Hawaii lieutenant governor to resign, join lobbying firm

HONOLULU — Hawaii Lt. Gov. Shan Tsutsui said Monday he would resign this week to join a lobbying and public affairs firm.

The lieutenant governor plans to return to his home island of Maui and work for the Strategies 360 firm that has offices in Hawaii, 11 other western states and Washington, D.C. His resignation is effective Wednesday.

Tsutsui, a Democrat, had earlier said he did not plan to run for re-election.

The Senate president and then the House speaker are next in line for the job.

Tsutsui said there’s never a perfect time to leave office, but he had an opportunity to work with Strategies 360 and move home to Maui.

Plus, he said the governor has sent his budget and legislative package to lawmakers.

Tsutsui’s own two initiatives — on after school programs and bringing Hawaii-grown food to public school cafeterias — are also in the Legislature’s hands, he said.

He said he realized when taking his oldest daughter to college in September how much he was missing from his children’s childhoods by being in elected office and by spending so much time on Oahu instead of Maui. He has two other daughters, age 14 and 10.

“The challenges of living on one island and working on another one kind of takes its toll on the family a little. I have an opportunity now to kind of fix some of that,” he said in an interview.

Tsutsui became lieutenant governor in 2012, when then-Gov. Neil Abercrombie appointed his own lieutenant governor, Brian Schatz, to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated when U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye died.

Tsutsui was Senate president at the time. He represented central Maui in the state Senate.

Under Abercrombie, Tsutsui lead a sports development initiative and had a seat at top strategy meetings.

Tsutsui was re-elected in 2014 to a four-year term when Democrat David Ige was elected governor.

However, Tsutsui told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in 2015 that he wasn’t nearly as involved in Ige’s administration as he was while he served under under Abercrombie.

“I was involved in more strategic meetings; I was always involved in those things under the previous administration,” said Tsutsui said. “Under this administration, probably not so much.”

Tsutsui said in the interview that his role in the Ige administration did not factor into his resignation.

He said the missile alert mistakenly sent to cellphones and broadcast stations earlier this month by a Hawaii Emergency Management Agency employee was also unrelated to his decision.

Hawaii lieutenant governors have little power unless afforded it by the governor. The main role is to take over if the governor becomes incapable of doing the job.