilapia and catfish.

In this lush location not far from where Kamehameha Highway and Whitmore Village intersect is where a nearly 1-mile pedestrian bridge is planned to connect Wahiawā with Whitmore Village by crossing over the Kiʻikiʻi Stream.

The project has long been championed by Donovan Dela Cruz, the state senator who has represented the Central Oʻahu district (it also includes a portion of Mililani, Mililani Mauka, a portion of Waipi‘o Acres and Launani Valley) since 2010.

Brown, who is running to unseat Dela Cruz in the Aug. 8 Democratic primary, thinks the bridge is a bad idea.

While Dela Cruz and the state Department of Transportation describe the project as an eco-friendly way to traverse the two towns, Brown says it’s a waste of money ($27 million), culturally disrespectful (it’s near Kūkaniloko, the sacred birthing place of Native Hawaiian royalty) and poor planning.

“They said they’re going to make this walkway out of cement,” Brown tells me, referring to the DOT and designer and engineer Keiwitt. “OK, for someone to walk and or bike, that’s a real incredible slope. And then you’re going to go shoot over the river, and they may or may not have two pilings in the river. Well, this is a running river. The way erosion works is you don’t put pilings in the river, because you’re going to cut out the banks, right? So, there’s that.”

Brown continued: “We asked them, ‘What are you going to make the bridge out of?’ They say, ‘We don’t know.’ As a former contractor, I know good and damn well that you didn’t bid millions of dollars and you don’t know what it’s going to be built with.”

Brown, an electrician by trade and a first-time candidate for political office, is using the pedestrian bridge as a way to criticize Dela Cruz. On July 12 she held a “Block the Bridge Party” at Whitmore Community Park.

The state, she said, canceled a community meeting of its own on the bridge that same evening.

The bridge, Brown believes, illustrates the misguided priorities of the incumbent and how her community needs new community leaders with “fresh ideas and energy,” as she states on her website.

“We need elected officials with boots on the ground, that truly represent the community, and take decisive action instead of letting issues fester and get worse, year after year,” as she stated in a press release for the June 12 event.

But Dela Cruz, who did not respond to my several attempts to interview him for this story, has never lost a reelection contest. Even when he drew a primary or general election opponent, his margin of victory has not been close.

As chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, he is widely considered the most powerful member of the Legislature. He is a former Honolulu City Council chair who almost ran for mayor and has ambitions to be governor someday.

And, according to the most recent filings with the Campaign Spending Commission (the next reports aren’t due until July 9), Dela Cruz has a war chest of $1.2 million built through the generous donations of lots of well-known developers, attorneys, shippers, realtors, real estate interests, medical associations, unions, lobbyists, farmers, educators, business executives and even government and elected officials.

Compare that to Brown’s most recent campaign spending report, which shows she has raised $5,300, loaned herself $3,500 and was $66 in the red. (Brown told me she has since raised about $10,000.)

Still, defeating Dela Cruz would upend leadership in the Senate. And underdogs sometimes do win. That’s what happened with Kim Coco Iwamoto two years ago when she knocked off House Speaker Scott Saiki.

Brown thinks many residents of Senate District 17 are not happy with projects like the bridge and would rather Dela Cruz pay more attention to issues like cost of living, broken sidewalks, rising crime and expanding homelessness. She thinks he’s vulnerable and that her campaign is worth her time, money and energy.

“Right now, the price of living is going up,” she said as she drove me around the neighborhood. “We all have how many jobs? Besides being a mom, an electrician, I also have my own bills. I’m not independently wealthy, so every waking minute I’m also out there campaigning, which doesn’t pay. And I am making a lot of sacrifices.”

She adds: “But I’m not doing this for nothing. I know it’s the right thing to do, and to be honest, like, I have not been this excited for an election, maybe even in my life.”

‘Nani Brown Is Dynamite’

Brown, 48, is a Native Hawaiian who grew up in Kāneʻohe. She aged out of the foster care system in the 1990s, an experience she said “shaped my commitment to systems that truly serve our communities.”

That commitment included volunteering with the Youth Challenge Academy, a program that is part of the Hawaiʻi National Guard, intended to help teens earn their high school diploma or equivalency while developing life skills.

Brown has lived in Wahiawā for 14 years, where she raised two daughters. She has a passion for animal rescue and says she has cared for over 100 dogs. Since 2022 she has also been a garden club director at Wahiawā Elementary School. Food sustainability is a priority, and she grows fruit in her backyard.

Last year Brown graduated from Kuleana Academy, a training program run by the nonprofit Hawaiʻi Alliance for Progressive Action, which was co-founded by former state senator and Kauaʻi County Councilman Gary Hooser. The progressive-leaning academy has seen 55 of its graduates run for office, including 11 currently serving across county councils and in the Legislature. Others serve on neighborhood boards and state or county boards and commissions.

“I think Nani Brown is dynamite,” Hooser told me. “She’s got the energy, the values and she is making the commitment to serve. Is she a long shot? Absolutely, with the money (Dela Cruz’s) got in the bank. But if anyone can do it from a grassroots level, it would be Nani Brown.”

Brown, whose campaign slogan is “boots on the ground,” said Hooser helped her focus and appreciate the importance of networking.

“I’m like a fish out of water in this thing,” she says of her entrance into politics. “I am just 100% confident that this is what I am supposed to do.”

In addition to fostering food sustainability and reducing crime and homelessness, Brown is focused on tax fairness, “a housing market that serves Hawaiʻi’s people,” declining corporate money (“no legalized bribery”) and an economy that is not just dependent on tourism.

Brown is well aware of the money that Dela Cruz has brought in to the district. As we drove by the $48 million civic center in Wahiawā, still under construction, she said, “It was super needed, but there was zero community outreach for any part of it.”

Yes, she agreed, the old courthouse was outdated and had only a handful of parking spots. But she said workers were unhappy that the work for the two-building, 61,000-square-foot center displaced them. In addition to the courthouse, there will be a state office complex and a City and County of Honolulu Satellite City Hall.

The work also involves the redevelopment of the existing Wahiawā Public Library, right behind the site of what will be a new Resource and Education Center facility.

“We had one of the oldest libraries,” Brown said. “But a lady, she had been in there for 30 some years and he didn’t even ask her, like, ‘Hey, how would you like it?’ They got like two days notice, and they’re gone. And that’s the kind of stuff that’s just disrespectful.”

Brown said she had heard many residents describe Dela Cruz as rude and a bully. Many, she said, were fearful to speak out against him.

“I have a different approach to community,” she continued. “If someone, especially like a kupuna, an auntie, uncle, whoever, who’s been there caring for this place for basically most of their working life and put all of their life’s work into this spot, I’m not just going to tell them to go ahead and get into this other square that I designed, right?”

Visionary And Bully

Dela Cruz has been in the public sphere for decades now.

At age 30, he was the youngest person to chair the Honolulu City Council, where he served two terms before running for the Senate in 2010. He’s a 1991 graduate of Leilehua High School and has degrees in journalism and communications studies from the University of Oregon.

He takes his work very seriously (he missed no votes in the 2025 and 2026 legislative sessions) and believes that he is advancing the best interests of the state, in particular in trying to better train Hawaiʻi youth so they won’t leave for the mainland. Agricultural sustainability is a top priority, and the Wahiawā area has benefitted for his goals.

Dela Cruz’s main project, “Nourishing Hawai’i’s Future,” aims to accelerate Hawaiʻi’s progress toward greater local food production. Its success will hinge on the construction of a range of facilities, costing tens of millions of dollars, including the Central Oʻahu Agriculture and Food Hub in Whitmore Village.

That hub includes an at-least $28 million regional kitchen for the Department of Education. The Agribusiness Development Corp. has been charged with building out the Whitmore campus with independent warehouses and cold storage, highly specialized processing facilities, greenhouses and workforce housing.

Dela Cruz also played a key role this past session in preserving a historic tax break crafted by the Legislature in 2024.

“The final version of the bill preserves income tax cuts for joint filers earning under $350,000, heads of household under $262,500, and single filers under $175,000, ensuring that affordability relief continues for roughly 90% of Hawaii households,” Dela Cruz said in his April 29 newsletter to constituents.

But Dela Cruz has been called a bully for years, someone who strong-arms fellow legislators and government officials into doing his bidding. He also sometimes seems to think the rules do not apply to him, as when he declined to recuse himself for voting on bills where he has a clear conflict of interest.

I asked Brown if she was worried about retaliation of some sort in her challenge to the powerful senator. Nope.

“I was handing out my flier and these three guys came up, and I was like, ‘Hi, guys, you know, I just want to invite you to this thing.’ And then they look at it, and they’re like, ‘Oh, God, you’re running against Donovan. No, no, no, we can’t even let him know that we spoke to you or he won’t hear our bills.’”

Brown smiles, something she does often, projecting confidence that she has her finger on the pulse of what voters want.

“We don’t want a bridge, but we do want sidewalks,” she said. “I am this close to probably winning an election on sidewalks — that is how bad we have been asking and wanting just the simple things. We’re not a fancy town. We’re not asking for too much, not even close. We just want to be able to traverse this space.”

Is Brown worried about blowback should she win? Nope.

“I am a female electrician that’s been in construction for 28 years now,” she said. “I’m not scared of him, you know what I mean? Like, to me, he’s just a bully.”