The People's Party of Hawaii: Archives

This article in the October 28, 1976 Star-Bulletin was a bit of an embarrassment to me, as Dexter and Tony had refused to submit to the newspaper's two-bit coverage of third parties. I'd written this as an extended "letter to the editor" but Editor Smyser had pulled it into the paper's one-page coverage of all third-party candidates. Fortunately, Tony and Dexter just shrugged it off--as did Editor Smyser, when I called to complain. If it's true that there's no bad publicity, I guess it was successful; thanks to my long-windedness, we received four times the column inches awarded to the other marginalized candidates.

Our competition included James Kimmel, then running as a non-partisan. Kimmel was the Party's Senatorial candidate in 1974, running against Democratic icon Dan Inouye. As I recall, we discovered he was "our" candidate rather late in the game; I believe he took it upon himself to run as a People's Party candidate without permission of the Triumvrate.

With no other outlet for frustrated Republicans on the ballot, Kimmel handily garnered the votes needed to keep the Party on the ballot in 1976. Kimmel was subsequently busted for possession of marijuana, and his "pot as part of my religion" defense apparently didn't fly.