Ozawa Challenges Waters’ Honolulu Council Candidacy In Court
This is the third time the two candidates have faced off in court over this city council seat.
Trevor Ozawa formally challenged Honolulu Council Chair Tommy Waters’ candidacy in circuit court on Tuesday, escalating a dispute as the candidates vie to represent Waikīkī, Kaimukī and East Honolulu on the council.
In his 52-page complaint, Ozawa says Waters should be deemed ineligible for this year’s election because he has already reached his term limit. Ozawa wants to block Acting City Clerk Chadd Kadota from certifying Waters’ nomination papers and stop Hawaiʻi Chief Election Officer Scott Nago from printing and distributing ballots with Waters’ name on them.
The City Charter says council members cannot be elected to more than two consecutive four-year terms. Waters has served for two terms, but his first term in 2019 started late due to an earlier election dispute with Ozawa. Waters says that means the first term didn’t amount to four-year term. Ozawa disagrees.
“He cannot add things to the charter that aren’t there,” Ozawa told Civil Beat on Tuesday.
In a statement on Tuesday evening, Waters stuck to his position.
“No matter how much my opponent attempts to distort the facts, the plain language of the Charter remains clear,” he said. “The law, the Charter’s intent, and established precedent all support my continued candidacy.”
He continued: “Across jurisdictions, courts have consistently recognized that term-limit provisions do not apply to partial terms unless the law expressly says otherwise. They have also repeatedly held that election laws and candidate eligibility requirements should be interpreted in favor of voter choice, ballot access, and democratic participation. Disqualifying a candidate from seeking office is an extraordinary remedy, and neither the facts nor the law support such an outcome here.”
In emails on Tuesday and Wednesday, Kadota and Nago declined to comment, saying their offices do not not discuss pending litigation.
The controversy stems from a previous matchup between Ozawa and Waters eight years ago for the same District 4 seat. Ozawa – who at that point was the incumbent – initially beat Waters in the 2018 general election by fewer than 25 votes.
Waters challenged the result in court arguing certain absentee ballots came in too late and shouldn’t be counted. The Hawaiʻi Supreme Court sided with him and invalidated the results. Mike Formby was appointed as an interim council member to represent the district, and a new election between Ozawa and Waters was scheduled for April 2019.
Waters won that April election and took office in May. Because a normal four-year term begins in January, he has said his first term should not count toward his term limit, allowing him to run for a third term.
Ozawa says that’s wrong.
“The evidence is clear. Tommy Waters was elected to a regular four-year term,” he said. “An April election never altered the regular term that we were running for. All it did was alter his time of service.”
Eligibility In Dispute
Election law experts from around the country told Civil Beat in recent interviews that the City Charter is ambiguous about whether candidates like Waters can run for a third term. In other jurisdictions, they said, it’s clear when a partial term rounds up for the purposes of calculating term limits.
Waters sees an opening in the charter’s ambiguity. In a recent interview, he told Civil Beat he’s not even fully sure whether he’s eligible, but that he’s “going to give it a shot.”
Earlier this year a Waters supporter, Christian Butt, submitted a formal objection to Waters’ candidacy to trigger an opinion from the city clerk. Kadota, the acting clerk — who reports to the council over which Waters presides — deemed Waters eligible.
This month, Ozawa filed his own opposition to Waters’ candidacy with Kadota and got the same response: Waters is allowed to run and “no further action will be taken by this Office.”
“The Acting City Clerk’s determination does not withstand scrutiny,” Ozawa’s lawsuit complaint states, stating that the clerk is conflating the start of Waters’ service with the start of his term.
To support his own case, Waters has pointed to previous cases of council members serving partial terms followed by additional full terms. For instance, Ann Kobayashi won a special election to fill the seat vacated by Duke Bainum, who died in office. She subsequently served two consecutive four-year terms.
Ozawa argues that Waters case is different.
When Kobayashi was elected, her certificate of election shows she was elected to fill a vacancy “for the unfinished term.” Waters certificate of election makes no such reference, Ozawa notes in his lawsuit.
“It’s pretty elementary school level,” Ozawa told Civil Beat. “One of these things is the same. One of these things is different. Where does Tommy’s fall?”
Tuesday’s lawsuit marks the third legal dispute between the two candidates for the District 4 council seat.
The duo ran against each other for the first time in 2014. Ozawa won by 41 votes. Waters challenged the result, alleging a possible miscount, but the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court said he lacked the evidence to back up his claim. Ozawa served as a councilman from 2015 to 2019.
In his lawsuit filed Tuesday, Ozawa urged the court to decide the case quickly.
“Time is of the essence,” Ozawa’s lawsuit states. If Waters name appears on the ballot and the election allowed to proceed, the harm to Ozawa and voters, he said, “will be impossible to remedy after the fact.”
