Three incumbents, a former Hawaii County mayor and a retired Circuit Court judge won races for five contested Board of Trustees seats at the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. [ OFFICE OF HAWAIIAN AFFAIRS ]
Almost half of isle voters
leave OHA ballots blankBy Pat Omandam
pomandam@starbulletin.com"I'm optimistic that the board will be able to get together, maybe for the first time in history, and I hope to help that happen," said Boyd Mossman, a retired Maui judge, who won the Maui seat.
"I still know that there will be some contention, but the Board of Trustees will work together."
Former Big Island Mayor Dante Carpenter, who also is a past county councilman and state senator, won the contest for the Oahu trustee's seat. He said he hopes the board will stop being a mini-Legislature and start working on pressing issues facing the state agency.
"I know that we can do a lot of things together," Carpenter said. "I know everybody there, and if we just don't end up playing games ... I think we can do a lot of things."
Meanwhile, incumbents Rowena Akana, Oswald Stender and John Waihee IV will return to the nine-member board.
"It's an improvement," Stender said last night of the new board. "I think we can do a lot more now than we've been able to do over the last couple of years."
Nearly half of voters left their OHA ballots blank or did not vote for the maximum candidates in the at-large races. That number was up from the 2000 election, when blank ballots in the OHA races averaged 32.4 percent.
OHA Chairwoman Haunani Apoliona said the blank votes may be a sign non-Hawaiians felt native issues should be left only to Hawaiian voters. She also said that the gubernatorial campaign thrust the dispute over ceded-lands revenues and federal recognition of native Hawaiians to mainstream issues.
