Island GOP politicians and high ranking state party officers have been routinely stealing from taxpayers; illegally abusing state employees and state resources for partisan advantage in the 2022 election campaign. The scandal is already rocking the State Capitol. These corrupt political operatives act this way because think it’s okay since you’ll probably never. What do YOU really think?

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Need to know more than has been reported in the local news?  For more information, full story and inside information from HIRA News coming soon . . .

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 21, 2022

CONTACT:
Eric Ryan  //  (808) 457-1950
president@hawaiirepublicanassembly.com
https://www.facebook.com/HIRA808/

LOCAL CONSERVATIVE GROUP ATTACKS HAWAII REPUBLICAN PARTY FOR HIDING RECORD OF TOP GOP CANDIDATE BJ PENN

“We’ve sunk to the Hawaii GOP’s lowest point ever”

Honolulu, Hawaii — With ballots for Hawaii’s Primary Election arriving in mailboxes today, Hawaii’s Republican Party is under blistering attack by a local conservative organization for “irresponsibly” vouching for the political legitimacy of troubled GOP frontrunner BJ Penn’s 2022 gubernatorial candidacy and for hiding Penn’s lengthy, troubling history.

In an ad which debuted two weeks ago entitled “Warning to Island Voters:  Secrets of the Hawaii GOP”, the SuperPAC Hawaii Republican Action has committed thousands of dollars in HIRA Action funding for online advertising to promote a 10-minute video which exposes voters to Penn’s actual record of domestic violence, physical and sexual abuse, racism, death threats, street brawls, terroristic threatening with a machete, criminal history and behavior, homophobia, deadbeat dad who had to be sued by a foreign baby mama, assault of a police officer, drug and alcohol abuse, and more.  Produced by the state’s 2nd oldest SuperPAC, HIRA’s video has racked up almost 50,000 views and nearly 1,000 comments.

HIRA’s BJ Penn video opens with audio of Penn shouting about “niggers” over and over again while Penn was being arrested in January 2021, only months before Penn announced his candidacy for governor.  Also featured is an excerpt of BJ Penn’s own 2022 campaign video in which Penn appears to deflect expected criticisms of his candidacy as “dug up”, “made up” and “invented”.

The group is calling on Penn to drop out or be disqualified by the party and for chairwoman Finnegan to resign.  HIRA Action chairman Eric Ryan warns that with many island voters already dubious about Republicans, elections have consequences far beyond 2022.  “Nominating a drunken clown, family abuser, and criminal as our top candidate to go up against Josh Green is horrible for our party and destroys any hope of getting island voters to take us seriously.  Penn has no chance in the general.  Party leaders need to stop kidding themselves with their obsession over Penn’s name recognition or his seeming appeal to younger voters.  Our state’s desperate and imploding Republican Party will be long remembered for vouching for Penn’s candidacy despite the many disqualifiers.”

Ryan points out the obvious:  “Any single one of these scandals would typically sink a candidacy before it got started.  In light of Penn’s dangerous and toxic record of criminal, scandalous and antisocial behavior, HIRA Action is raising serious questions about why the state’s Republican Party would knowingly and irresponsibly vouch for this unstable, serial criminal and his joke candidacy in light of the shocking public record.”

Even while embracing Penn and his multiple DUI arrests, the Honolulu County Republican Party has formally condemned the candidacy of Democrat Rep. Matt LoPresti for re-election to the state legislature following his recent DUI arrest in Ewa Beach; demanding LoPresti’s withdrawal from the race with the support of state GOP leaders including Finnegan and new vice-chair Lani Kaaa.  Yet, Hawaii’s Republicans are looking the other way at Penn’s growing list of scandals, which includes multiple DUI arrests and arguably far worse behavior.

Ryan’s group believes that Lynn Finnegan and the party’s entire state committee of officers is flushing the Republican brand down the toilet by pretending this information will never come out.  HIRA Action believes that the Democratic Party has been sitting on the opposition research for certain use against Penn in the general election should Penn get within striking distance of Green, however unlikely that situation seems.

HIRA Action also takes issue with the Republican National Committee’s chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel for overlooking the state party’s embrace of Penn and awarding the Hawaii GOP with an infusion of $50,000 from the RNC for the 2022 election campaign.

Less than three years ago, BJ Penn’s career as a UFC fighter was brought to an abrupt end after league president Dana White decided that Penn’s unstable behavior was reason enough for Penn to stop fighting professionally:  “He needs to focus on his personal life and get himself together.”  But only two years after being kicked out of the UFC, Penn was arrested for drunk driving and unleashed a rage-filled, racist verbal tirade caught on camera.

HIRA Action’s Ryan contends, “Penn was thrown out of the UFC for his recent inexcusable behavior which only seems to have gotten worse in the time just before announcing his campaign for governor.  Even Penn’s most recent history makes him too dangerous and unstable to be worthy of consideration by voters, let alone promoted and vouched for by a major political party.  It was only recently that he threatened to kill his family, spilled cocaine on his daughter and got into a series of drunken brawls.  For the state Republican Party to pretend that Penn is governor material means that we’ve sunk to the Hawaii GOP’s lowest point ever.  Lynn Finnegan’s desperate party is playing a cruel joke on Hawaii voters by pretending Penn is a suitable fit for the top of the ticket for the highest office in Hawaii when they know he is really bad news.  BJ Penn would be a disaster as leader of the fiftieth state, let alone the leader of the GOP.  With so much at stake in the Aloha State, there’s nothing less patriotic than a major political party trying to foist an unqualified, unhinged, highly unstable and troubled candidate like this on the public when Hawaii is reeling from serious problems requiring serious, thoughtful leadership.”

The conservative group also takes issue with a number of 2022 candidates running as Republicans who appear to be vouching for Penn’s legitimacy and seeming to have no problem appearing alongside Penn despite his scandalous and sociopathic behavior.

“Every Republican candidate and every Republican party officer seems sworn to secrecy because none of them are speaking out or stopping this travesty from continuing to happen.  To date, not one of them has the guts to tell BJ Penn to drop out of the race or tell party leaders to cut BJ Penn from the Republican team.  Some have even doubled down by making new appearances with Penn in a show of ‘circling the wagons’.  Right now, everyone in the party is pretending that there’s nothing wrong and that it is perfectly normal to have an unstable, dangerous candidate with all these problems and scandals which would have completely derailed any other campaign for president, governor or even dog catcher.  If Hawaii Republicans are collectively willing to cover up for BJ Penn, will they really have the guts to fix our broken state government?  The more likely outcome of the GOP trying to normalize and mainstream Penn as a viable candidate, ignoring his recent pattern of horrifying behavior, and pretending that Penn is compatible with the Republican brand is that island residents will be even more anti-Republican going forward.  The Hawaii GOP is going down in flames thanks to the destructive leadership and whitewashing of Penn by Lynn Finnegan.”

DISASTER IN 2022 — RINOS MAKE SURE HAWAII DEMOCRATS SLEEP WELL TONIGHT AND EVERY NIGHT

Maui GOP county chair Tamara McKay and 2020 Election Denier and congressional candidate Joe Akana, who received less than half the votes than Kai Kahele two years ago yet believes he actually “won” the “stolen election” (click on photo to see video)

Two long weeks ago, on Friday July 8th, a big meeting of the Hawaii Republican Party’s secretive executive committee (just a handful of top party officers) was held near downtown Honolulu at GOP headquarters.  On the agenda?  Two big resignations of party officers (effective immediately).  There was prolonged bickering over party corruption. And revelations of leaked internal documents shared with HIRA News reveal rulebreaking, cheating, rumormongering, falsified testimony (including faked ‘anonymous’ complaints, reportedly originating secretly from a top party officer about a rival officer) about the fitness of that officer, plus even more corruption than usual.  A secret resolution was adopted condemning Lynn Finnegan’s handpicked right-hand man — 1st vice chairman Joel Borgquist — who was censured for leading this attack to try and oust the Maui GOP’s county chairwoman (and 2022 state senate candidate) Tamara McKay because she refused to go along with Borgquist (and Finnegan’s) plan to steal HIRA’s ecommerce trademark “Stand for Hawaii” for use in the state party’s beleaguered and belated 2022 campaign.  It turns out that no vote was ever held by the party’s governing State Committee to approve the theft of HIRA’s “Stand for Hawaii” commerce trademark.  McKay’s integrity-fueled protest prompted Borgquist’s failed attempt to orchestrate the ouster of the Maui GOP chair.

Following a heated meeting, not long after Borgquist’s false allegations against McKay were retracted and the Executive Committee agreed with the defense mounted by Honolulu County GOP chair Brett Kulbis, HRP national committeewoman Laura Nakanelua (aka Miriam Hellreich’s handpicked replacement), and McKay herself, Joel Borgquist RESIGNED his position as chief strategist.  You can read this leaked copy of the approved censure motion by a majority of the Executive Committee against the party’s top strategist here:  HRP_Borgquist_Censure_070822

Henry Vincent, the state party’s vice-chairman for failing to build political coalitions prior to Election 2022

According to the state party’s vice-chair for Coalitions (a.k.a. the RINO schmuck who’s really done nothing for two years), Henry Vincent: “The censure is appropriate based on Joel Borquist’s unfounded and false accusations.”  [Take it from Vincent.  As HIRA has previously reported, he and his life guru Andria Tupola know all about making false accusations for personal and political advancement.]  The resolution read, in part:  “Resolved, the Hawai’i Republican Party Executive Committee in a meeting on July 8, 2022, formally censure Joel Borgquist for his false accusations, unbecoming behavior and destructive actions which have been disruptive to the good order of the Executive Committee and Hawai’i Republican Party, and was inconsistent with the position of Vice Chair of Coordinated Campaigns which he held at the time.”  OUCH !!!!   Naturally, Crooked Lynn Finnegan stood by her Crooked Joel Borgquist, defensively whining to fellow officers “I disagree with this resolution.”  But don’t expect Finnegan to resign until after the coming General Election debacle.  She’s the kind of person who can easily convince herself she’s the most important and indispensable person around.

Anyway, following the vote, the executive committee’s evening Zoom meeting adjourned.  But, that’s only when the fireworks REALLY got started.

[As usual, you won’t learn any of this from Hawaii’s lamestream media outlets which only grudgingly cover the Republican Party in order to seem ‘fair’ and ‘informative’.  Only HIRA News can tell this story . . . and the story of what happened next.]

Tiana Elisara leading an anti-Trump, anti-GOP rally, holding a sign reading “I’m Brown. I’m a Woman. I’m Bisexual. I’m a Scientist.”

The following morning, on July 9th, the much larger governing committee of the state party (aka the “State Committee”) convened for a meeting and found out that TWO, not just one, of Finnegan’s executive officers had bailed prematurely, on the eve of the Primary Election.  The other officer resigning was Tiana Elisara, the infamous bisexual anti-Trump social justice warrior who had been using tax dollars to illegally run “RINO Bob” McDermott’s laughable U.S. Senate campaign (against Democrat Brian Schatz) out of his State Capitol office.  Elisara was Finnegan’s hapless vice-chair in charge of the Hawaii GOP’s woefully inadequate and poorly conceived communications program, which Elisara had also been illegally subsidizing with tax dollars from Rep. McDermott’s office.  [These alleged crimes and more are currently under investigation by the State Ethics Commission and by the Hawaii Attorney General.. Stay tuned for another exclusive from HIRA News.]  UPDATE:  Elisara secretly resigned the night before the May 2022 state convention of the Hawaii GOP, just hours after the ethics and criminal investigations began.  Shortly after that, reports surfaced that Elisara may have fled to the mainland along with a co-conspirator.

With nothing accomplished during the state party’s meeting which could hope to move the political football downfield to beat Democrats, the meeting was adjourned following three hours of non-stop arguing by party leaders who couldn’t even agree to adopt the meeting’s agenda.  A visibly panicked Finnegan pulled the plug on the meeting once it became clear that executive committee members were likely leaking embarrassing internal documents to HIRA News; the kind of leaks which would stop Hawaii’s few Republican donors to continue writing checks to the state party and/or its candidates.  And with Primary Election ballots arriving in Hawaii mailboxes in just a few days (and only a couple of months until the General Election ballots arrive), the listless Hawaii GOP is plagued by infighting and is in even more disarray than usual.  Suffice to say that the Pat Saiki inspired series of purges of GOP members by Josef Stalin copycats Mele Songsong, Lynn Finnegan and Celyn Chonkey got the State Committee pretty fired up.  [More on this story later.]

Like HIRA News, Fox News and its viewers have been endlessly pointing out (correctly) that Joe Biden and the Democrats are headed for disaster nationally in 2022.  And the failure of Vice President Kamala Harris is easily measured in how many staffers are resigning from her ever-troubled office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB), located next to the West Wing on the White House premises.

Likewise, Lynn Finnegan’s gang of incompetent party officers at the Hawaii GOP headquarters in Kakaako is dropping like flies as a direct reflection of Finnegan’s undeniable resemblance to Kamala Harris.  In case you missed it, bisexual Anti-Trump social justice warrior Tiana Elisara was put in charge of the state party’s communications since May 2021. But she (or maybe the right pronoun is ‘they’?) is out, effective immediately. And some dude in the jewelry business from the mainland, Joel Borgquist. who nobody in politics has ever heard of before yet was handpicked by Finnegan has resigned effective immediately as the state party’s top strategist — a guy with highly questionable political strategy experience from somewhere on the mainland . . . maybe.  Certainly not enough experience to survive a few months without getting ousted over making false allegations.

Yep, they’re both gone. Just like that. Sad. Election 2022 was a once-in-a-decade chance for island Republicans to unseat Hawaii’s Democrat supermajority, as virtually every elected position across the state is scheduled to be on the ballot this year due to the recently completed census and the redrawing of political districts.

The party rank-and-file membership has been kept in the dark all this time (and probably forever) in order to swindle uninformed donors into giving money to the doomed Hawaii GOP, even as many of its candidates are clearly willing to adopt Democrat Party policies as their own (from taxes and spending to ending statehood in the USA, yes seceding from the USA to create an independent 3rd world ‘nation’ run by the same folks who’ve made OHA and DHHL expensive laughingstocks).  Transparency?!?  Fugettaboutit, braddah.  [More coming on these stories, exclusively from HIRA News.]

RINO gadfly Rita Kama-Kimura happily posing with crooked, ousted HRP chief strategist Joel Borgquist one short week after his forced resignation for faking a case to oust Maui’s county chairwoman (credit:  Rita the RINO)

After more than one year of promises and hype, Team Finnegan is being rather quickly exposed as all talk and no action and plentiful resignations.  Yet, despite Finnegan’s corruption and her imploding leadership team, there was no shortage of RINO cheerleaders rising to Finnegan’s defense.  Foremost is Mililani GOP gadfly and full-blown RINO apologist Rita Kama-Kimura, who attended the botched State Committee meeting and lavished praise upon Finnegan and her RINO thugs:  “I wanted you all to know that you all did an outstanding job in dealing with these non-productive outburst(s) …. I know it was not easy, Lynn your demeanor and tone were perfect, controlled and authoritative. Peter (Finnegan, Lynn’s nepotistic husband and hanger on) did a great job very clear and precise in correcting some of what Steve (Lipscomb) had said.  I could see Brett (Kulbis) tense up, as he pursed his lips together and had that look! yet again, firm but controlled! and loved the presence of Celyn (Chonkey, the corrupt HRP rules committee chairthing) being there, sort’a brings a sense of calmness.”  No question about it:  Losers and enablers and phony-baloneys like Kama-Kimura are the reason why the Hawaii GOP keeps going down in flames, election after election, and why island Democrats sleep so well at night.  [SAD NOTE:  Rita the RINO is far from the only locust signaling the coming political apocalypse.]

When those election night returns showing Republicans being massacred by large margins in race after race from Hilo to Hanalei start being read aloud on live TV by smiling news anchors, remember that corrupt RINO party officers believe that “standing for Hawaii” means standing in favor of perpetual disarray, endless cheating, closet liberalism and the inclination to sink the GOP ship while brave Republican candidates and their supporters go down in flames.

Ironically, the Hawaii GOP’s tentative plans for a post-primary “Unity Event” have been scuttled in the wake of the implosion at HRP HQ this weekend. Sorry folks, despite the horrible statistics and scary headlines about how bad life has become in Hawaii for working folks of all ethnic backgrounds under Democrat rule, get ready for whatever the opposite of a “red wave” in Hawaii is. Team Finnegan has thrown the game and squandered the last two years. Better stick to Fox News on November 8th and watch the good news across the mainland. Here at home, it’s yet another lost opportunity in 2022 courtesy of the RINOs in our midst.

Instead of party leaders setting a course for beating dozens of sorry Democrat incumbents based on their terrible records in office and the widespread suffering of island residents, RINO Lynn Finnegan and her sychophantic cadre of leftist losers that tightly control the Hawaii GOP can’t even hold a meeting with fellow party officers without arguing about Team Finnegan’s breathtaking corruption and routine purges of party members who dare to criticize said corruption; even when just trying to hammer out an agenda for a weekend party gathering — the very meeting which was ultimately aborted after nearly three long hours of accusations and counter-accusations and hands thrown into the air. Yes, Democrats are sleeping very well at night thanks to the Hawaii GOP ShitShow of amateur hour and total disarray.  And THAT is the very latest from Hawaii GOP headquarters.  Auwe!