Rep. Adrian Tam, Hawai’i House of Representatives — photo credit: Lance Roylo

January 6th — the Waikiki Connection

I have the good fortune of living precisely where I want to live … and in my case, that happens to be Waikiki, a community of about 20,000 permanent residents, more than 45,000 hotel rooms and — oh yes, I almost forgot — a world famous beach. In the fall of 2020, a young Taiwanese-American named Adrian Tam was nominated by the Democrats to represent Waikiki and an adjacent neighborhood in the Hawai’i House of Representatives. His Republican opponent was Nicholas Ochs, a Texas transplant.

I briefly considered setting up an interview with Ochs. When it comes to politics, Hawai’i is sapphire blue — no other state, not even Massachussetts, is as reliably Democratic as the Aloha State. I was curious about why Ochs would invest his time and resources in a campaign that appeared doomed to failure from the beginning. After all, in Hawai’i even the conservatives run as Democrats. Och’s reasons might, I thought, make a good story.

Ultimately, I never scheduled the interview and subsequently never met Nicholas Ochs. As expected, Adrian Tam handily won a seat in the Legislature, becoming the only openly gay member of our House of Representatives. And for my part, I forgot all about Nicholas Ochs, assuming that he…