After nearly two months of receiving constituent feedback and personal reflection, I am announcing today that I am resigning from the Republican Party and seeking membership in the Democratic Party.

When I joined the Republican Party eight years ago, I did so with a group of people my age who were full of hope, ideas and energy. We saw an opportunity to take a political party that was broken, in a political system that seemed rigged, and even the playing field. To us, Democrats represented the status quo, and what we knew was that the status quo was allowing the place that we called home to become so expensive that it was no longer affordable to local families. It seemed like the Democrats in control weren’t concerned with Hawaii’s high cost of living, growing income inequality, our lack of high-wage jobs or our housing crisis.

After serving at the State Capitol, I discovered that it wasn’t just me and my Republican friends trying to change the status quo. There were good Democrats trying to change things too. So we started working together. But, in doing so, I ran into Republican partisanship that insisted I stop working with Democrats even when it clearly benefitted our community.

The issues that I’ve had with the Republican Party are well-documented and to reiterate them now would be adding fuel to a fire that doesn’t need to keep burning. It’s enough to say that my friends and I were wrong to think that a failing party could be changed just because we had the will to change it. In the process of trying to make a party that spoke about issues that our communities cared about in a way that Hawaii’s voters wanted to listen to, my friends and I uncovered louder and more powerful voices that fought divergence, difference and diversity at every step. This election, those voices won.

I’ve served at every level of the Hawaii Republican Party from envelope stuffer to party chair. And, I’ve worked for Republicans in the Legislature as their file clerk and their Minority Leader. I believe that when you pick a team leaving that team should be a last resort even when you doubt whether you should've ever been on that team in the first place. I did everything I could think of to fight for a better Republican Party. I even spoke out against the President.

In the coming days, I will be talking to Democrats in my district and in the larger Democratic Party as I seek membership in their organization. Ultimately, it will be up to Democrats to decide if they want to accept me or not, but I want to assure my constituents that I will continue to uphold the convictions I have always demonstrated, regardless of my political affiliation.

In serving my district at the Legislature, I’ve found significant common ground with my Democratic colleagues. Enough common ground that I believe that we can fit comfortably in the same tent. For me, I think the Democratic Party of Hawaii allows enough diversity of opinion that the values and ideas that I’ve always held can find a home there. Democrats that want to change the status quo in Hawaii are still fighting to do it, and I want to help them.