The state Republican Party just elected its third chair in six months while several party officials have recently resigned over fights with leadership.
A slew of press releases last month from a half-dozen Hawaiʻi Republican party leaders announcing that they had left the party amid infighting has a lot of people who follow local politics scratching their heads. What happened to the momentum the local GOP has shown the past couple years?
Hawaiʻi’s minority party now has the most elected members in the Legislature since the halcyon days of GOP Gov. Linda Lingle in the 2000s. Six of the seven state House seats on Oʻahu’s West Side are today represented by Republicans, as is a state Senate seat.
Republicans also reign nationally, controlling the White House and (narrowly) both houses of Congress and constituting a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. They have an edge in governorships and state legislatures as well.
While President Trump’s popularity seems to flutter with every news cycle, he remains the dominant figure in American politics, as he has been for 10 years running. He may have also lost Hawaiʻi in three consecutive presidential contests, but his vote percentage has only gone up since he first ran in 2016. George W. Bush was the only Republican to receive a higher percentage of the Hawaiʻi presidential vote over the past 34 years.
Meantime, the Hawaiʻi Republican Party has long cycled through leaders, something that has been widely reported over the decades. What’s different this time?
GOP Chair Shirlene Ostrov, who was elected the new party chair last week, downplayed the spate of resignations, saying they represented only a handful of the party’s 15,000 members.
“Six people resigning is not a mass exodus,” she told Civil Beat. She also said the party is undergoing a process of review and renewal.
Still, Ostrov is the third party chair in just six months — not an indication of unity. The concern now is that the latest spate of divisiveness may risk the gains the party has made.
Much of that success is due to the grassroots work of members like Teri Kia Savaiinae, a longtime Leeward Coast resident, substitute teacher and health care worker, who is one of those who resigned earlier this month.
A former Democrat who left that party after the second term of Barack Obama, she helped grow the GOP in her capacity as the Hawaiʻi Republican Party’s regional vice chair and vice chair of candidate recruitment and training.
For Savaiinae, winning in politics means nurturing grassroots.
“I am a Kanaka ʻŌiwi (native of the land), and all my ancestors are from this moku (district), this ʻāina (land), and I need to do my part in making things better,” she told Civil Beat.
But Savaiinae, like other departing colleagues, alleges current party leaders have disregarded internal bylaws, retaliated against members who try to challenge decisions and abandoned fiduciary responsibility and proper management of donor funds.
“This decision comes after careful reflection and years of service to a party I once believed stood for integrity, transparency, and true conservative leadership,” she wrote in a widely circulated email. “Unfortunately, the conduct I have witnessed within the party has diverged sharply from the standards we claim to represent.”
It would take many paragraphs to detail all that has been said among party members over the past six months. It includes a lot of finger-pointing, name-calling and personal outrage, chronicled in reams of emails and memos and more.
But it also involves substantive debate over principles, ideology and leadership. And it can all be quickly shared at the click of a mouse as members have been doing in recent months.
It doesn’t help that the Hawaiʻi Republican Party has a decades-long history of infighting and turnover. The most recent upheaval was evident at the party’s state convention at the Kauaʻi War Memorial Convention Hall in Līhuʻe in May. That’s when a slate of new leaders defeated the slate supporting Tamara McKay, who had run the party for 18 months and was seeking a second term.
Party members like Savaiinae were surprised by the election of a new party chair, Art Hannemann, and his allies for party positions. Many had not been active in party politics. And Hannemann has already resigned as chair, in October, adding to the disruption.
The convention was also marked by the surprise issuing of subpoenas to McKay, Savaiinae and several other members, stemming from a lawsuit. Christina Everett is suing the party, claiming that the defendants tried to cause her “reputational harm” by issuing false, malicious statements about Everett, who has ambitions to run for office.
Also named in the lawsuit is Nolan Chang. He was part of the faction that recently resigned, in his case from his posts as chair of the party’s Honolulu County Committee and national committeeman. He cited reasons similar to Savaiinae and three others who quit.
In his lengthy resignation letter, Chang singled out Hannemann (a cousin of Mufi Hannemann, the former Honolulu mayor and current tourism executive) and Ostrov, a former party chair aligned with Hannemann.
Chang described a “sustained pattern of misconduct, mismanagement, and abuse of authority” that has created an environment “that is unrecognizable to those of us who have worked diligently for years to build a principled, grassroots Republican movement in Hawai’i.”
Chang told Civil Beat he expected more resignations to come, saying that “a lack of leadership, a lack of transparency” top the growing concerns among members. The problem with the current leadership is “there’s no plan, there’s no direction,” he said.
“I got a pretty good pulse of how the people feel in my Oʻahu county, and so you’re only looking at the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot of displeasure from our body.”
Chang declined to comment on the lawsuit on the advice of his attorney. He also said he has not heard from Hannemann or Ostrov since stepping down.
“See, that’s part of the problem where there’s a lack of communication,” he said. “So there is no communication between me and them.”
Hannemann told Civil Beat that he remained “extremely disappointed” in the party and its leadership. He did, however, say he strongly backs the three GOP state senators and most of the nine GOP stat representatives in office.
“They’re good people,” he said. “They’re in it for the right reason. They’re not part of the party and the politics of the party and the deepness and the ugliness of the party.”
Hannemann said the GOP legislators are right to oppose Democrat-introduced legislation to legalize marijuana, allow gambling and to support transgender rights. If passed, the legislation would make Hawaiʻi be seen less as a “family-friendly destination” and would destroy tourism, the state’s top industry, he said.
While she supported Hannemann for chair, Ostrov said he ended up not being a good fit. “And we saw it coming and we thanked him for his service.”
Ostrov also declined to comment on the Everett lawsuit, saying it preceded her time leading the party. But she did say that “consistent misinformation has plagued this party.”
Ostrov said the party is now working on “setting the record straight” and forging a “renewed commitment” to transparency and accountability.” She described the membership as energized and focused on renewal and electing more Republicans in 2026.
To that end, next week party members will meet over Zoom to discuss an internal financial review of the party’s books, something that is required by party bylaws.
Still, infighting continues.
Another lawsuit, this one targeting the party, Hannemann, Ostrov and others alleges that they violated bylaws and Robert’s Rules of Order. The plaintiff is Tammy Ash Perkins, who has served as the Maui County GOP chair and a member of the state committee. According to the lawsuit, she says that party members tried to suppress her rights by censuring her.
Ostrov said via text Tuesday that she has been advised by counsel not to comment on ongoing litigation.
“We are confident the court will find the claims agains the Hawaiʻi Republican Party to be without merit,” she texted.
Perkins finished second to Ostrov in the election for chair last week. Ostrov said Perkins was temporarily suspended from her post last month by a majority vote of the party’s executive committee following a preliminary investigation into concerns about Perkins’ actions against the party.
McKay, the former chair, said she is glad to learn the party is being more transparent and accountable, especially regarding its finances.
She would like to see the party audited and said that, during her tenure, the GOP succeeded in selling its costly office space on Kapiʻolani Boulevard, as the headquarters had greatly contributed to the party’s debt. As of June 30, the most recent records for the party filed with the Campaign Spending Commission show it with $56,200 in cash on hand.
The party also managed to secure $50,000 in financial support for the 2024 presidential election in Hawaiʻi from the Republican National Committee, she said. (Ostrov was the chair of the Donald Trump campaign in Hawaiʻi.) And it was under McKay’s watch that the party picked up seats in the Legislature.
But McKay remains critical of what she calls the “new regime,” meaning first Hannemann and then Ostrov.
“They haven’t disclosed what the financials are. We have no idea what’s going on,” she said. “They don’t want to recognize me as past chair, even though we showed a resolution. They have not been transparent, nor welcoming to the members or anybody that they consider a so-called patriot.”
McKay, who estimated that the party had gone through nine chairs between the end of 2021 when Ostrov stepped down after her first stint and when McKay took office in 2024, suggests the latest developments in the party’s tumultuous history may not bode well for the 2026 elections.
“Right now, it’s definitely not positive,” she said.
Savaiinae, who helped build the GOP on Oʻahu’s West Side, remains hopeful that, despite the turmoil, good candidates will still run as Republicans. But it may not involve actually being directly involved with the party itself, as she was.
“I don’t believe anybody needs to be a party member to win,” she said. “You just need to be pono. Do the right thing and not (for) someone else’s agenda but really, really for the people, because we’ve gone away from doing it for the people. It’s sad, it’s disgusting.”
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