How bad does it have to get?  Since 2014, we've lost two full years to lies, fraud, smoke, and mirrors from the corrupt, inept party leaders known as Team Hellreich.

BUT FIRST, A BIG NEWS FLASH:   After Team Hellreich blew many tens of thousands of dollars since 2014 on the party budget's $120,000 line-item for an inexperienced executive director with very little political, work or even life experience, Marcia Tagavilla has been terminated and secretly replaced by repeat failure 'campaign consultant' Jack "The Music Man" James who only weeks ago boldly predicted to Civil Beat (screenshot below) that his hard work and skills and strategy would lead to the certain victory of Jaci Agustin; yet ended up losing just as badly in 2016 as she did in 2014.

Due to the usual lack of transparency by Team Hellreich (i.e. secretiveness), we don't know if the Hawaii GOP is paying county vice chair Jack James to work for the party as Tagavilla's replacement or perhaps just letting him sleep upstairs.  But all GOP members in Hawaii deserve to know about the stumbling party leadership, the rotating cast of characters, and about how desperate the party's finances have become under the shoddy management of Team Hellreich; which includes Hellreich/Rohlfing loyalist Jack James, who is as bad a predictor of "Republican victory" as the New York Times.

FACT CHECK:  Party favorite Jaci Agustin received only 38% of the vote in 2014 and received just 41.7% in 2016.  All that effort and money spent by Jack James over two years for virtually ZERO improvement with voters.  HIRA will be detailing the key reasons this campaign went south again in an upcoming newsletter.  But readers like you can probably guess the reasons.  And, NO, you didn't see a 'Help Wanted' ad for the position at the Hawaii GOP just filled by James.  Team Hellreich stuffed its buddy in there with the apparently secret consent of every RINO on the executive committee, from party treasurer Mary Smart to career politician Gene Ward.

NOW, BACK TO THE PROBLEM AT HAND . . .

 

Yesterday, KHVH Newsradio's Rick Hamada spoke out on his show multiple times against the Hawaii GOP's chronic dysfunction and called for new leadership right away; even suggesting that Sam Slom seek the job of party chairman.

 

But conservatives like Hamada are NOT alone in decrying the hijacking of the Hawaii Republican Party by incompetent RINO's and closet Democrats.  Even true-blue liberals in Hawaii speak out more frequently and just as passionately about the death of the Hawaii GOP at the hands of Miriam Hellreich, Pat Saiki, Fritz Rohlfing, Barbara Marumoto and their starstruck gang of RINO apologists and do-nothings scattered throughout various party posts.  Here's a recent sampling:

 

This past Sunday's edition of the Honolulu Star-BirdCageLiner saw columnist David Shapiro declare in no uncertain terms:  "The Hawaii Republican Party is dead."

Just six months earlier, the very same David Shapiro was already able to predict the future : "The GOP brand is shot in Hawaii, and the party won't recover as a relevant political force anytime soon.

 

KITV's Denby Fawcett (no friend of conservatives) weighed in around the same time:  "There is nothing sadder than watching Hawaii's struggling Republican Party sink lower and lower."

Just last month, Civil Beat's Neal Milner dug a little deeper with his recent assessment :  "Tea party people and other conservative rivals like the Hawaii Republican Assembly (HIRA) call the state's Republican leaders RINOs - Republicans in Name Only.  In fact, a better description of the state GOP is PINOS - Party In Name only."

While local Democrat Party-aligned columnists are sorrowful for the demise of the GOP in Hawaii, it's important to remember that these are the very liberals who root for the failed policies of our political opponents, Hawaii's Democrats.  That's what makes their collective cries of alarm about the death of the Hawaii Republican Party particularly bittersweet and even quite credible.

 

But real Republicans and principled conservatives in Hawaii who look around our islands and see in all directions the ongoing devastation caused by failed Democrat policies regard these comments from liberals about our as particularly enraging.  Why?  Because every two years it's the exact same outcome from the phony Republicans who lead the phony Republican Party we've endured here in the Aloha State for two decades.

 

So phony, in fact, that everything we were told by local GOP leaders over the past two years were complete lies.  Lies about goals.  Lies about strategy.  Lies about party health.  Lies about their intent.  HIRA has uncovered much.

Their lies go much deeper than just the broken promises of RINO party leaders to increase Republican influence in 2016; such as how Fritz Rohlfing (with the approval of his fellow party officers from Team Hellreich) promised an increase in the number of elected Republicans in the State House and State Senate . . . but instead we got a 100% decrease in the senate and a 14% decrease in the house.

 

What's worse is that the horrible outcome two weeks ago today could have been prevented.  The steady flow of lies, smoke and mirrors from these phony Republicans are tantamount to a realtor selling you a home knowing full well that the inspection revealed cracks in the foundation, termite-eaten frames, black mold-infested drywall, dangerous wiring, leaky plumbing, a roof ready to cave in, and even bodies buried in the backyard.

 

 

STATE CHAIR ROHLFING CAUGHT IN A HUGE LIE

*** EXPOSED BY HIS OWN BIG ISLAND COUNTY CHAIR ***

 

Here's just one example of Team Hellreich's fraud.  Back in July, HIRA explicitly warned (among other warnings) that the Hawaii GOP was setting up candidates for failure by ignoring its primary responsibility of organizing for victory against Democrats by failing to undertake the essential tasks of identifying Republican voters, educating and persuading independent or 'swing' voters, and then "getting out the vote" (GOTV) with calls and home visits throughout the 246 precincts statewide.  Cut to the chase:  It wasn't done.

But with time running out, the 'con job' of cover-your-okole, 'make-believe' campaigning had to be launched .  You see, in order to avoid an avalanche of criticism and an embarrassing scandal which might keep Team Hellreich's do-nothing officers from being re-elected for another dismal two year term through 2019, Lyin' Fritz Rohlfing actually PRETENDED this crucial work was ongoing; before, during and after the election.  In fact, his lies about leading a GOTV campaign continued even after the November 8th general election, both in statements to party members and to the media.

 

In Rohlfing's own newsletter to card-carrying Republicans across Hawaii, Lyin' Fritz actually reflected on the 2016 campaign by writing the following message of pure, unadulterated bullcrap:  "To provide additional support to our candidates locally, the Hawaiian (sic) Republican Party organized and executed a statewide get­-out-the-vote campaign to identify new voters."  Uhhh, NO YOU DIDN'T, FRITZ.  YOU ACTUALLY PULLED THE PLUG.  There was no Voter ID effort and there was no GOTV effort.  Our candidates were thrown to the wolves yet again.  (More about this below.)

 

Set aside how HIRA has dozens of sources throughout the Hawaii GOP who tipped us off about Rohlfing's fraudulent claims.  Lyin' Fritz's cover story completely unravelled thanks to the Fourth Estate.  Since our party leaders decided to transmit that same B.S.-filled 'we did a really great job' newsletter in the form of a press release to the local news media, those exact words from Lyin' Fritz were picked up by the editors of the Big Island newspaper , the Hawaii Tribune-Herald .  They didn't waste any time pounding the pavement to expose Rohlfing's BIG LIE.  It didn't take long for intrepid investigative reporter Nancy Cook Lauer -- the very same reporter who broke the story last year about Billy Kenoi's abuse of a county debit card -- to get one of RINO Rohlfing's own lieutenants to break ranks and tell the truth debunking Rohlfing's self-serving and fictitious shibai.

 

Enter David Ross, the West Hawaii county chairman for the state Republican Party who countered Rohlfing by admitting quite frankly:  There was no 'organized, executed statewide GOTV effort'.  According to Lauer's reporting , Rohlfing's own appointee Ross quickly admitted that "there wasn't an organized get-out-the-vote effort."  Ross continued:  "It was ad hoc.  It wasn't a highly organized thing."  Yes, Lyin' Fritz.  It was not an organized effort.  On the Big Island, there were Republicans who took it upon themselves to do the job you and Team Hellreich failed to do.  The takeaway:  Party chair Rohlfing shamelessly attempted to take bogus credit in the wake of Trump's strong showing in Kona for what in reality was "individuals and groups engaged in sign-waving to support Trump."

Republicans statewide have every right to be outraged!   Party leaders are NOT supposed to 'pretend they did their jobs' while actually doing nothing at all.  The reason we keep losing elections on such a massive scale every two years is because the RINO's at Team Hellreich maintain a phony, non-existent field organization of pure 'astroturf', which is hamstrung even further by Hellreich's RINO commitment to keeping silent about Democrats and maintaining RINO neutrality on issues -- a surefire recipe for disaster.

 

With his classic RINO prevaricating, smoke and mirrors, Lyin' Fritz just happens to be the same party chair who took thousands of dollars from the party's bank account to hire a Democrat union lawyer to stop HIRA from telling the truth about corrupt party leaders.  But check this out . . .

 

 

*** CANCELLED PARTY LEADERSHIP MEETINGS ***

 

Now, if you still believe that Team Hellreich's henchmen intended to do their party officer jobs after clearly demonstrating two years of inaction while in complete control the Hawaii GOP, the rest of this story will help you understand that they were never serious about Voter ID or about Getting Out the Vote (GOTV).

Just three short weeks before the just concluded November 8th general election, another one of Lyin' Fritz Rohlfing's appointed (not elected) county chairs finally promised to call a meeting to discuss the non-existent party effort to make contact with hundreds of thousands of voters statewide.  [The same voters who saw ZERO 'vote GOP' advertising coming from our state party while it blew $15,000 per month on overhead alone.]

On 15 October 2016, following more than 23 months of do-nothingness since the 2014 election, and with just three weeks to go, Honolulu GOP county chair Larie Manutai sent a panicky and apologetic midnight e-mail to fellow party officers scheduling a last-minute "late notice" meeting of the Honolulu County GOP leadership just two weeks before the election.  In her message, Manutai claimed to have developed some last-minute strategy hastily dubbed the "Hukilau Plan" which would attempt to reach hundreds of thousands of potential Republican voters across Oahu just in time for November 8th.

Yes, you read that correctly.  This plan aimed to have nonexistent volunteers call hundreds of thousands of previously uncalled voters in just two weeks of dialing.  You really need to completely suspend disbelief to accept that this would even be possible with Team Hellreich's infamously emasculated and completely gutted GOP Hawaii organization.  Still, Ms. Manutai -- a state employee and loyal lieutenant to Hellreich and Rohlfing -- scheduled a presentation to all GOP leaders on Oahu of the never-before-seen, never-before-discussed, never-before-heard-of "Hukilau Plan".  Again, this rollout of this phony plan was not two months before the election or two years before the election.  But a mere two weeks.

 

POOF - UP IN SMOKE!!!!!   Only hours after this big meeting got announced, Hellreich's top officers Rohlfing and Manutai abruptly cancelled this big, last-minute meeting at party headquarters.  The GOP's entire "Hukilau" campaign to reach voters over a 2-week period was jettisoned.  What was their excuse for pulling the plug on the entire GOTV effort for 2016?  Well, the reason cited by Boyd "Not-So-Ready" Ready (Rohlfing's secretary, demoted from state party vice chair for 'coordinated campaigns' two years earlier following a similarly un-coordinated campaign of pure failure) was 'a mere scheduling conflict' -- that Oahu's Trump campaign would be signwaving by the Kamehameha statue the same morning as the meetings called by Rohlfing and Manutai:  "The meetings are hereby cancelled."

 

Yes, believe it or not (though HIRA fully believes it because we know these people), the already pathetic and colossally ineffective plan for GOTV in 2016 was scrapped because the last-minute meeting conflicted with a morning of signwaving by a mostly different group of people than those expected in the party leadership meeting.  So, in order to save face, a teeny-tiny-GOTV phonebanking session by a handful of people (who could only realistically hope to reach 1% of Republicans on Oahu) was choreographed on Election Day so that photos could be taken to 'prove that party leaders did something'.

The smoke and mirrors, faux GOTV effort was staged at our $15,000 per month (admin overhead alone) party headquarters, at which failed party leaders attempted to fool card-carrying members into making us think they could reach in 1 day what really takes two full years to accomplish.  They never meant to do anything but pull a sleight-of-hand to make themselves "look busy" when actually laying the foundation for Republican losses.

 

The phony "coordinated campaign" of Hellreich, Hickling, Rohlfing, and county chairs Manutai, Yoder, Ross et al was a complete and abject failure by any measurement.  Right on schedule, as in past years, the slaughter of Republicans at the hands of Hawaii GOP leaders proceeded as expected on Tuesday, November 8, 2016.

 

You know how the story ends .  You saw the losses of two elected Republicans (bringing us down to just 6 at the state capitol versus 70 Democrats), while not a single Republican challenger even came close.

 

--------------------------------------------

 

In addition to demanding the resignations of all party leaders, HIRA demands that a meeting of the party's State Committee be held right away with the following agenda:

 

*** PROPOSED HAWAII GOP EMERGENCY MEETING AGENDA ***

for official post-election gathering of State Committee:

 

 

--------------------------------------------

 

Why is it that Miriam Hellreich's puppets on the Hawaii GOP's executive committee, the county committees and the state committee always pretend that they have no responsibility for our party's budget, strategy, priorities and outcomes?  In any other organization, wasting this much money, time, and countless political opportunities while failing so miserably in its mission would result in firings, audits, criminal charges, civil suits, and new management, if not a shutdown of the company or organization.

 

It's no longer a matter of mere speculation that Team Hellreich finds this level of failure to be acceptable year after year.  It's now a proven matter of fact that the Hawaii GOP has been hijacked by RINO's who are determined through a mixture of incompetence and intention to give Democrats what they desire:  TOTAL VICTORY OVER REPUBLICANS.

 

Yes, Fritz Rohlfing and the rest of Team Hellreich will lie to your face over and over that they did everything they could, when all they really did was lead our candidates and our policies to the slaughter again in 2016.  And yet these leaders still won't resign.  The new scuttlebutt we're hearing is whether Rohlfing will get fired in the way that Jonah Kaauwai ( pushed out in 2011 ) and David Chang ( replaced by Pat "Gangsta" Saiki in 2014 ) were both tossed aside by fellow party leaders shortly after each was "re-elected" and long before their terms in office were scheduled to end.

 

One thing's for sure, party leaders failed to make the case against Democrats -- Democrats who never once felt like they were put on defense here in the islands.  Now RINO's are looking to repeat their failed formula in November 2018.  Since they act like they did a great job and they refuse to resign, will we let them stay on?

 

STAY TUNED :  In the days and weeks ahead, HIRA will tell you more disturbing, 100% confirmed stories about more of the many, many ways local party leaders have screwed Republicans and deceived us all.  You deserve to know how and why so many Republicans in Hawaii lost needlessly.

-------------------------------------

The good news - CHANGE IS COMING:  Join HIRA's leadership team today and Republican help will be on the way.  If you haven't already done so, please pre-register to be part of the solution by visiting: www.HawaiiRepublicanAction.com

Then, be on the lookout  later this week for a Thanksgiving Weekend sneak preview of Hawaii Republican Action's exciting and detailed plan to save the Hawaii GOP.  Republicans in Hawaii deserve better.   We hope you'll join us!