Hawaii: Control & Party Structure
The Governor of Hawaii is currently David Ige, he has been in this official position since 2014 and will be serving another term based on the 2018 elections. Currently, Hawaii runs a Democratic state government, which means that the democratic party has continuously led the Hawaiian government over any other political party. The democratic party has been in power for about forty years. The Current leaders are Ronald Kouchi (Senate President), Scott Saiki (House Speaker), Jamie Kalani English and Della Au Belatti (Majority Leaders) and Gene Ward (Minority Speaker). These leaders were re-elected after the 2018 elections, some have been in the same position for a couple of years. The way the Hawaiian government structures their government is through having 25 members of Senate and 51 members of the House, 88% of their government are Democrats while 11% of their members are republican. The total terms for a Senate official are 4 years while a house representative is 2 years. The constitution they follow in order for their structure to work is Article III of the Hawaii Constitution, which is a guideline of what the role each member has and does not have.
The Agenda
Based on David Ige’s website, he lists the important priorities that the legislature has to come into terms with. The legislature’s mission is to restore faith into the government and preserve the Hawaiian Islands, so future generations are able to call Hawaii home. They prioritize their time in laws concerning education, housing and homelessness, health, effective, efficient, and open government, economy, energy, agriculture, environment, treatment of native Hawaiians, traffic, taxes and preserving their core values. Ige has been very involved in making sure housing can be affordable for everyone and create shelters for the homeless in order to keep them out of the streets. He seemed to accomplish a lot of these goals during 2017. So, it may seem he will continue to do more projects on this.
Illinois: Who represents you at the state level?
I currently live in the US Congressional District #4 in Chicago, IL, which means Iris Martinez is our state senator and for the house, Jaime Andrade is our representative. They are both members of the democratic party as well as Latinos. Martinez has been in office for 16 years while Andrade has only been in office for about 6 years. The issues that they are currently trying to resolve seem to be the same but what they prioritize is different. For Martinez, her priorities are education, energy, labor, and pensions. Andrade is more focused on business licenses, Cybersecurity, Human services and regulations of roads and bridges. I think I feel more represented by Iris Martinez because it seems to care more about how the people of Illinois leave in an everyday life, while Andrade seems to be more focused on the technological aspect of our lives, which is also important, but interactions socially seem to be more my priority, and Martinez seems to understand that.