Hey Primary Campaign Candidates! We Want To Hear From You
Civil Beat’s candidate surveys went out last week. Send your answers back as soon as you can so we can get them out to voters.
Mahalo nui to all the political candidates so far who have filled in and returned the surveys that Civil Beat emailed out last week that we’ll begin publishing soon to clue voters in about where you stand on various topics.
We set last Friday as the deadline for submissions and so far we’ve received 178 back, representing 57% of the 310 candidates who filed the paperwork to run for more than 100 open political positions in local, state and national Hawaiʻi races.
Some big gaps still need filling, including in the House and Senate races where nearly half of the 154 filed candidates’ responses are missing, and many responses from the Kauaʻi and Maui County Council races also are MIA.
The good news is if you haven’t yet completed the survey, there is still time to do so — but not much. We need them as soon as possible since we want to get all of them set up to publish well before ballots go in the mail in the middle of July.
Each survey is tailored to the specific position each candidate is seeking, and each includes one question provided by a constituent, which Civil Beat sought via a social media callout.
We know that completing the survey takes time, but the responses are a popular feature of our election coverage and offer candidates the opportunity to share their views directly with the electorate. Just in case our email reminders got lost in inboxes, our reporters spent several hours Friday hitting the phones with friendly reminders to candidates to finish up the surveys and submit them as soon as possible.
We are hoping to publish responses for candidates for the same office at the same time so that readers can directly compare candidates against each other. For races with more than five hopefuls, we’ll roll them out in batches, then gather all of them in our elections guide.
Some words of caution for those still submitting involves photos:
- Be careful to not send photos that have been heavily photoshopped or, worse, manipulated by AI. Because of our commitment to not distribute AI-generated content, we’re running your headshots through an AI-detection tool and that has led to a few rejections so far. (Likewise, we expect candidates to avoid using AI to formulate their answers.)
- If you upload your headshot to the internet to share with us, please make sure to include a specific link to the photo you want us to use. We’ve had to go on a few frustrating hunting expeditions there.
We’re more than happy to work through any issues you might encounter, and we’ll accommodate special requests as much as possible. Our goal is to make this as easy as possible on you so that your words reach the widest possible audience.
Some candidates needed the survey to be resent, or wanted to confirm the survey had been received –– mahalo for reaching out. Some candidates reached out to let us know they were traveling or had other reasons that delayed their response, and we really appreciate the heads up.
Drop us a note at candidate@civilbeat.org if we can assist or if you need to troubleshoot anything.
Meanwhile, don’t forget our 2026 Elections Guide is up and running.
