Kathryn Ghean, who chaired Maui’s Republican Party for a decade, accused the Maui County Council on Friday of “bullying” behavior after its recent rejection of her nomination to the Maui County Board of Ethics because of items she posted on her Facebook page.
The circumstances surrounding that rejection provided a real-time look at the Council’s decision-making process. During its January 15th meeting, Ghean’s nomination had been put forth by Council Member Mike Molina, seconded by Member Yuki Lei Sugimura, and was minutes away from approval when Member Tamara Paltin spoke up. Paltin had just received testimony from community activitist Kai Nishiki about Ghean’s social media posts.
Ghean’s posts, Nishiki wrote, “demonstrate racist and misogynistic viewpoints and lack of judgement and should not represent our community.”
“Attached was a very disturbing post from [Ghean’s] social media in what seems to be misogynistic bullying of a female elected official,” Paltin told her colleagues. “I cannot support that kind of behavior on the Board of Ethics.”
Paltin was referring to a post on Ghean’s Facebook page that featured a caricature of U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with the comment, “AOC had Twitter remove this photo. Keep it alive on Parler. She hates this!!”
[Parler was the go-to social media website for supporters of Donald Trump, right-wing extremists, conspiracy theorists and other fringe groups before it was removed from Apple, Google and Amazon sites following the January 6th insurrection attempt at the U.S. Capitol.]
Free Speech has “Consequences”
In addition to the post about Ocasio-Cortez, Ghean’s Facebook page is filled with posts related to politics and pro-life issues. There are numerous references to Donald Trump, with pictures of “Trump’s Army,” and another featuring Jesus with his hands on Trump’s shoulders. In addition, Ghean posted news stories from conservative websites that, among other items, referenced the widely-discredited assertion that Hunter Biden gave White House access to “communist-aligned Chinese elites.” Another post links to a story claiming that Trump may have been deliberately infected with COVID. A post about Planned Parenthood was stamped “False Information” by Facebook. Another post reads, “We are living in a time where Satan doesn’t even hide anymore, and the world still can’t see him.”
Paltin was quickly joined by Council Member Keani Rawlins-Fernandez who said Ghean’s “activity on social media” was “not reflective of someone who should be participating on the Board of Ethics.” Although the First Amendment guarantees the right to free speech, it doesn’t guarantee free speech “without consequences,” Rawlins-Fernandez added. “So you can say whatever you want publicly, but there are consequences. The kind of hate that emanates from the comments in her posts on social media is not something we should be allowing on our County boards and commissions.”
Council Member Shane Sinenci said he wouldn’t vote for the nomination either. “Taking into account some of the events at the national level, we’re now seeing social media outlets cutting off people that promote [things that are] untrue.”
At this point, Council Member Mike Molina, chair of the Government Relations, Ethics and Transparency committee, asked for input from Mayor Michael Victorino’s representative Ipo Mossman, who was monitoring the meeting.
“We had no idea that this was even on there,” Mossman said. Having learned of it, Mossman added, the mayor would “definitely” reconsider the nomination.
Sugimura, saying that she hadn’t yet located the Facebook page, spoke of Ghean’s service as a member of Gov. Linda Lingle’s Maui advisory board “with a background in terms of governance” and said she’d do “my own research,” on the matter.
Moments later, Sugimura apparently found Ghean’s page. “Oh my God,” she said on camera.
“It’s just one of those things that I guess went through the cracks,” Molina commented. “But because of the standards we expect from our people on boards and commissions–especially the Board of Ethics”–the Council had no choice but to hand the nomination back to the Mayor “to find another nominee.” The vote to reject Ghean’s nomination was unanimous.
Council behavior was “bullying”
Ghean, whose Facebook page is followed by 24 people, was somewhat stunned and definitely unhappy with the council’s treatment of her and her Facebook posts, she said Friday.
“So now we recognize that Hawaii is no longer the land of Aloha,” said Ghean. She called her posts “a free speech issue that certainly had no bearing on my ethics or issues that may come before the Maui Board of Ethics.
“The offending issue was a meme/caricature of “AOC,” a public political figure,” she said in an email, adding that the Council hadn’t given her an opportunity to speak during the meeting, although she had been standing by.
Ghean said she has been in contact with Victorino’s office. “I have spoken with the Mayor’s executive assistant. The Mayor’s Office and staff were blind-sided, as was I. It felt like an ambush.”
Several requests for comments from the Mayor on Ghean’s disapproved nomination and the process involved in vetting candidates for boards and commissions went unanswered.
Ghean applied for the Board of Ethics volunteer position because “it has interested me for a while” and felt qualified for the job. “I had 30-plus years with IBM, which had very strong ethics rules.” On Maui, the Kihei resident said she had served on the Committee on the Status of Women and as a board member on the Kaanapali Operations Association, in addition to her work with the Republican Party.
She directly criticized Paltin for referring to her Facebook post as “bullying.” Said Ghean, “In fact, what the Council did to me is a true example of bullying: silence those you disagree with.
“The Council owes me an apology for besmirching my name and reputation for simply exercising my freedom of speech.”
A Fine Line
Colin Moore, director of the University of Hawaii’s Public Policy Center, said discussions about politics and free speech can walk a fine line. “It would certainly not be appropriate to reject someone simply because he or she expressed unpopular beliefs or was critical of local leaders,” he said Friday.
However in the Ghean case, Moore was unequivocable: “Nobody has a right to be appointed to the Maui Board of Ethics. There are lots of factors to consider when evaluating a candidate for a public position, because good character is an important qualification. It seems fair to consider past speech–or, in this case, Facebook posts–that demonstrate a lack of good judgement and would be unbecoming for the member of an ethics board.”
The ignorance Ghean showed, not only in regards to the First Amendment and the definition of Ethics, after she was outed is astounding. Thank goodness some council members actually vetted her.
Thank you for catching and stopping a bully from,serving. The Republican party endorsed Nicholas Ochs to run for representative for Waikiki. , Ochs us leader of Proud Boys Hawaii and was recently arrested for storming the Capitol building January 6, 2021.