Why the Hawaii GOP Swamp Just Got Deeper and More Corrupt

THE SWAMP JUST GOT DEEPER: Shocked Shirlene Ostrov Supporters Abandon Hawaii GOP's Sinking Ship After Team Ostrov Circles the Wagons Around Disgraced Fritz Rohlfing Aloha, Republicans: HIRA has some painful breaking news to share -- eye popping news that you deserve to hear because you ought to know why our state party isn't more successful in Hawaii unseating crooked and incompetent Democrats.  Sadly, this breaking news clearly reveals that the swamp is NOT being drained by our party's new leaders.  Instead, the swamp has gotten deeper.   Below are two shocking reasons we've learned which explain why supporters of state chair Shirlene Ostrov have begunabandoning the ship in recent weeks.  In fact, volunteers and donors have reached out to HIRA in recent weeks, including members of Ostrov's liberal organization the Oahu League of RINO Women:  "You guys at HIRA were exactly right.  Nothing has changed.  In fact, it's gotten worse under Ostrov.  She's controlled by Hellreich and Saiki, just like HIRA warned us.  Now I'm outa here!" Yep, there are some reallystrange happenings atHawaii GOP headquarters.  Without further ado, HIRA is obligated to share with you what we've learned -- the TWO GIANT REASONS Ostrov supporters are abandoning ship and causing Republicans to openly wish they hadn'taccepted free airfare and free convention registration from Ostrov campaign honcho Mark Blackburn to attend last Spring's Kauai state convention at no cost . . . with Ostrov supporters openly wishing they could take back their votes. --------------------------------------------------- Reason #1 - Despite Ostrov telling gullible delegates that the failed leadership of Fritz Rohlfing would be history if she got elected at the state convention, Ostrov has decided to keep Fritz Rohlfing on the party's powerful Executive Committee as an executive officer of the Hawaii GOP for at least 2 more years, maybe longer.   Try to imagine how disgusted you'd feel if Donald Trump's election and inauguration were followed by an announcement that President Trump would be pardoning Hillary Clinton and appointing Barack Obama to the Supreme Court.   You'd be justified in feeling prettyterrible.  With that in mind, sit down right now for this news because the most shocking leak from GOP headquarters makes it abundantly clear that Shirlene Ostrov will stab her most loyal supporters in the back:   In a shocking decision by Team Ostrov which epitomizes 'two steps backward',Republicans will now have to endure TWO MORE YEARS of Fritz Rohlfing running things at the HawaiiGOP.  You read that right.  Instead of Rohlfing being 'shown the door' after two of the worst years of party 'leadership' in recent memory, Team Ostrov decided it wants to keep Fritz Rohlfing around through at least May 2019 if not longer.  Yes, we're referring to the same Fritz Rohlfing who ran the party's 2015-2016 campaign into the ground and lost multiple elected Republicans at the ballot box and due to defections.  Yes, the same Fritz Rohlfing who left the party in even worse financial shape than he found it.  Yes, the same Fritz Rohlfing whose mismanagement and violations of rules and deficit spending and misuse of funds and phony accounting and fiscal irresponsibility and violations of party budgetare now legendary.  That Fritz Rohlfing.   Wait, WHAT?!?  Shirlene Ostrov's 'rise from obscurity' candidacy was supposed to be a total reaction against the corrupt, do-nothing tenure of state chair Fritz Rohlfing and his corrupt, do-nothing buddies.  Remember how Ostrov's campaign told us that Rohlfing had screwed the party and that the election of party officers at the Kauai State Convention two months ago was going to be a referendum on Rohlfing's failures and malfeasance?  Remember all that?  And do you remember how Rohlfing dropped out of the race for state chair after realizing he had no chance of getting re-elected; throwing his support instead behind fellow churchmember and surprise candidate Andria "Where are you now?" Tupola as his chosen successor?  Remember all that?   Well, despite what Ostrov told gullible convention delegates throughout her campaign, it turns out that the political neophyte is just finewith Fritz Rohlfing after all -- especially as demonstrated by the sneaky way she chose to keep Rohlfing around.  Here are a few details.   Several weeks ago, a concerned, longtime party member and past GOP state senate candidate on Kauai named Dave Hamman filed a powerful and thoughtful complaint against Rohlfing -- an official complaint which documented some of Rohlfing's years of inexcusable and "blatant malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance" -- a strong case that should have led to his immediate ouster as a party officer.  In response, Team Ostrov decided to ignore all the evidence and circle the wagons around Rohlfing instead; allowing Rohlfing to exploit a little-known provision in party rules which allows him to serve for at least two years on the extremely powerful Executive Committee of the Hawaii GOP as "immediate past chairman".  [And if Ostrov gets re-elected in 2019, Rohfing would be able to stay in party leadership for an additional two years through 2021.]   How did this happen, you might ask?   Well, one of Ostrov's first decisions as the new state chair was to quietlyreappoint one of Fritz Rohlfing's corrupt and loyal sycophants,Andrew Walden, to continuefor another two years as chairman of the state GOP's Rules Committee.  You might remember HIRA's stunning report about Walden andRohlfing plotting and scheming together last summer to extend Rohlfing's term as state chair through May 2018 (an entire extra year in office) through a sneaky change to party rules** -- asleazy maneuver soundly defeated by delegates at the 2016 state convention by an overwhelming margin of 4 to 1.   [**Ostrov was reportedly very impressed with Walden's sleazy RINO power tactics.]   Well, this same Andrew Walden has been known for doing the bidding of party RINO's like Miriam Hellreich and Pat Saiki for years, as their stooge on various party committees.  And with Ostrov's hush-hush reappointment of Rohlfing's puppet, one of Walden's first decisions a few weeks ago was to protect Fritz Rohlfing from any official complaints which could have led to Rohlfing's ouster from the state party's Executive Committee.  Ostrov's appointee Walden refused to even schedule a hearing on the complaint,refused to afford the complainant due process, refused to let the complainant testify or argue case or even answer questions before either the state committee or the rules committee, and refused to even allow Hamman to be there.  Ostrov simply let Walden quietly dismiss the case against Rohlfing.  No wonder the complaint and the 'ruling' have been kept secret from party members.  This is an absolute outrage!  Ostrov and her supporters previously blamed for every problem now facing the Hawaii GOP on her immediate predecessor.  Now she's protecting him and giving him more time and power to destroy our party.   Never mind that the complaint was addressed to Ostrov.  She kicked the whole matter to her new RINO stooge Walden to make the irrefutable complaint quietly go away.  Yes, Ostrov could have gotten rid of Rohlfing --she was given TONS of justification.  Fritz Rohlfing, the proven party destroyer, broke party rules left and right.  But new chair Ostrov's first decision reappointing Rohlfing's own crony to rule on this solid case sealed the deal.  The foregone outcome came as no surprise to the very few people inside the party who know about this.  And now you know.   As word spreads with each passing day, Ostrov's backstabbing of her supporters appears to be too much to take for many of them.  As news gets out about Team Ostrov's embrace of Fritz Rohlfing, donations to the party continue to decline.  Stay tuned for a shocking report from HIRA later this week showing that Ostrov has dug an even deeper hole in the past two months than Rohlfing did in two years.  Maybe that's why the backstabbing of Ostrov's supporters doesn't end there . . . which brings us to Reason No. 2 why folks are abandoning the ship:  Ostrov appears to be protecting Rohlfing by refusing to release the results of an emergency audit of party finances undertaken two months ago. ---------------------------------------------------   Reason #2 - Ostrov appears to be HIDING something BIG, as she and her team still refuse to release the results of an internal financial audit -- AND Ostrov is now MORE than a month LATE issuing her annual state party budget for approval.   Call it a coverup to protect fellow RINO Fritz Rohlfing.  Call it stonewalling.  Or call it incompetence.  Either way, Ostrov refuses to release the results of an emergency financial audit which has beenmore than two months in the works.  Look, it's not some giant audit of the federal government or a forensic audit of some massive company or mammoth organization or even an audit of an agency like HART.  It's just the minor matter of looking under the hood of our teeny little Hawaii Republican Party.  C'mon, how long does itreally take to review a few checking account statements and the huge stack of unpaid bills on Ostrov's desk?  This audit should only take two weeks tops, not two-plus months with no end in sight. Something's really fishy.   However, since taking over the top leadership spots at the HawaiiGOP in mid-May, Team Ostrov (really Team Hellreich/Saiki) has been unwilling to tell fellow party leaders, let alone party members,how deep the financial hole got dug by Ostrov's fellow party officer Fritz Rohlfing . . . or how much deeper Team Ostrov has made that same hole.  Ostrov keeps putting off sharing the revelations.  In fact, her team appears to be so determined to keep this financial scandal and the corruption a secret that they are nowbreaking the rules themselves by refusing to present a budget for approval, now more than a month overdue.  So much for Ostrov's empty promises of being 'different' and promising not to "be above the rules" as expressed on her campaign website. Ostrov's circling of the wagons around Fritz Rohlfing make her actions even more suspect.  The audit of Rohlfing's many violations of the last two annual budgets, his unauthorized spending and many other irregularities are not being revealed or even being pursued for recovery.  Instead, in the very sleazy turn of events revealed above, Ostrov is keeping fellow RINO Fritz Rohlfing on the executive committee for another two years where he can provide the controlling RINO's with one more vote in favor of silence and inaction.  Shocking right?  Ostrov actually wants Rohlfing to help her lead the party for two more years.  That's not the draining of the swamp you were promised, is it?   Instead, in another blow to the promise of following rules, Ostrov's unelected finance chair and self-proclaimed bigshot Mark Blackburn (some guy who nobody has ever heard of before in political circles) just declared in anewsletter to party members that a small cabal will make all the decisions about how money will be spent, how much, and on what candidates they decide to target.  Never mind that such a decision requires formal review and official approval of the entire statewide party organ known as the 'State Committee' which hasseveral dozen voting members.  Ostrov's appointee says that RINO party officers Pat Saiki and Lorraine Shin will "target our financial goals".  So, before anyone has even seen a draft budget, Blackburn has unilaterally announced that two or three people will decide how money gets spent, which candidates get targeted or "chosen", and which "pressing issues" are the most important to spend money on.   This Obama-like power grab suggests that neither Ostrov, Blackburn, Saiki, or Shin have read the party's rules (state and/or county) nor even care about rules in the way Ostrov pretended to during her misleading campaign for state chair.  Factor in the reality that this handful of committed liberals and RINO's have usurped the authority of the state committee to make decisions about money, candidates and issues to the exclusion of others reveals that Ostrov is really Rohlfing 2.0.   ---------------------------------------------------   Integrity matters.  Ostrov promised transparency.  We're not getting it.  Ostrov promised to bring in big money.  We're not seeing it.  She promised to follow the rules.  Nope, she's not.  Shepromised to lead a party which stands for something and fight the Democrats.  But she's gone a completely different direction. That's why her supporters are abandoning ship.   There's also a steep price to be paid for doing nothing to fight Democrats and the liberal agenda.  That price will be a drop indonations, a drop in volunteers, a drop in candidates, and a drop in votes.   Nope, the swamp isn't being drained at all.  It's getting deeperand dirtier.  And the revelations above are just early signs of more RINO shenanigans to come should Saiki and Hellreich continue to control the Hawaii GOP through their puppet state chair Shirlene Ostrov and her left-leaning leadership team.   Now, if you think that folks have begun abandoning the GOP under Ostrov for the powerful reasons above, wait until you read the forthcoming, earthshattering report from HIRA's national director (and former GOP state chairman) Willes Lee about the dismal state of party finances.  These RINO's really lied to put Ostrov in power.  Auwe!!   Mahalo, ERIC RYAN Member, Hawaii Republican Party (HRP) President, Hawaii Republican Assembly (HIRA) Chairman, HIRA Action SuperPAC P.S.  HIRA continues to speak for conservatives and Republicans in Hawaii while the RINO's at the state party remain silent and neutral.  Mahalo to Hawaii Public Radio for turning to HIRA to provide conservative counterpoint in its recent story about the anti-Trump progressives and Democrats marching and protesting inHawaii.  Click HERE for the story. --------------------------------------------   Please donate to HIRA Action, the official SuperPAC for the HawaiiRepublican Assembly, to support HIRA's work to educate voters about failed Democrat policies and about conservative Republican solutions for Hawaii. Your kokua will help us continue to provide a voice for conservatives.  Donate $10, $25, or $100 today to let the establishment know we're not going away. HAWAII REPUBLICAN ASSEMBLY (HIRA) The Hawaii Republican Assembly (HIRA), an affiliated chapter of  the National Federation of Republican Assemblies  is the conservative standard-bearer of the Republican Party of Hawaii  and the leading advocate for conservative solutions in the islands. We are not an official arm of the Republican Party of Hawaii (RPH).  We are the conservative base of the Republican Party.  Please visit us at www.HawaiiRepublicanAssembly.com   Hawaii Republican Assembly | P.O. Box 2567 | Ewa Beach, HI 96706

HIRA Report: Hawaii RINO Shirlene Ostrov Elected as New State Party Chair

For Immediate Release May 13, 2017 CONTACT: Eric Ryan - HIRA President 202-525-6105 info@hawaiirepublicanassembly.com www.Facebook.com/HIRA808 ELECTION OF WEAK NEW LEADERSHIP TEAM FOR HAWAII G.O.P. PROVIDES DEMOCRATS WITH LIKELY SMOOTH SAILING IN 2018 Lihue, Kauai -- Sinking enthusiasm among Hawaii Republican Party members resulted in only 359 out of 2,000 eligible delegates and alternates -- just 18% -- to bother showing up at today's state convention on Kauai where Shirlene Ostrov was elected by a vote which wasn't even close to serve as the new party chair for the next 24 months along with her slate of mostly unfamiliar names and faces; bringing to a close a months-long campaign between two rival factions divided over the future of the expensive Kakaako party headquarters on Kapiolani Blvd. After shrinking to the lowest number of elected Republicans in the past six decades, many convention delegates only showed up after being lured to Kauai with the offer of free, round-trip airfare by competing state chair candidates Andria Tupola (who normally votes with Democrats like Beth Fukumoto) and Shirlene Ostrov (a complete unknown to party members until a few months ago and recruited to run by the liberal wing of the state party which favors staying officially neutral and silent on issues facing Hawaii). Among today's convention highlights was a moment when the outgoing Fritz Rohlfing leadership team got booed for the shockingly dismal content of outgoing treasurer Mary Smart's report. The state party is now broke and barely able to meet its obligations after struggling financially and politically for years. In fact, the cash poor party is unable to support Republican messaging, organizing, lobbying and even its own candidates. The sustained booing for Rohlfing's team could be heard in the hotel lobby. Also, in a strange twist, outgoing chairman Fritz Rohlfing actually awarded the state party's honor for "Volunteer of the Year" to the outgoing vice chair for coordinated campaigns, Bob Hickling. Hickling is party officer who led the party's official statewide campaign over the past 24 months which resulted in the loss of multiple elected Republicans in 2016. Adding to the divisions within the party, the Hawaii Republican Assembly (HIRA), the conservative wing of the Hawaii GOP, officially endorsed "None of the Above" for party leadership after citing "serious lack of qualifications" among the 14 candidates for state party officer posts, substantial cheating and manipulation of the delegate selection process, as well as the rulebreaking selection of Kauai rather than Oahu for the 2017 state convention. HIRA president Eric Ryan commented: "With 87-year old Pat Saiki, 74-year old Gene Ward and 73-year old Miriam Hellreich firmly re-installed as the top leaders of our failed party, today's Hawaii GOP Convention has ushered in another bleak and underwhelming era of closet Democrats and unqualified RINO's leading our state party. You'd think we learned the lessons of the last two decades of decline at the hands of liberal Republicans. But they control the process by which party leaders are elected, so Democrats dodged another bullet today. As history has repeatedly shown, RINO's are determined to keep our party silent while preventing Republicans from leading a full-blown political uprising against Democrats. Today is a sad day. Despite Hawaii being in big trouble and the GOP having all the arguments for change on our side, we handed victory to Democrats today through a decision to remain weak and liberal." The irrelevance of the Hawaii GOP was not only reflected in the steady reduction of elected Republicans to a record low of just five, but Hawaii's news media stayed away from today's state convention in droves. While a reporter from Kauai's Garden Island newspaper was spotted covering the event, no members of the statewide media were on hand. Ryan responded to the deliberately low-key affair: "In a state of 1.4 million people, we have a weak and unappealing party which can only turn out 359 people for a nearly invisible gathering of no interest to even Republicans, let alone the news media. Today's rigged election on Kauai shows, once again, how our state GOP fails at transparency. Today's barely noticed election of party officers gives little to no hope for party members nor Republican and independent voters hoping for relief from failed Democrat policies." Six months have already passed since the 2016 General Election.  Most of the remaining eighteen months between now and the 2018 General Election are expected to be sacrificed by inexperienced party officers still receiving on the job training and trying to get their bearings in running a party with no funds, no infrastructure, few candidates, and very little respect from voters. #     #     #     #     #

Womp Womp Womp! Hawaii RINO Lincoln Dinner Cancelled! (HIRA Told Ya So!)

KILLING LINCOLN: 2018 Just Morphed Into Another Political Disaster for Hawaii's GOP Aloha Republicans: One week ago, HIRA explicitly warned Republicans like you that this would happen. We warned that the state party's extremely poorly selling 2017 Lincoln Dinner soiree scheduled for next Monday night would get cancelled . . . so don't bother buying tickets.  And we were right . . . again. HIRA learned directly from reliable sources in Washington, D.C. and in Salt Lake City that keynote speaker and Utah congressman Jason Chaffetz (semi-famous for his ubiquitousness on Fox News) would be undergoing emergency surgery last week and would need to recuperate in Utah for a full month.  Further, HIRA warned that the extremely mismanaged state party had no backup keynote speaker of any note and that nobody would want to pay $150 to watch a live Skype video (or prerecorded YouTube) for an hour of an congressman on post-surgery painkillers getting his cast signed by well-wishers.  [Of course the event had to be canceled. Who'd really want to sit through another cringe-inducing speech from RINO Linda Lingle pretending she's a conservative.] Based on horrible ticket sales all along and now the keynote speaker's surgery (with no backup plan), HIRA knew the state party's major fundraising event was doomed. BAIT AND SWITCH:  Late last night, following a week of total silence from state party officers who tried to avoid the inevitable, the Hawaii GOP finally announced the devastating news that its main source of revenue for barely existing each year was now cancelled.  Toast.  Finito.  Indeed, the Hawaii GOP appeared to deliberately hold back such devastating news in hopes of continuing to sell tickets to misinformed donors (whom party leaders hoped would notask for refunds). As part of the ongoing disinformation campaign by party officers since HIRA broke the story last week, e-mail messages have circulated among clueless, low-information, high-ranking RINO officers of the Hawaii GOP actually alleged that HIRA was making up this story about Chaffetz's emergency surgery.  That's right, when HIRA first broke the story one week ago, top party officers began accusing HIRA of making up the story in order to "hurt Lincoln Dinner ticket sales" rather than recognizing that HIRA was honorably trying to warn donors about a potential bait-and-switch in which tickets were being sold under false pretenses. Now, about those refunds . . . As proof of the party's disinformation campaign, ticket sales for the cancelled event are still being promoted and still being sold online on Tuesday morning. http://gophawaii.com/?page_id=1864  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2017-hawaii-republican-party-lincoln-dinner-tickets-32341409025 THE BIGGEST AND 'REALIST' CONSEQUENCE OF ALL: Cancelling this event now, at mid-year, has the same apocalyptic effect as having a family's long-unemployed breadwinner lose his brand new job after spending all the family savings buying new suits and a new car for a job that no longer exists.  We're talking rock bottom, folks. Far more important than cancelling a rubber chicken gala is the massive financial shock to the system this Lincoln Dinner cancellation represents.  Andria Tupola for State Chair campaigners Jack James and Fritz Rohlfing bet the proverbial farm on this one.  Spending a literal fortune of scarce party dollars on the Democrat-run Honolulu Convention Center in hopes of packing in a thousand attendees to hear the Utah congressman, Tupola campaign operatives James and Rohlfing promised to bring in nearly $150,000 in revenues in one night.  Poof, up in smoke.  That's why you don't bet the farm.  One crop per season, maybe.  But not the whole farm. The money raised from this event doesn't just sit in a passbook savings account until the 2018 election.  This is day-to-day survival money for a barely-breathing state party.  Lincoln Dinner is not a break even affair to get free publicity for the Hawaii GOP. No, the now-cancelled event is specifically budgeted to bring in one-third to one-half of all revenues the state party will collect over 12 long months. SORRY, FRITZY:  Jack James, Fritz Rohlfing and Andria Tupola expected that they would be welcomed like heroes when they entered the Kauai state convention hall just five days after a wildly successful Lincoln Dinner.  After all, who could say no to voting for Andria Tupola (or even for another 2 years of Fritzy Boy Rohlfing) after such an amazing haul of loot had been realized?  Who would NOT want Jack James to get a big, fat pay raise and a lifetime contract as the party's executive director after scooping up that much record-breaking cash from one event. Instead, the party is now broke.  Beyond broke.  Jack James was contracted by Fritz Rohlfing and the Hawaii GOP Executive Committee to bring in a minimum of $15,000 per month, each and every month (no exceptions, no averages) from the date he was hired in late 2016.  Forget Lincoln Dinner.  James' focus was supposed to be on attracting sustaining donors while Fritz Rohlfing's "Finance Committee" (formerly led by HART's John Henry Felix and now rudderless) went after big money. Instead, there was no Finance Committee.  There are no sustaining donors.  And, now, there is no Lincoln Dinner.  it appears that Tupola operatives Rohlfing and James have deficit-spent the party's tiny cash reserves by that same $15,000 amount by foolishly trying to mount a massive event at the Democrat-run Honolulu Convention Center, where the expenses are in the tens of thousands of dollars and profit is considerably harder to realize. HIRA will soon report on a recent meeting of the state party's State Committee at which the RINO Civil War between Tupola and Ostrov was fought for two long, very angry, and entirely uproductive hours by the surrogates of Andria and Shirlene.  Why mention this?  Because the highlights of that meeting include the revelation that Jack James never got the consent of the party's treasurer to spend like a drunken sailor on the Lincoln Dinner; signing contracts and blowing through cash without the consent of the party's treasurer.  [When you hear the meeting highlights, you'll be blown away by all the revelations . . . and you'll say to yourself, "OMG, that's why we keep losing."] Making matters worse is that Rohlfing has refused to answer serious inquiries about party finances for WEEKS.  Multiple state committee members have asked Rohlfing and James for updates on the financial health of the party and have provided recommendations on stopping the bleeding.  Every single request has been ignored along with every single proposed solution. But, hey, forget all the sordid details.  Let's get right to the stark reality:  2018 will be another unmitigated disaster for the Hawaii GOP, whose 'tentpole' event is now history.  The cash flow has officially dried up.  And there is ZERO chance anymore of the party breaking free of its longtime practice of existing solely to cover its massive monthly administrative overhead.  Yes,  any thought of the state party having enough money for advertising to reach new voters, new donors, new volunteers and new coalitions (not to mention candidate support, lobbying, etc.) has been completely gobbled up by the stark reality of merely scrounging to meet the monthly 'nut' of mortgage, huge maintenance fees, utility bills, salaries, taxes, and more. And speaking of a new job that no longer exists.  WHY is Jack James still working at the Hawaii GOP.  This con man has failed to raise the money he promised to; $15,000 per month in sustaining donor income which were among the explicit terms of his hiring.  Why aren't Andria Tupola and Fritz Rohlfing and Steve Yoder and Bob Hickling and Andy Mukk helping to pack up Jack James' desk and taking him out to the sidewalk? HIRA might just have the answer. There might be more than simply Jack James' DESK to pack up with a Jack James termination. HIRA has received reports from too many sources to count that, in violation of county zoning ordinances, Jack James actually LIVES INSIDE PARTY HEADQUARTERS -- reportedly with the full knowledge and consent of Fritz Rohlfing and other pro-Tupola party officers. One of the most interesting of these 'party insider' reports comes a top official with the Oahu League of RINO Women. Stay tuned for a full report later today . . . In the meantime, it won't be long before new hashtags on Twitter start trending: #baitandswitch #wantmy$back #moveoutjackjames #stoplootingourparty Finally, best wishes on your recovery, Rep. Jason Chaffetz. And we're very sorry on your continued financial and political losses, Hawaii Republicans. That's what you get for electing RINO's like Fritz Rohlfing -- endorsed by Pat Saiki and Miriam Hellreich in 2015. Be wary of anybody endorsed by Rohlfing, Saiki or Hellreich in 2017, even if they offer you free airfare, free lunch, free ground transportation, and free convention registration. [You really should ask yourself the following question: Where is our broke party getting so much MONEY to pay to fly in delegates to Kauai for Ostrov or Tupola? And if our state GOP really is controlled by Democrats and closet Democrats and their allies, maybe the funding for free flights and registration fees and lunch and ground transportation is being paid for by the same Democrat Party which just increased your taxes yet again?] Anyway, HIRA wants to all Republicans to have a clear conscience, Because once the dust settles and the confetti is swept away, those to help keep RINO's in charge of the Hawaii GOP will have indigestion for the next two years which makes the Rohlfing years look like a minor tummyache. Thanks and God Bless Hawaii. Mahalo, ERIC RYAN President, Hawaii Republican Assembly (HIRA) Chairman, HIRA Action SuperPAC