Shekinah Cantere is a prospect.

Young, bright, and down-to-earth in a manner locals recognize as distinctly neighbor island, she hopes to overcome a lack of political experience and a tough general election opponent Tuesday to win the state House of Representatives District 11 seat left open by Rep. Tina Wildberger’s departure.

Born in Saipan but raised in Kihei, the former Hawaiian studies teacher and mother of three speaks earnestly about her desire to advocate for the people of South Maui — people, she says, who are just like her.

Unlike her opponent Terez Amato, who proudly touts her Democratic bona fides and speaks assertively and with specificity on a squad-worthy progressive platform, Cantere, 27, projects a more centrist, less noticeably partisan public face, listing as her key concerns such traditional inarguables as education, homelessness and tourism.

She is, in the reality of perhaps the bluest state in the union, precisely the sort of candidate the local Republican party has been trying to cultivate.

“I never even thought about what I was until I got recruited,” Cantere said. “But I believe in people having more of a say than the government and I love my community, whatever our differences are. Being a Republican in Hawaii is hard but I hope to be a great example for bringing people with different political views together for one cause.”

Depending on who you talk to, the party is either a rudderless mess caught in the tide of 70 years of Democratic dominance or a slow rising tsunami animated by seismic frustration at the local status quo and building in the warm waters of cultural conservative.

Only two Republicans have served as governor since statehood: William Quinn, who lost his bid for reelection in 1962, and Linda Lingle, whose second term ended in 2012.

The last Republican to represent Hawaii in the U.S. Senate, Hiram Fong, retired in 1977. The only two Hawaii Republicans to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives since statehood combined for less than five years in office. Pat Saiki served one term, from 1987 to 1991. Charles Djou was elected in May 2010 to complete the remaining term of Neil Abercrombie, who resigned to run for governor and lost in the following general election to Colleen Hanabusa.

And the number of Republicans in the state Legislature has dwindled since its peak in 2002, when 15 served in the House and five in the Senate. Following the departure of Rep. Val Okimoto (to run for Honolulu City Council) and Rep. Bob McDermott (to run for U.S. Senate) this year, the number heading into Tuesday’s general election stands at just three: Sen. Kurt Fevella, Rep. Gene Ward and Rep. Lauren Cheape Matsumoto.

“The Republican Party just basically doesn’t exist as any kind of living, breathing entity here,” said University of Hawaii emeritus professor of political science Neil Milner. “It has no organization. It has no regular communication capacity. The media pays very little attention to it. There are no really conservative intellectuals here. And they certainly don’t talk about how they relate to the insurrection or Stop the Steal.

“They’re in a really, very bad place and it’s very hard to blame them necessarily, personally, because it’s structural disadvantage,” Milner said. “If you’re the extreme minority party here over all these years, it’s very hard to change that. We’ve never had the kind of anger, the kind of right-wing Tea Party extremism or even the strong Trump stuff. It never became as public here as it has been elsewhere. So they’ve got nothing to offer them.”

Yet, local Republicans also point out that Republican voter turnout for the July primary election was roughly double what it was for the last midterm primary in 2018. And at just about 20%, the percentage of Republican votes cast was the highest it’s been in nearly two decades.

Part of that success goes to the party’s grassroots effort to recruit and train candidates like Cantere, an effort that allowed it to field about 60 candidates in races up and down the ballot. But that itself was an outgrowth of a crisis that sharpened the distinction between parties and inspired a greater number of potential candidates to test political waters for the first time, according to one local Republican leader.

“A lot of that was generated by 2020 and 2021 and the way that people were treated here in Hawaii with regard to COVID-19,” said Honolulu County Republic Party chair Brett Kulbis, “What the governor did, as far as we’re concerned, was illegally use his emergency powers and our state legislature just sat on their hands and did nothing. Businesses had to close. First responders who did their job before the vaccine came out lost their jobs when they decided for whatever reason, not to get the jab. All of that has generated a lot of enthusiasm for people to get involved.”

And while all that may be true, it is yet to be seen whether the party is prepared to harness that dissatisfaction and whether the 2022 field of Republican candidates is up to the task of reasserting its presence on Hawaii’s political landscape.

Venerable party figure James “Duke” Aiona is the de facto face of the party for this election cycle, a figure whose experience as a judge and creator of such innovating programs as the drug court helped lift him to the office of lieutenant governor under Lingle but no higher despite two previous bids for the governor’s seat.

Aiona’s last-minute entry to this year’s governor’s race was perceived by some as an indication that their party’s stable of political hopefuls weren’t quite ready for prime time. Early favorite Heidi Tsuneyoshi, who gave up a spot on the Honolulu City Council to run, failed to gain traction outside of her district, ended up a disappointing fourth in Republican balloting after newcomer Gary Cordery. Former mixed-martial-arts champion B.J. Penn, another surprise entry, drew plenty of attention but never mounted a fully articulated campaign and could not able to mobilize a support base that traditionally hasn’t turned out to vote in significant numbers.

Hence, local Republicans turned to a trusted, familiar face for broader credibility in perhaps the same way Democrats nationally did with Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race.

“With Duke as the candidate, it’s just them repeating the same kind of cycle they’ve done before,” Milner said.

Colin Moore, University of Hawaii associate professor and director of the Public Policy Center, said the local Republican Party has long been divided between traditional, mainstream Republicans and more hardline members, more culturally and philosophically akin to the national party’s MAGA faction.

“I think you’re going to see more of there being a clear division between moderate Republicans like Cynthia Thielen and populist MAGA candidates,” he said. “The old, mainstream Linda Lingle Republicans may start to fade or even become conservative Democrats.”

To Kulbis, however, the range of perspectives the party represents is less polar. Likewise, what it takes for a Republican candidate to win and hold on to a seat, particularly in the state Legislature, may be more pragmatic than many are willing to admit.

“A lot of people don’t understand that with Democrats in rule, Republicans have got to play their game, right?” Kulbis said. “They’ve got to play nice in the sandbox. They can’t be the outspoken, in-your-face type of Republican to get things for their district."

To that end, Kulbis said he doesn’t hold it against Republicans in office for going along with certain votes. However, “There are some core, core votes that they should vote ‘no’ to.”

Kulbis said he is less concerned about the appearance of unity between Republicans here and on the mainland because “we all support the platform,” and thinks the ultimate goal is to achieve more representation in state and local government.

 “Personally, I couldn’t care less about our congressional races,” he said. “I’m more focused on the governor on down because those are the people that are closest to us we can actually influence on local policies that really affect our communities.”

For years, the party has tried to recruit and retain homegrown candidates, particularly those who are able to connect with untapped racial, ethnic and cultural voting blocks.

“The majority of voters and residents in Hawaii are conservative and faith-based and, especially this year, we did a great job reaching out to our faith-based community,” Kulbis said. “We’re reaching out to the Hawaiian community because a lot of the Hawaiian community don’t vote. We’re trying to teach them that your vote matters. If you want things to change and you want us to be able to get your land back and get it out of Democrats’ hands, you need to change your voting habits.

“We’ve made a lot of people realize that they are not Democrat; they’re probably actually Republican or conservative,” he said. “So hopefully, they come out and vote there.”

Moore said the goal has been long-standing, if elusive.

“Republicans have been saying for a long time that a lot of local values are consistent with Republican values, and if they can just communicate that to people who are more traditional in their values, they can draw people away from the Democratic Party who are there mainly because of unions and tradition,” he said.

“They’re looking for people who can make that connection,” he said. “People’s fear of the mainland Republican Party is that it’s racist,” he said. “It helps to counter that image if the person reaching out is someone they trust.”

In recent years, the party has made inroads with locally rooted candidates like Andria Tupola, who ran unsuccessfully for governor before landing on the non-partisan Honolulu City Council, and with prominent figures like fellow Council member Augie Tulba and House incumbent (in a radically redrawn district) Cheape Matsumoto, who have worked diligently to gain their political footing.

Cantere said she was referred by her sister to a Republican handler looking for candidates to vie for Wildberger’s open seat on Maui. She was eager to do something for her community but had never seriously considered political office. Also, she had just given birth to her third child a couple of months earlier and she and her husband were in the midst of planning a long-overdue wedding celebration.

“My husband and I talked about it and he said, ‘You need to do this. We need to make a difference for our kids and for everybody here,’” she said.

Cantere said that while the bulk of her material and moral support has come from her family, the local Republican Party has provided campaign guidance and other help. In the early summer, the party flew Cantere and other Neighbor Island candidates to Honolulu for a training retreat.

“If I did this as a Democrat, I’m sure I could have had a lot more community support from the beginning, but I’m not here to blend in,” she said.

Should Cantere beat Amato on Tuesday, she will mark a major return on investment for the party. Should she lose, history suggests that she may never appear on a ballot again.

“They did a good job, better than usual, in finding candidates to run for state legislative seats,” Milner said. “The challenge is that when you’re such a minority party, and especially if you’re running against incumbents, it’s really hard to win the first time. I remember talking to one Republican Party chair and he said the real challenge is to get a person to run a second time when they’re better known. That’s because they usually lose so badly the first time and it costs a lot of time and money.”

Kulbis agrees.

“One of the things that I’ve been trying to do after the election is making sure that those candidates that don’t succeed don’t give up,” he said. “Historically, losing candidates fade into the wind and they never come back. I try to convince them to run again. Now's the time to prepare so that when the next election comes up, you’re ready to go, you already got some sort of a base, and you just grow on that. Part of our overall problem here in Hawaii is that first-time candidates don’t realize that you got to keep going. You can’t just do one and done.”

Michael Tsai covers local and state politics for Spectrum News Hawaii.