Honolulu Weekly

The bubble-lettered signs that sorority girls make tend to advocate car washes and rush parties, more than, say, Senate candidates. But every afternoon for the past two months, 19-year-old University of Hawai’i Alpha Gamma Delta sister Resa Tsuneyoshi has stood on the side of Kamehameha Highway with her mom and dad, waving at commuters from behind a placard with her name on it.

It’s been a long time coming. When Tsuneyoshi was a little girl, she wanted to be president of the United States. And she’s only mildly tired of people asking about her age.

“I don’t think it’s an issue at all,” she said. “There are three qualifications in order to get on the ballot, and that’s being 18, being a registered voter, and living in whatever district you’re running in.”

Tsuneyoshi, a member of the Mililani-Waipi’o-Melemanu Neighborhood Board, said the district desperately needs her vision.

“I bring a different perspective,” she said. “I want to focus on issues that are important to my generation, so there’s a better way to represent them.”

She said she’s mainly concerned with affordable housing and education. Meantime, she’s working through her own curriculum as a political science sophomore. If her professors have noticed that she’s running for the Senate, they haven’t mentioned it yet. Nor has Tsuneyoshi interacted much with the incumbent she’s challenging; Sen. Ron Menor.

“I actually campaigned for him in his 2006 election,” she said. But Tsuneyoshi’s opinion of the senator has dropped since his April DUI arrest. Menor denied the allegations against him until finally pleading no contest to drunk driving charges in May.

“We haven’t really exchanged words,” she said. “Seeing as how he lied, it’s just wrong. No public servant should lie to his people.”

Tsuneyoshi is the youngest of five and the only girl. She said big brothers Tad, Earl, Kurt and Chad set the bar for success high.

“Of course there’s always that sibling rivalry and you want to outdo each other,” she said. “They’re proud of me, but one of my brothers is a little sad because he wanted to be the first one to enter politics. He’s 27.”

Tsuneyoshi’s father, who not only screens her calls but conducts pre-interviews, said he pushed his children to think about what they hoped to accomplish early-on.

“We made it a requirement for our kids to establish a vision for their future at an early age,” Randall Tsuneyoshi said. “She was always reading books and she liked the leadership roles at school. She was fifth grade president and then student government president at Kamehameha. She knows the community and she believes in service to the country, service to Hawai’i.”