Harold "Freddy" Rice:
We're defending the rights of the majority.

Lately he's been reading about himself.

Rice, 62, is the fifth-generation kamaaina Caucasian who filed suit to overturn the recent vote by Hawaiians on electing representatives to propose a native Hawaiian government.

He said state money should not be used to finance the vote if non-Hawaiian residents like himself are barred.

"We're defending the rights of the majority," Rice said. "Sovereignty affects all of us. We should all have a vote. I have friends and relatives who went to war and fought and died for that. I'm not about to give it up for public opinion."

Rice believes that so strongly that he's committed $10,000 so far toward the court battle. He said some money may also be coming from the Washington, D.C.-based Campaign for a Color-Blind America, which offered to help after reading about his court battle in the New York Times.

Following a ruling by U.S. District Judge David Ezra, the vote favoring a native government by a 3-1 margin was revealed Wednesday.

Rice has appealed the case to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which could stop further action by the Hawaiian Sovereignty Elections Council, which staged the plebiscite.

He has another suit pending saying non-Hawaiians should not be barred from voting for trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. He filed that lawsuit in April, a month before he filed the lawsuit challenging the Native Hawaiian Vote.

Rice said he had been thinking about the OHA elections for some time. He decided to file the lawsuits after he got to talking with John Goemans. Rice said Goemans, his attorney, asked if Rice would join him in a lawsuit over the plebiscite.

Sticking his neck out like that could get him misunderstood.

One of his cafe breakfast buddies, former Big Island Mayor Larry Tanimoto, said no one should mistake what's in Rice's heart.

"He's a great guy," Tanimoto said. "He's a cowboy. He loves the aina. He loves this land as much as any Hawaiian person."

Another breakfast buddy, Eddie Akana, a sheriff's deputy and frequent candidate for public office, said he disagrees with Rice.

But, "I like him because he has a good personality," Akana said. "I don't think he's trying to fight anybody. He's trying to do something he believes in."

Rice adds that he's not against sovereignty, not against the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, believes Hawaiian culture should be strengthened, and believes the Hawaiian language should be taught in all public schools.

If he could have voted in the plebiscite, Rice says his vote probably would have been "no."

"I feel there's no way the U.S. Congress would ever let it get to Hawaii being truly sovereign," he said.

Rice has done more than talk about Hawaiian causes. Big Islander Sonny Kaniho, famous for putting cattle on Hawaiian Homes land many times in protest of that department leasing land to non-Hawaiians, confirmed he often got the cattle from Rice.

Kaniho praised Rice's form of protest. "I'm glad he did it for me to learn," he said.

A member of the Maui branch of a missionary family, Rice was born on Kauai and moved to the Big Island in 1957. He's a cattleman with 700 head of beef cattle, but he owns no land. All his pasture is leased.

After years of working on other people's ranches, he spent 10 years as a charter fishing boat skipper in the 1980s. He had a client list of 2,000 people with actors and sports figures among them.

But taking people fishing meant working nearly every day of the year, so he recently returned to cattle to simplify his life. His hobby is roping, which he practices two or three times a week. He's planning to take his children and grandchildren (who are part-Hawaiian) to a competition in Oklahoma in October.

"Modern ranching does not provide roping, bucking, riding horses like they used to. A minority of people who participate in rodeos work on ranches," he said.

Rice, along with two friends, was responsible for seeing ranch skills continue as a sport by forming the Hawaiian Rodeo Cowboy Association in the 1960s. "Today it's a huge sport," he said.

The way Rice dedicated himself to rodeo skills and fishing explains his character, said his friend Clayton Hee, chairman of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

"He's very active and very committed to what he believes in. I don't have a quarrel with him in his belief (about the sovereignty vote). I happen to disagree," Hee said.

"Nonetheless, I recognize he's fully committed to assert his political beliefs in a manner that's honorable. Freddy's a gentleman."