The People's People from Spectrum News

As a child, Congresswoman Ann Wagner aspired to Broadway stardom. But her hardworking parents made sure she had something to fall back on — even if they didn’t necessarily expect it to be elected off…

Jay Ashcroft grew up in politics. It’s been a part of his life forever, and the family dinner conversations often centered around it. His childhood also included meeting presidents and Arnold Schwarz…

Perhaps there’s no direct path from childhood to Lieutenant Governor, but Mike Kehoe’s story has a few more surprises than one would expect. Raised in northern St. Louis by a hardworking single mothe…

Dru Mamo Kanuha was just 28 when he was first elected to represent the people of his Kona community. Though his family can trace its local lineage back 12 generations, Kanuha has forged a path in pol…

With several life stories that read like a movie script, Hawaii Island Mayor Mitch Roth had a circuitous path to elected office. In this episode of the podcast, he discusses the impact of several key…

Hawaii State Senate President Ron Kouchi hoped to be a high school history teacher and enjoyed reading novels in his spare time. But to get out of a job he was too embarrassed to quit, he began campa…

Congressman Ed Case has had a life full of adventures, from a childhood “close to nature” in Hilo to working as a jackaroo on a sheep farm in Australia to weathering the culture shock of a small libe…

Derek Kawakami has gleaned lessons from all sorts of life experiences, from hustling to grow his paper route as a young boy to feeling like an outsider as a teenager to parenting while trying to buil…

State Senator Lynn DeCoite is a third generation homestead farmer who grows purple sweet potatoes when she is not traveling from island to island representing her constituents in the so-called “canoe…

Rick Blangiardi is new to elected office but not leadership. After a long career as a television executive, he became mayor of Honolulu in January 2021. Yet Blangiardi’s road to City Hall began on th…

Josh Green first ran for office hoping to work on some of the issues he had seen first-hand as an emergency room physician. But his experience and expertise took on an unanticipated relevance during …

Listen to new episodes starting on December 7th.

What do you know about your elected officials? Do you know what makes them, and the districts they represent, unique? Or why they ran for office in th…

David Rollins says that back in the 1960s, very few people in Augusta, Maine would have expected a certain high school athlete to one day be mayor. But looking back at his 16 years of civic service, …

Kate Snyder always keeps a tab open on her computer with the mayor of Portland’s powers and duties, as written in the city charter, to remind herself what her role is—and isn’t. She is only the third…

Being the chief executive of a state during a pandemic is a job nobody could prepare for, but Maine Governor Janet Mills learned to work through challenges and thrive through adversity at an early ag…