The Aloha Aina Party, a new Hawaiian political party which garnered lots of positive news coverage earlier this year when it qualified to field its own candidates during this year’s election, is now in chaos and facing unanswered questions about its finances, structure, and control of the party organization.
The party traces its political heritage to Hui Aloha Aina, an anti-annexation political group of Native Hawaiians formed following the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. The Aloha Aina Party has described itself as the first Hawaiian political party in 107 years. It has 14 legislative candidates and a Congressional candidate on the general election ballot.
The party appeared to have the potential to be a voice for Hawaiians in the political system. However, it has failed to take advantage of that potential.
While Hawaii’s established political parties are nonprofit corporations, and some small parties appear to be unincorporated associations, this new Hawaiian party was formed as a limited liability corporation, legally a for-profit company, according to the state’s business registration records. And it is Aloha Aina Party LLC which registered as a political party with the state Office of Elections, the Campaign Spending Commission, and the Federal Election Commission.
Control of the LLC, and presumably the party, appears to have been changed by two back-to-back filings with the state Business Registration Division on September 25, 2020.
The first, received at 11:26 a.m., reported that the prior list of officers/directors/members/managers of the LLC had been replaced by just two, Daniel Decker and Black Pen Capital LLC, both at a common post office box address on Saratoga Road in Waikiki.
The second filing, received at 3:11 p.m. on the same day, named Black Pen Capital LLC as the sole member of the Aloha Aina Party LLC.
Both filings were signed by Daniel Decker on behalf of the Aloha Aina Party LLC. Decker had been listed in previous filings among the members or managers of the party.
Black Pen Capital turns out to be a Nevada company created by Decker in April 2016, and later registered to do business in Hawaii. However, the business registration system maintained by the Nevada Secretary of State currently lists the status of Black Pen Capital as “revoked.”
However, the company continues to be registered in Hawaii. As of September 29, 2020, it reported having a single member, Forerunner Consulting, Inc, state business records show.
Forerunner Consulting Inc. is a new company incorporated in Hawaii on August 14, 2020. On October 5, it listed two officers–Landis W. Ornellas Jr. (president, secretary, and director) and Daniel B. Decker IV (vice-president, treasurer, and director).
To make the circle complete, the registered agent for Forerunner Consulting is Black Pen Capital, business registration records show.
Ornellas could not be reached for comment.
Decker responded to a voicemail message via text indicating that he was not available to talk this morning, but would call later. No further response has been received at the time this was posted.
However, in a telephone conversation in late September, Decker said he had gotten involved in recruiting candidates to run under the Aloha Aina Party umbrella, and was then asked to serve as party treasurer. Both state and federal campaign spending reports confirm he did serve as treasurer. Decker said he started as treasurer on June 26, 2020 and continued until he was removed on August 28.
Decker said he had not been given information he needed to be an effective treasurer, and his questions about what had been spent on t-shirts and other merchandise had gone unanswered.
“I was told to just file reports showing zero,” he said.
He said the party was not really like a political party, but “a dictatorship” controlled by a few members who hold ranks in the Royal Order of Kamehameha.
Donald Kaulia, one of the party’s three origial founders who is now party chair, declined to answer questions about these filings and the legal status of the Aloha Aina Party, and referred those questions to attorney Keoni Agard, who was listed as a a member and officer of the LLC at least until August 2020.
However, an attempt to reach Agard failed because the call was transferred to voicemail, but the mailbox was full and would not accept a message.
When asked about the Aloha Aina Party’s finances, Kaulia said that the party has not raised or spent any money. That is consistent with its required reports to the Campaign Spending Commission, which showed the party has not received any contributions, and has not made any expenditures.
“We’re not rich like those other guys,” Kaulia said, referring to the major parties. “What we’ve got is heart.”
However, what appears to be the official website of the Aloha Aina Party (votealoha.org) has been both soliciting funds and offering logo merchandise for sale since in April 2020, according to domain registration records. When asked directly about donations to the party through the website, Kaulia said no money came to the party. Any solicitations were done by individual candidates, he said.
He did not respond when asked about the merchandise offered for sale, which includes two different t-shirt designs priced at $35 and $45 each.
In addition, money was solicited for the party via a website, CampaignHQ.com. The website reports $2,910 has been contributed to the Aloha Aina Party by 88 people. The solicitation page provides a link to AlohaAinaParty.com, which resolves to the party’s Vote Aloha website.
Kaulia denied that this site raised money for the party. He said it was “illegitimate,” and did not provide any money to the party itself.
Lewis Leroy Black, the current Aloha Aina Party treasurer, did not respond to a voicemail message this morning.
However, Kaulia later sent a text message indicating he knew of my call to Black and asserting it was some kind of trick to call him after trying unsuccessfully to reach Black.
His text also included photos of Pierre Omidyar. “You think we don’t know who you work for?”
“Why [sic] are you Democrats afraid of?” he wrote.
Clearly none this was responsive to the legitimate questions I had asked about the Aloha Aina Party LLC and its activities.
Disclosure: I previously was a regular contributor to Civil Beat, a news site founded by Omidyar, and still contribute occasionally.
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Shame on this New Wave Kamehameha I, Masonic Order! The Lodge II (Big Island) strayed in disrespect of founding Ali’i members long ago!
“The Aloha Aina Party has described itself as the first Hawaii political party in 107 years.”
Well, either that’s a typographical error or else it simply does not make sense.
107 years ago was 1913; and I cannot think of anything uniquely ethnic Hawaiian that happened that year. Perhaps they mean to say 127 years, which would refer to the 1893 revolution that overthrew the monarchy; or 123 years, referring to the anti-annexation petition of 1897 sponsored by Hui Aloha Aina.
But for historical fact, the greatest success of a race-based ethnic Hawaiian political party happened when Robert Wilcox created the Home Rule Party which was successful in electing Wilcox in 1900 to be Hawaii’s first Territorial Delegate to Congress. Wilcox served a single 2-year term and then lost to ex-prince Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana’ole, running as a Republican, who served as Delegate for 20 years after swearing an oath of loyalty to the U.S. to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
It’s a shame that there’s so much confusion and apparent corruption in this latest race-focused political party; because it would be nice to have a genuine, seemingly respectable race-based party that could be devastatingly ground into the dust by Hawaii’s anti-racist rainbow of friends and neighbors.
Mr. Conklin,
Just to be clear: Do you reserve your disdain and clear contempt only for Hawaiians? Or does this extend to all indigenous groups nationally/globally?
Thanks!
Hi there Juicy J. I reserve my disdain and contempt for the leaders of any group in my home State who are race-supremacist; who demand either total secession of Hawaii from the U.S. or else demand to divide the lands and people of Hawaii along racial lines; who already have hundreds of government and philanthropic racial entitlement programs exclusively for themselves and persist in demanding lots more. There’s only one group in Hawaii that fits that description. If you can think of another one I’m sure you’ll let me know.
We hear lots of complaints about White supremacists on the mainland. But in Hawaii it’s a different race whose most aggressive, most visible leaders push a religious creation legend saying their group are children of the gods and siblings to the land in a way nobody else can be who lacks a drop of the magic blood. It’s the same Aryan blood-and-soil nonsense that caused so much trouble in the 1930s and 1940s; only this time its color is not white. And instead of the contempt such views deserve, here in Hawaii we have not only tolerance but celebration of those views by government officials, cultural leaders, and even PBS-Hawaii as we see mobs blocking roads to enforce their demands, and convoys of vehicles proudly flying their emblems intimidating anyone who might dare to disagree.
I’m pretty sure they’re claiming to be the first Hawaiian political party in 107 years, not the first Hawaii political party in 107 years. They’ll be looking back to the Home Rule Party of the early 20th century. A number of other political parties have been founded in Hawaii since then, but they haven’t had the Native Hawaiian emphasis.
I wonder whether the decision to establish the party as a profit-making corporation was inspired at all by Donald Trump.
Thank you. “Hawaiian” is correct. My typo.
The Home Rule Party was dissolved in 1912. 107 years before 2019.
Mahalo Ian for this story. So disapointing. I had high hopes for the Aloha Aina party alternative to the Democrats who never turn down steel stabbing into our aina . With Cynthia Thielen gone, Hawaii Republicans are now Trump’s party. No Aloha Aina there!
Hope the Aloha Aina party gets new mature leaders so we can have a real Aloha Aina party.
Will we be hung and burned at the stake? Every 2 years politicians pose their fears through media at many levels. NOTE: “When you own the information, they can bend it all they want”…hupo between the lines
I just love these brutal election seasons…don?t you?
They will definitely try anything to make us look bad and make themselves look better. There is no honor in that. Aloha Aina is what Hawai’i needs.
P.S. Ian Lind: There is nothing in the Hawaii Revised Statutes, nor Federal Elections Commission that say what type of organization a political party must be.
It’s a “hostile takeover” by Daniel Decker and his company. Daniel Decker was proven to be a fraud trying to take down leadership of the AAP. His gripe with the AAP leadership is that they did not approve a loan set up by Decker. He requested to step down as treasurer to manage the candidates of AAP. Why? Because if the loan got approved by the leadership, Decker would get paid. The loan was not approved, because we have no money to back it up. Everyone working for the Aloha Aina Party has normal jobs and bills. No one gets paid to do this on the side, it’s hard work. Daniel Decker has turn the party to LLC and make himself leader of AAP which is entirely fraudulent. He will be in prison.