MAYOR LA COSTA 2026
La Costa News Center • Special Report Outside Money Floods Maui Realtors. Airbnb. Developers. Contractors. Carpenters. Plumbers. A construction-backed super PAC has spent more than $183,000 promoting Yuki Sugimura—on top of a donor network, industry endorsements and a public record that reveal who is already reserving a seat at her policy table. Caption / photo…
Mayor La Costa 2026 La Costa News Center Accountability • Research • Maui Issues The General-Election Housing Test One Candidate in This Race Can Beat Richard Bissen. It Is Not Yuki Lei Sugimura. Maui’s mayoral election is becoming a referendum on who can keep local families here. The decisive question is not who can claim…
Mayor La Costa 2026 La Costa News Center Accountability • Research • Maui Issues Campaign Finance Investigation Half the Itemized Money Behind Her Campaign to Lead Maui Comes From Somewhere Else Yuki Lei Sugimura is out-raising every prior campaign in the record — but an analysis of 11 years of state filings by the Mayor…
Mayor La Costa 2026 La Costa News Center Accountability • Research • Maui Issues A Look at the Math The Arithmetic of August 8: Why Only One Challenger Can Beat Bissen Bissen’s floor is locked. Sixty-two percent of the county says Maui is on the wrong track. And three consecutive Maui mayors have been fired…
Mayor La Costa 2026 La Costa News Center Accountability • Research • Maui Issues The Lahaina Disaster– by the La Costa research team. A Reckoning: What Bissen and Sugimura Knew — and Failed to Finish Maui was warned before Lahaina burned. Richard Bissen inherited the emergency system that failed. Yuki Lei Sugimura helped oversee the…
Mayor La Costa 2026 La Costa News Center Accountability • Research • Maui Issues From Inside the War Room The General Election Bissen Is Praying For Ballots for the August 8 primary are days away. Inside the La Costa campaign, one question drives everything: which challenger hands Richard Bissen his escape route — and which…
Mayor La Costa 2026 La Costa News Center Accountability • Research • Maui Issues A Look at the Record The Money Behind the Record The donors who funded Yuki Sugimura’s rise to power also financed a lieutenant governor’s campaign. On July 8, 2026, that campaign was referred to the state Attorney General for possible criminal…
A public-record review of Yuki Sugimura’s housing votes, developer-aligned support, and the special-interest coalition now backing her mayoral campaign.
Maui County had the plans, the warnings and the money. But Kīhei flooded anyway. The La Costa News Center examines the drainage plan left on the shelf.