Candidates running for office across Hawaiʻi are requesting less public funding for their campaigns, the state Campaign Spending Commission says.
Nearly 260 candidates ran for office in 2024, including for positions at the state, city, and county levels. But Tony Baldomero, the commission's associate director, says the last election year was a record low for public funding requests.
Baldomero says the commission has given roughly $5 million to candidates since the program began in 1980, after the 1978 Constitutional Convention.
In the 2024 election year, the commission distributed just over $52,000 to 10 candidates.
“Seven of those candidates were successful, so if you ask them if the public funding program is working, they will probably say, ‘yeah, it's working for me,’” Baldomero said.
“But you ask other people and you’ll hear that the money is too little or the expenditure limit is too low. So we're trying to fix that with our public funding bill to incentivize more users.”
For comparison, the commission released about $202,000 in the 2016 election year, and nearly $146,000 in 2012, according to its data.
Baldomero says the commission is working on a public funding bill to incentivize more candidates to request funding in the coming years.
The commission currently has just over $2 million to cover public funding requests for the 2026 election year and is requesting a match of that same amount from the state Legislature to cover the primary and general elections.
The commission says 103 out of 128 seats are up for election next year, and no one has submitted an intent to request public funding so far.
Candidates can officially request public funding beginning Feb. 2.
