The problem
In 2018 the minimum wage here was $10.10 an hour — about $21,000 a year for full-time work, in the state with the highest cost of living in the country. More than a quarter of the workforce earned less than $18 an hour. Raising the wage had stalled at the Legislature for years: bills would pass one chamber, then quietly die in the other.
What I did
I founded Living Wage Hawaiʻi in 2018 and ran it as a volunteer while working full time as a mortgage loan officer. I ran every part of it: the research and messaging, the candidate survey and voter guide, the rallies, the op-eds and interviews, and the testimony and legislative strategy.
The strategy
Make the numbers impossible to ignore
I published the comparisons showing how far Hawaiʻi’s wage fell short of what it costs to live here, and kept repeating them until they became the common frame in coverage and in legislators’ own arguments.
Make it an election issue
In 2018 I surveyed every legislative candidate on whether they backed a living wage, and published the answers as a voter guide. Forty of the 70-plus incumbents said yes, along with 34 challengers. That turned a vague sympathy into a position people could be held to.
Keep it in print
I wrote eight op-eds between 2018 and 2022 for the state’s largest paper and its main nonprofit newsroom. The paper picked me as the “pro” voice for its paired debate on the issue. One column drew a published rebuttal from the state’s largest business lobby, which meant the other side was now arguing on our terms.
Take the argument live
I debated a free-market think tank’s analyst for 52 minutes on public radio, in the middle of the 2022 session.
Show up every session, with language in hand
Living Wage Hawaiʻi testified on minimum wage bills in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 — supporting the strong versions, filing comments on the weak ones, and saying plainly which was which. In the earlier sessions I drafted bill language myself rather than only reacting to whatever got introduced, though the version that finally passed came from House leadership.
The outcome
Act 114 (2022), signed in June 2022, raised the wage in steps. It was the first state law in the country to set an $18 minimum.
- About 192,000 workers were covered — roughly 27% of the workforce, including more than 110,000 women and 168,000 workers of color.
- The same law made the state Earned Income Tax Credit refundable and permanent, which matters most to the same households.
- The schedule has held. The wage reached $16 on 1 January 2026, and the state’s own economists found no clear job losses from the increases so far.
What I’d tell you if you asked what went wrong
The bill I wanted reached $18 by 2026. It passed the Senate 24–1 and never got a hearing in the House. The version that became law took two more years to reach the same number and raised the tip credit instead of ending it. I argued publicly against weakening it, and when the final deal held the $18 target, we backed it rather than lose the raise entirely.