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 the most housing units. It is who can explain why families still cannot afford them — and who has a credible plan to move both stalled projects and struggling households forward.

La Costa News Center • Election Analysis • Maui Mayor’s Race

On the morning of October 16, 2025, a ti leaf that had grown out of the ashes was carried into a blessing in Lahaina.

The occasion was the opening of Kaiāulu o Kūkuʻia — 200 apartments below the bypass road and the first newly built permanent multifamily affordable housing to open in the Lahaina burn zone since the August 2023 fire.

Lieutenant Governor Sylvia Luke sat in the front row. So did Mayor Richard Bissen. Among the new tenants was Carlito Hernandez, who escaped the flames on Front Street and had gone two years without a settled address.

“We’re just happy to have a place to stay,” he said.

It was the right image for a county that has spent three years arguing about almost nothing more urgently than housing. It was also, in a way that matters to the election now underway, not quite the mayor’s image to claim.

Kaiāulu o Kūkuʻia went before the Hawaiʻi Housing Finance and Development Corporation in November 2021. It broke ground in July 2022, at a ceremony attended by Gov. David Ige and then-Mayor Michael Victorino. Richard Bissen took office on January 1, 2023. By the time the fire came, the 28-acre site had already been cleared.

The County’s own description of Bissen’s contribution is precise: his administration fast-tracked the project.

That distinction — between originating a project and accelerating one — is the hidden argument inside Maui’s mayoral race. It is also the point that separates P. Denise La Costa from Yuki Lei Sugimura as potential general-election opponents.

Bissen can claim legitimate credit for helping an inherited project cross the finish line. But that same claim establishes a principle: a mayor has the executive power to identify housing developments that have cleared substantial approval hurdles, break through departmental inertia and get them moving.

La Costa’s Homes Together plan makes that principle part of the policy itself. It does not rely only on down-payment assistance or rental relief. The campaign says it would clear stalled projects, fast-track substantially compliant developments and tie approvals to actual construction and performance.

That changes the general-election calculation.

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The Narrative, and What Is Actually Holding It Up

Before the housing comparison, one preliminary matter deserves to be stated plainly, because it is shaping this race more than any policy argument.

The prevailing assumption is that Bissen and Sugimura are the likely finalists — and that only Sugimura can beat him.

That assumption is not a polling conclusion. Polls have been publicly reported, and they conflict. Sugimura led by more than ten points in two surveys backed by groups supporting her. Bissen’s own campaign polling showed him ahead by six. Their sponsors, populations and methods differed — and every one of them measured the August primary.

Not one published poll has tested any challenger against Richard Bissen head-to-head in a November general election.

What is left is an inference drawn from fundraising, familiarity and institutional support, repeated often enough to be mistaken for a finding. The reports show Sugimura raised approximately $335,000 to Bissen’s $293,000, and held $114,240 in cash to his $69,654 at the end of June. That is a real organizational advantage. It is not a measurement of voter support, and nobody has produced one.

The second assumption underneath the narrative is that incumbents are difficult to unseat. On Maui, recently, they have not been. Bissen himself defeated Mayor Michael Victorino in 2022, taking 59.7% of the vote. Three consecutive Maui mayors have been turned out of office after a single term. The county’s record over the past two decades is not a record of incumbent durability.

And the deepest problem with the narrative is that it reads Sugimura’s fundraising exactly backward.

The Case Bissen Would Make Against Either Challenger

Bissen’s housing argument is formidable because it begins with action.

He introduced Bill 9 in May 2024, after the Lahaina fire displaced thousands of residents and intensified an already severe housing shortage. The law phases out the longstanding exemption allowing thousands of apartment-zoned condominiums to operate as transient vacation rentals. The phase-out begins January 1, 2029, in West Maui and January 1, 2031, elsewhere.

His political formulation is concise: “Where else can you get 1,500 to 2,000 units built without swinging a single hammer?”

Bissen also says affordable and workforce-housing delivery averaged fewer than 100 units annually during the decade ending in 2022 — 98, by county figures — but rose to an average of 293 annually after he took office, a claimed 190% increase. His administration reports more than 880 affordable and workforce units delivered over three years, nearly 3,000 projected by 2030, $1.29 billion committed to housing-related infrastructure and approximately $250 million in direct affordable and workforce-housing investment.

That gives Bissen three claims an opponent must overcome: he acted when others were afraid to; housing completions increased while he was mayor; and his administration is investing in the water, wastewater and roads required to support future development.

This is why Sugimura is, on housing, the opponent he would rather face.

Why Sugimura Gives Bissen the Easier Race

The Bill 9 contrast is almost perfectly designed for him

Sugimura voted against Bill 9 at both first and final reading, one of three dissenters when the Council passed it 5-3 on December 15 and Bissen signed it the same afternoon. She said the process was rushed, divided the community and failed to account adequately for economic and tax-revenue consequences.

Those are serious governing objections. They are also difficult general-election arguments.

Bissen needs one sentence: I acted to return housing to local use. She voted no.

Sugimura requires several minutes — that many affected properties function as resort accommodations; that some are unsuitable for local families; that the County did not complete sufficient economic analysis; that the loss of visitor accommodations could eliminate jobs; that the shift in property classification could reduce county revenue; that water and infrastructure are the real constraints; that new homes should be built rather than existing owners forced to change legal uses.

Each point may have merit. Collectively, they concede the visual contrast. Bissen signed a law. Sugimura objected to it.

Her record turns one vote into a pattern

Bill 9 is not Sugimura’s only vulnerability. Her council record includes repeated votes that opponents can characterize as resistance to binding affordability measures or delays to major housing projects.

• Voting against restoring language requiring 450 affordable homes within the Honuaʻula project district — an amendment that failed 4-5.
• Joining the five-member majority that approved amendments leaving the development with 288 required workforce units, far below the 700-unit concept historically associated with the project.
• Repeatedly voting against measures intended to move Pulelehua forward, including as the lone dissent on several actions.
• Voting against Bill 10’s requirement that certain fast-tracked projects be 75% affordable.
• Voting against Bill 107, intended to lower affordable sales prices.
• Voting against factory-built housing authority in the Lahaina burn zone.

Each vote has context. Pulelehua’s water problem is real — the Department of Water Supply has said no unused municipal water is available for the development, and the developer’s history has generated legitimate questions. Bill 40 is not a clean attack at all, because Sugimura changed her vote procedurally to permit reconsideration and revive the measure before opposing final passage.

But elections are built from patterns, not legislative footnotes. Four adverse Pulelehua votes are harder to explain than one. A long legislative record gives Bissen multiple routes to argue that Sugimura supports housing rhetorically but retreats when affordability requirements become binding.

She cannot cleanly attack Bissen for claiming inherited projects

The biggest weakness in Bissen’s 190% production claim is project attribution.

Kaulana Mahina’s 195 affordable rentals were in development years before Bissen took office — approvals date to at least 2017 — and broke ground in 2022. Kaiāulu o Kūkuʻia’s 200 units were approved, financed and under construction before his term began. Those two projects alone account for 395 units, roughly 45% of the more than 880 affordable and workforce units associated with Bissen’s headline production claim.

The completion increase is real. But it measures when buildings opened, not which mayor originated them.

Sugimura cannot exploit that weakness cleanly. She has been on the Council since 2016 and participated in the approvals, budgets and Affordable Housing Fund appropriations that created the inherited pipeline. If she says Bissen is claiming credit for work started under prior administrations, his response is immediate: you were part of the government that approved those projects — and part of the decade when delivery averaged 98 units a year.

La Costa is not burdened by that contradiction. She can acknowledge the legitimate roles of previous mayors, council members, developers and housing agencies while arguing that Bissen is presenting a multigovernmental pipeline as a first-term executive production record. That attack is available to an outsider. It is much less available to a decade-long council member.

The Rate Schedule and the Donor File

The property-tax record complicates any simplistic claim that Sugimura has merely protected short-term rentals.

In fiscal 2024, Maui County’s vacation-rental classification paid a flat rate of $11.85 per $1,000 of assessed value, compared with $11.75 for hotels and resorts. Over the next three budgets, the top vacation-rental rate rose to $17.00.

Rates per $1,000 of assessed value. Sources: Maui County Resolutions 24-78, 25-88 and 26-69; County of Maui Revenue Overviews; Real Property Assessment Division budget materials.

The top vacation-rental rate increased approximately 43%. The hotel rate increased five cents — four-tenths of one percent. Timeshares moved thirty cents. Rising assessments widened the gap further: vacation-rental values grew 91.9% from fiscal 2021 to fiscal 2026 while hotel and resort values grew 49.8%.

Sugimura chaired the Budget, Finance and Economic Development Committee during those budgets, although the tax structures were council-wide decisions and the budgets passed unanimously. Nothing in a rate schedule alone proves preferential treatment.

The donor records add a second layer.

An analysis by the Mayor La Costa 2026 research team found that $159,967.74 of Sugimura’s $319,303.50 in itemized contributions through June 30 carried addresses outside Maui County — 50.1%, exceeding Maui-addressed money by only $631.98.

That geographic headline is the weakest part of the research, and the report says so. Mailing addresses are not residence, voter registration or economic connection. Approximately $114,342.74 of the off-Maui total came from Oʻahu, not the mainland. Statewide union political funds may file from Honolulu while representing Maui members.

The durable findings concern industry alignment and timing. Visitor-industry entities have contributed throughout Sugimura’s six campaigns. The Hawaiʻi Lodging and Tourism Association’s HotelPAC contributed in every one of her council election cycles. Timeshare-industry organizations contributed repeatedly, including the national trade association’s political arm across four of six cycles. The Hawaiʻi Realtors PAC contributed in five of her six campaigns and gave its largest-ever contribution to her this June. And Civil Beat independently reported that at least some of Sugimura’s financial support was likely related to her opposition to Bill 9, identifying the Airbnb-funded committee, the Realtors PAC, real-estate companies and luxury developers among her supporters.

The file also includes a more complicated contractor issue. On June 15, the chairman of Goodfellow Bros. and a retired family member each contributed the $4,000 maximum. At the time, Goodfellow held a $5,042,795 County contract involving Front Street infrastructure and had been selected through competitive procurement as construction lead for the nearly $300 million Hoʻokumu Hou wildfire reconstruction program.

There is no evidence those contributions purchased influence. The company itself did not contribute, and contractor selection is administered by the executive branch rather than the Council. The relevance is the appearance created when officers or relatives connected to government contractors give while major public work is underway — a channel the Campaign Spending Commission’s own 2026 legislative package described, in the text of House Bill 2052, as creating an appearance of pay-to-play politics. The bill died.

Why the Money That Makes Her Look Inevitable Is the Money That Beats Her

This is the point the conventional wisdom has exactly inverted, and it deserves its own section.

Consider the sequence from Bissen’s side. He wants the general election fought on Bill 9. It is his signature act, the thing he can say in one sentence, and the only issue on which he can occupy unambiguous moral ground. His problem is that he needs an opponent who makes that framing work.

Sugimura is that opponent. She voted no twice. She said the reason was economic harm to a tourism-dependent island. And two months after that vote, a committee sponsored by Airbnb wrote her a maximum check.

Bissen does not have to allege anything. He has to put three facts in chronological order and let a voter draw the line. Sequence plus alignment is more powerful in a campaign than an accusation, because an accusation invites a denial and a chronology does not.

Every additional maximum contribution from a lodging, realtor or timeshare interest between now and November strengthens that advertisement. Her fundraising advantage is, quite literally, the raw material of the case against her.

There is a second-order problem. Bissen’s own file is not clean — Ledcor Development, Blacksand Capital’s chief executive, ATC Makena, four Nan Inc. employees at the maximum, several donors giving to both campaigns. Against most opponents that symmetry would neutralize the attack. It does not neutralize this one, because the alignment is issue-specific. None of Bissen’s developer donors map onto Bill 9 the way Airbnb does.

Against La Costa, none of this is available to him. Her filings show approximately $103,000 raised, roughly $76,600 of it loaned to her own campaign, and no PAC money. That is a severe organizational disadvantage in July. It is also the reason there is no donor file for Bissen to run in October.

Bill 88 Weakens Bissen — But Does Not Rescue Sugimura

Bill 88 is the most important complication in the race.

Bissen introduced Bill 9 as a historic effort to return thousands of apartment-zoned vacation rentals to residential use. But in 2026, he strongly supported Bill 88, which creates the H-3 and H-4 hotel districts.

Those classifications were designed around roughly 4,500 grandfathered vacation rentals at approximately 104 properties. Bill 88 does not automatically rezone anything; it gives qualifying complexes a pathway to seek hotel zoning and continue transient use. All three county planning commissions recommended against it. The Council passed it anyway, 7-2, on June 19, and sent it to the mayor’s desk. Sugimura voted for it.

Bissen calls Bill 88 an intentional second step: Bill 9 establishes residential use as the default in apartment districts, while Bill 88 allows genuinely hotel-like properties to seek more appropriate zoning. He told the committee the measure does not reclassify any property and does not undo Bill 9. He also said a broad ban was not appropriate.

That is a defensible explanation. It is also a substantial retreat from the broadest political presentation of Bill 9.

If approximately 4,500 of the originally affected units can pursue continued vacation-rental operation, voters are entitled to ask how many homes Bill 9 will actually produce, how many will be suitable for local occupancy and how many will be affordable after purchase price, insurance and association fees.

But Bill 88 does not solve Sugimura’s problem. Bissen can still say he imposed a phase-out on properties that do not obtain hotel zoning, while she opposed imposing one at all. The honest contrast is narrower: Bissen supports a selective phase-out combined with a hotel-zoning pathway; Sugimura opposed the mandatory phase-out but supported the later pathway. That is a real difference. It is not the difference between an uncompromising housing champion and an industry captive.

More importantly, Sugimura voted for Bill 88. She cannot attack the compromise as cleanly as La Costa can.

A Unit Is Not a Home

La Costa’s strongest argument is not that Bill 9 protects no housing interest. It is that Bissen is confusing housing inventory with housing affordability.

A condominium can become legally available for long-term rental or owner occupancy and remain entirely beyond the reach of a Maui household.

The University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization, in the analysis prepared for the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation, found the median appraised value of an affected Minatoya List unit to be approximately $971,500 — against $845,000 for all Maui condominiums. Ninety percent have one or two bedrooms. Roughly 85% are owned by non-residents.

UHERO also modeled the benefit, and stating it in full is what makes this argument survive contact with the mayor. Under a complete phase-out, condominium prices were projected to fall 20% to 40%, and the share of local households able to afford a median unit was projected to rise from 14% to 21%.

That is a real improvement. It is also a policy that, in its own best-case projection, leaves roughly four in five Maui households still unable to afford the units it converts — before insurance and association fees, and no earlier than 2029.

The 2026 Hawaiʻi Housing Factbook adds a further complication the price models do not capture: 42% of Hawaiʻi homeowners pay association fees, Hawaiʻi has the second-highest median monthly HOA charge in the country, and insurance and association costs can absorb part of the apparent improvement created by falling condominium prices.

Bill 9 does not put a down payment in a family’s bank account. It does not make a lender ignore a $900 monthly association fee. It does not help a fire survivor transition out of FEMA-supported housing. It does not lower next month’s rent.

What UHERO Recommended, and Nobody Did

Alongside its projections, UHERO listed the complementary measures policymakers should weigh: higher property taxes on transient vacation rentals, an empty homes tax, zoning and permitting reform — and expanded homeownership assistance.

The study the administration cites for its housing numbers recommended building a down-payment program. Three years into the term, there is none at countywide scale.

Homes Together is that program. The published plan proposes:

• Down-payment assistance of $50,000 to $80,000 from the County.
• Total assistance reaching as much as $110,000 when paired with existing state and county programs and below-market state mortgage rates.
• A temporary HOA bridge to help buyers overcome association-fee underwriting barriers.
• Approximately 400 to 650 families a year assisted into ownership.
• Rental stabilization for as many as 1,750 households annually.
• Up to $800 per month for qualifying fire-affected renters.
• Transition support for families leaving FEMA housing, and priority for Lahaina fire survivors.
• A declining 10-year recapture lien to discourage speculation and recover part of the public investment when a subsidized home is sold early.

The plan answers a different question from Bill 9. Bill 9 asks how government can push more existing units toward residential use. Homes Together asks how a specific Maui household obtains and keeps housing.

That is a stronger affordability framework because the beneficiary is visible. A hotel employee and a preschool teacher receive a path to a down payment. A nurse raising a child receives rental or ownership assistance. A fire survivor leaving federal housing receives transition support. A condominium buyer receives help with the monthly fee that otherwise disqualifies the mortgage.

Bissen offers a market mechanism. La Costa offers a household mechanism.

And It Moves the Projects

The principal economic criticism of buyer subsidies is straightforward: if government gives buyers more money without increasing the number of homes, sellers may capture part of the subsidy through higher prices.

That is why the fast-track element is not an optional paragraph in Homes Together. It is essential to the plan’s economic credibility. The strongest formulation is: help local families afford homes while forcing the housing pipeline to move.

Maui does not lack approved projects. It lacks approved projects that move. Pulelehua has approval for hundreds of homes, with a first phase of 240 units that would be fully affordable, and has been described as shovel-ready for years while the Department of Water Supply says no water is available. In 2025 the Council urged the administration to find Phase 1 exempt from the County’s water-availability policy; Sugimura was the lone dissenting vote. Honuaʻula took seventeen years to reach a zoning vote. Kaiāulu o Kūkuʻia went before the state housing finance board in November 2021 and opened in October 2025.

Water scarcity cannot be ordered away. The Upcountry meter waitlist runs more than 1,400 applicants deep and has been closed to new names since 2013. West Maui constraints are genuine. A responsible fast-track program cannot approve homes without a lawful, sustainable water source.

But a mayor can require every department to answer the same project at the same time, identify the exact unresolved condition, establish deadlines, negotiate infrastructure agreements, coordinate state and private systems, and tell the public who is responsible when a substantially approved project remains stalled. That is executive work.

Bissen’s own record validates the concept. He says his administration deserves credit for fast-tracking Kaiāulu o Kūkuʻia. La Costa can agree — and ask why fast-tracking is not applied systematically to every substantially approved project trapped in the pipeline.

The comparison then becomes: Bissen fast-tracked selected inherited projects and counted their completion. La Costa proposes to turn fast-tracking into an accountable countywide housing-delivery system. That is much more difficult for an incumbent to dismiss.

Bissen’s Strongest Rebuttals

A thorough analysis must acknowledge that the mayor would have serious responses.

Homes Together preserves revenue; it does not create free money

The approximately $65 million currently collected from short-term-rental properties is already part of the County’s revenue structure. Preserving it does not automatically make the entire amount available for a new program. A serious fiscal appendix must show how much revenue Bill 9 would actually eliminate after Bill 88, how much would be preserved by repeal, how much is already committed to existing operations, what spending would be reduced or replaced, whether the program would be phased in, how the fund would perform during a tourism downturn, and what administrative expenses and reserves would be required.

Bill 88 particularly complicates the original premise. If thousands of properties ultimately obtain hotel zoning and retain transient use, Bissen can argue that much of the threatened revenue survives without repealing Bill 9. This is the single most important unfinished piece of the campaign’s housing argument.

Assistance without supply can inflate prices

UHERO has found that Maui’s net residential supply growth was essentially zero from 2018 through 2022, as limited construction was offset by conversion to visitor use. Increasing purchasing power without increasing supply can cause buyers to bid against one another for the same limited homes. This is precisely why fast-tracking, infrastructure and construction must stand on equal footing with grants and rental assistance.

Fast-tracking cannot manufacture water

The administration is investing in water, wastewater, roads and drainage and says its five-year infrastructure program will unlock thousands of future homes. Some projects may need to wait. The answer is not that every stalled project should be approved immediately — it is that every substantially approved project should receive an executive decision, an identified infrastructure pathway and public accountability, rather than disappearing indefinitely into departmental silence.

A mayor cannot repeal Bill 9 or appropriate $65 million alone

La Costa’s platform acknowledges this; she proposes transmitting a repeal bill, building Council support and packaging repeal with Homes Together. Bissen can characterize the program as dependent on a Council that may not agree. The answer is executive coalition-building, draft legislation, transparent fiscal analysis and a project-ready implementation plan.

Bissen has buildings; La Costa has a proposal

Even inherited projects are real homes. Residents at Kaiāulu o Kūkuʻia are not concerned with which administration first processed the entitlement. La Costa cannot win by suggesting nothing has happened. The credible argument is that the County has produced some progress, but the mayor is claiming too much credit for inherited projects while leaving the affordability barrier and the stalled pipeline unresolved.

The General-Election Comparison

The question is not which candidate has the longest housing résumé. It is which candidate gives Bissen the hardest November argument.

Against Sugimura

Bissen can say: I introduced Bill 9 and she voted against it. I increased housing delivery; she served during the low-production decade. I invested in infrastructure; her signature proposal is pipes, permits and pavement. I completed projects; she has a record of votes and explanations. Airbnb, the Realtors PAC and visitor-industry interests financed her campaign. She joined me on Bill 88 after opposing the underlying phase-out. And she has been part of County government for nearly a decade.

Sugimura’s response is that Bissen rushed Bill 9, damaged the economy, failed to complete the necessary analysis and claimed inherited housing projects as his own. Some of that is persuasive. But every attack returns to a record in which she was already a governing participant — and every week of fundraising adds to the file he will use against her.

Against La Costa

Bissen would face a different structure. She was not part of the council decade he uses as his low-production baseline. She can challenge his inherited-project accounting without contradicting her own votes. She can criticize both Bill 9 and Bill 88 rather than defend participation in the compromise. She can distinguish market inventory from household affordability. Homes Together provides identifiable benefits for renters, buyers and fire survivors. Fast-tracking answers the criticism that subsidies alone do not create supply. She can identify substantially approved projects still stalled during his administration. She can connect housing to the broader cost-of-living argument. And she has no PAC money for him to run against.

Bissen’s attack would be that she is a Realtor defending vacation rentals with an expensive subsidy plan dependent on uncertain revenue and Council approval. That is a serious attack. But it requires him to debate her program. Against Sugimura, he can simply debate her record.

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Final Judgment

La Costa has the better general-election argument against Bissen on affordable housing.

Bissen would probably defeat Sugimura on the issue, because her candidacy allows him to turn housing into a simple referendum on Bill 9 — he acted, she voted no. Her donor coalition, council tenure and repeated project votes make that contrast easy for him to sustain. Bill 88 weakens his purity but does not eliminate the underlying difference.

La Costa changes the question. She can force the general election away from whether government should remove vacation-rental rights and toward three harder tests for the incumbent:

• How many genuinely affordable homes did Bissen originate rather than inherit?
• How many units will Bill 9 actually produce after Bill 88 — and who can afford them?
• Why are substantially approved housing projects still stalled inside an administration claiming historic momentum?

Homes Together gives her an affirmative answer: preserve the revenue, help renters stay housed, help working families become owners, address HOA and mortgage barriers, fast-track substantially approved projects, tie entitlements to construction, and build new supply instead of treating expensive resort condominiums as the central solution.

The plan’s funding must be recalculated on a post-Bill 88 baseline. Its fast-track system must distinguish administrative delay from genuine water and infrastructure constraints. Its grant program must be paired with enough new supply to prevent price inflation. Those are vulnerabilities. They are also policy questions.

That is exactly why La Costa gives Bissen the harder race.

Sugimura would spend the general election defending why she voted as she did, while the money that made her the presumed nominee became the evidence used against her. La Costa would make Bissen defend why, after four years, Maui families are still waiting — and why so many projects, permits and promised homes remain waiting with them.

Ballots have been mailed across Maui County and must be received by 7 p.m. on August 8. Ten candidates are on the primary ballot. The top two advance to the general election on November 3.

Paid for by Mayor La Costa 2026 Committee  |  PO Box 12424 Lahaina HI 96761