Running mates at odds as Hawaii GOP kicks off campaign

SA: … Tupola capped off the event in a speech that emphasized her support for Trump, limited government and the need to be united as a party.

“We need to do this together. We need to get in lockstep. We need to stop fighting against one another. We need to start working together,” said Tupola. “We need to be unified … We need to be unified in our message to change what we need for Hawaii. And we are that change.”

But that message of unity wasn’t resonating with her running mate Friday night. Kerns stormed away from her VIP table to the back of the room several times during the night, cursing and complaining that Tupola’s political views were too liberal. She accused the local party leadership of not giving her a name tag or a chance to speak and seating her at a table with the Young Republicans, rather than major donors. At one point, convention staff pleaded with her to calm down.

“I told (Tupola), you need to apologize because of your voting record,” Kerns told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser as Tupola delivered her speech….

read … Running mates at odds as Hawaii GOP kicks off campaign

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Hawaii GOP ticket united, looks toward November

News Release from Hawaii Republican Party

HONOLULU (September 22, 2018) -- Hawaii Republicans launched their ticket's general election campaign Friday during a dinner also attended by gubernatorial running mates Andria Tupola and Marissa Kerns.

PHOTO: Republican National Committee co-chairman Bob Paduchik addresses the Hawaii Republican Party's Constitution Day Dinner on Friday at the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu. (Courtesy photo)

Some 200 of the party faithful attended the Constitution Day Dinner at the Hawai'i Convention Center in Honolulu. The keynote speakers were Charlie Kirk, founder of the Turning Points USA advocacy organization, and Heritage Foundation economist and newspaper columnist Stephen Moore, who was a senior adviser to President Donald J. Trump during the 2016 speaker. Both Kirk and Moore are frequent Trump surrogates on national TV, including CNN and Fox News.

A surprise came when Don Benton, a Trump appointee as director of the Selective Service, took the stage to thank the Aloha State GOP for their support of the president.

PHOTO: Trump presidential appointee Don Benton, director of the Selective Service, represented the administration at the Hawaii Republican Party's Constitution Day Dinner on Friday at the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu. (Courtesy photo)

Republican National Committee chairman Ronna Romney McDaniel and Republican National Committee co-chairman Bob Paduchik separately addressed the dinner via recorded special messages.

"Republicans are united around our platform of more jobs, bigger pay checks and less taxes," said Hawaii Republican Party chairman Shirlene DelaCruz Santiago Ostrov. "This election is a choice between over 60 years of failed policies and a better, brighter future for all of Hawaii — a future in which families no longer wave goodbye to their children and grandchildren."

Other speakers included Tupola and state Rep. Gene Ward, Hawaii's committeeman on the Republican National Committee. 

Party unity was evident not only by the nominees who attended, but also by the presence of candidates who unsuccessfully ran for the Republican nomination in August's primary election, including John Carroll, Ray L'Heureux and Steve Lipscomb.

Also attending was Honolulu lawyer Samuel King Jr., whose grandfather, Samuel W. King, was governor of Hawaii from 1953–57 and a member of Congress from 1935–1943.

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