When a politician’s career ends in scandal, we focus on the scandal. But most political endings have a longer history. They result from a series of decisions, enemies made, and debts piled up. By the time things fall apart in public, a great deal has already happened in private.
Sylvia Luke has been Hawai‘i’s lieutenant governor since 2022. She’s up for reelection this year. But she has placed a large target on herself, and her enemies have been waiting.
To understand why, you need to know what she did for nearly a decade as chair of the House Finance Committee.
Rail construction is the lifeblood of the Carpenters Union. What it wanted from the Legislature was a permanent GET surcharge extension — a guaranteed revenue stream for rail with no end date. Luke denied them twice, in 2015 and again in 2017, and she didn’t confine her opposition to the back rooms. She said what she thought in public committee hearings and on the House floor.
The Carpenters’ super PAC (now known as Be Change Now) has a one-track mind. In 2012, it spent more than $3 million trying to end Ben Cayetano’s anti-rail mayoral campaign. It stopped Cayetano — though the campaign ended in a public apology and a court settlement. In 2018, the Carpenters spent more than $1 million helping Josh Green beat Jill Tokuda for lieutenant governor. Tokuda had also opposed rail funding. In 2022, when Luke left the Legislature to run for lieutenant governor, the PAC spent $2.9 million supporting her opponent Ikaika Anderson, plus $1.2 million opposing Luke. Their $4.1 million spending total set a state record for spending by a PAC in a single race.
The ads linked Luke to an indicted defense contractor (now in prison) through a tax bill she had voted for. About seventy other lawmakers voted for the same bill, including Green himself. Four rival union leaders called it “an all-time low in Hawaii politics.” Luke won anyway — the primary with 36 percent, the general with 63.
The story the Carpenters were telling — that Sylvia Luke was corrupt — didn’t land.
What’s arrived since then has landed differently. Federal court documents made public in 2025 described $35,000 in a paper bag handed to an “influential” state legislator. Civil Beat eventually asked every active and former lawmaker: was it you? Then they started asking about Luke’s campaign finance records specifically. In February, her campaign quietly amended its filings. It added $10,000 in donations that had never been reported, received at a 2022 dinner that a federal informant also attended.
A few days later she told reporters she may be the legislator in the filing, while denying she’d received $35,000. Governor Green canceled a Washington trip rather than leave Luke as acting governor. A follow-up audit of Luke’s campaign finances found $7,870 more in unreported donations.
Every disclosure came after someone started asking.
Luke says she is running for reelection. The filing deadline is June 2. Challengers are lining up, according to political insiders. Governor Green, asked directly, declined to discourage a challenge.
Kaua‘i Mayor Derek Kawakami has not been shy about his aspirations for higher office. On Tuesday, he officially announced his candidacy for lieutenant governor. Others may follow.
The Carpenters have backed a candidate in every statewide cycle for more than a decade, though they have not yet endorsed a candidate.
Whoever steps into this race with the Carpenters behind them won’t be outspent. The union has never had trouble finding money when the target was right.
