It’s crunch time in politics, with less than 20 days to go until November 3. All around Maui, campaign managers and others are working overtime to ensure that their candidates or ballot issues are successful. They are fielding calls and texts, monitoring signage, flooding social media, dispersing funds, and plotting hourly strategies.
All of them, it seems, except Grant David Gillham, the chairperson/treasurer/custodian of books and accounts for Hui O Maui Citizens for Change, the super PAC which has received $100,000 from the Hui O Maui 501(c)(4) group of hidden donors. A super PAC can’t donate directly to a campaign, but it can run an independent effort to support that candidate.
While Maui campaigners battle from the trenches, Grant, 63, works to avoid bunkers as he strolls the lush fairways of Nuevo Vallarta golf courses on the resort-laden west coast of Mexico. How do I know this? Well, it isn’t because I’ve been chatting him up. I’ve tried. Grant hasn’t returned calls, texts and messages from me or other local reporters about his super PAC since the Hui O Maui dark money story broke earlier this month. However, what Grant does do is post on social media. A lot.
So I decided to visit him there.
Grant frequently updates his two Facebook pages, plus others on Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and Reddit. He describes himself as a “corporate strategist, consultant, conservationist, writer, director, producer, Tulane ’79, USAF pilot” on Facebook, along with the fact that he’s single and lives in Las Vegas. He is listed elsewhere as a member of a Puerto Vallarta neighborhood association, so perhaps he’s a part-time expatriate.
Earlier this week, I texted Grant again, this time to ask about his committee’s appropriation of the Hui O Maui name—one that has been used by a Hawaiian advocacy group since 2015. Grant didn’t get back to me, but he did find time to post on Facebook that he was playing some white ball at the Flamingos Golf course in Bucerias, Mexico. A friend asked how the fairways were. “Not bad considering the weather,” the Hui O Maui Citizens for Change chairperson wrote back.
Grant never responded to me, but later that night he put up a New York Times story about COVID-19 symptoms, snarking, “Pretty much everything that makes you feel lousy is a sign that you could have COVID.”
He also posted a Happy Birthday card to the Navy, celebrating its 245th birthday. Then, with a brief nod to the organization that currently employs him, Grant shared a slick YouTube video about the slate of candidates that his super PAC is supporting (Tasha Kama, Yuki Lei Sugimura, Alice Lee, Mike Molina, Alberta de Jetley, Claire Kamalu Carroll, Tom Cook, Rick Nava and Stacy Crivello) under the comment: “Maui County has been a train wreck. Hopefully we can turn things around.”
We?
Grant didn’t get any likes on that post, but nine people gave him a thumbs up for the picture he posted at El Tigre Golf Club. Another 10 liked his shot from the Greg-Norman designed Litibu Golf Course, where 8 holes are “surrounded by virgin jungles,” according to its website.
Despite his charmed Mexican Riviera existence, Grant isn’t always happy. On October 5, he re-posted a story about other planets being more suitable for life than Earth. “I’m ready to move,” he commented. “This shitshow is getting old.”
A friend commiserated, “Let’s put the democrats on a rocket, shoot them into space and they can get back to us.”
Grant responded with a laughing emoji.
In this COVID-ravaged unemployment landscape—especially here on Maui—all I can say is, “Wow, Grant! Cushy gig!” It’s unclear whether he’s even set foot on Maui since he took this Hui O Maui Citizens for Change job; why bother when you can just phone it in?
Even Grant’s brother William seemed surprised on October 1 when Grant posted Honolulu Civil Beat’s story about him running the Hui O Maui super PAC. “I thought you were laying on the beach (Miami Vice-style) with some Jack, Tito’s Jim Beam and cigars…”
William could be right. Grant’s been in Mexico since his group filed as an independent expenditure committee on September 11. There are lots of gorgeous ocean shots on his Facebook page, though none from Maui.
A few years back, Grant seemed a bit more hands-on when it came to Maui political consulting jobs. In early 2016, he began work with another Maui independent expenditure committee, One Ohana PAC, a group of timeshare owners protesting what they said were unfair property tax hikes. Grant took home almost $62,000 from One Ohana during the next two years, at one point serving as executive director.
In those days, Grant did talk to the media, complaining vociferously about the County of Maui’s unfair tax assessments and working to elect a slate of candidates who presumably would be compassionate to One Ohana’s timeshare owners. He even sent out press releases with his name on them. In addition to campaigning, the group filed more than 500 tax appeals and a lawsuit against the county. In the 2016 primary election, One Ohana spent more than $40,000 to support then-county managing director Keith Regan, who was running for the seat vacated by now-mayor Michael Victorino. Regan lost, and later told the Maui News that he really wasn’t sure whether One Ohana’s support had benefitted his candidacy.
One Ohana—which still exists, with about $500,000 in the bank—and Hui O Maui have more in common than just Grant. Honolulu attorney Grant Tanimoto is the registered agent for both corporations. San Francisco attorney Peter Bagatelos, who drew up Hui O Maui’s incorporation papers, has been listed as a timeshare owner at the Ka’anapali Ocean Resort and was a plaintiff in a 2013 property tax lawsuit brought by his timeshare association and others against Maui county. They are two of Grant’s 1,174 friends on Facebook.
In Grant’s salad days of political consulting, between 2007-2012, he ran a nonprofit called Citizens for Fire Safety (CFFS) that had a budget of about $17 million to battle bills in state legislatures. CFFS opposed legislation that sought to restrict the use of fire-retardant chemicals in household furniture (the chemicals are believed to cause cancer). Grant’s group was formed to protect “the United States with the highest standards of fire safety through a coalition of fire professionals, educators, burn centers, doctors, fire departments and industry leaders.” CFFS sent all kinds of folks to testify against these anti-fire-retardant bills. One of them was physician David Heimbach, who shocked California legislators in 2011 with his graphic description of caring for a 7-week-old baby girl who had been severely injured while laying on a burning pillow set afire by a nearby candle. The pillow hadn’t been treated with fire retardant chemicals. The infant later died. The bill did too.
The problem was, Dr. Heimbach’s story was a total lie. No baby. No pillow. No fire. These revelations came courtesy of a 2012 investigative series by the Chicago Tribune that revealed the doctor’s story to be a sham, as well as other claims by Grant’s group. Rather than citizen-based, CFFS had been funded by the very chemical companies the bills sought to regulate. Grant was described in one of the Tribune stories as having “honed his political skills advising tobacco companies.” The multi-part series was lethal, and the CFFS abruptly shut down. Then-California state senator Mark Leno said at the time that the chemical industry’s tactics with CFFS were “as crass and as insensitive” as anything he’d seen in his career.
Although the American Chemistry Council (ACC) at first denied any involvement, Grant busted them in 2015 in interviews acknowledging that the ACC had been in on the phony citizen’s group from the beginning. Grant told the Center for Public Integrity that he’d been “misled” about the safety of fire-retardant chemicals. He later testified on behalf of the fire-retardant restrictions that he’d once fought, but the episode seemed to bring a chapter of his working life to a close. Corporations have long memories when it comes to consultants who burn them, so to speak.
But I digress. While interesting, none of this helps us to understand more about Hui O Maui Citizens for Change or Grant David Gillham’s involvement with it—other than it’s a paycheck. I would ask him, but I just checked Facebook and Grant’s busy right now. It’s happy hour at the Margarita Grill in Old Town Puerto Vallarta and he’s there with his pal Tim.
Bottoms up amigos!!
I greatly appreciate the data mining and clarity.
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