The 2026 Kauaʻi Mayor’s Race Is Off To An Early Start
Two familiar faces on the Garden Island have emerged as frontrunners, declaring their intent to run months before it’s even time for candidates to register.
With the primary election more than a year away, the 2026 Kauaʻi mayor’s race is shaping up as a competition between two well-liked candidates with longstanding ties in government and overlapping policy stances but drastically different political styles.
Bernard Carvalho, the longest-serving mayor in Kauaʻi history, and Mel Rapozo, a retired Kauaʻi police officer, announced their intent to run within days of each other. They’re vying to replace Mayor Derek Kawakami, 47, who will step down at the end of next year due to term limits, which prevent mayors from serving more than two consecutive, four-year terms.
Both candidates sit on the County Council and represent Kauaʻi’s more conservative old guard, leaving room for a fresh face or a more progressive candidate to enter the race, which is nonpartisan. Candidate filing begins in February and ends in June.
The upcoming mayoral race comes at a time when voters are looking for a top county official who can restore the Garden Island’s economy, which is in the throes of a severe and worsening affordable housing crisis that’s driving young people to move away. A median-priced single-family home on Kauaʻi costs $1.1 million.
Familiar Faces
It’s unclear which candidate will win Kauaʻi’s institutional support. Rapozo, the County Council chairman, has raised three times as much campaign money as Carvalho, who served as mayor from 2008 to 2018 and played pro football for the Miami Dolphins in the 1980s.
Both men, who have served several terms on the council, have the magnetism, compelling biographies and name recognition required to win.
“Mayor Carvalho is always out in the community smiling and laughing, shaking hands,” former legislator and Kauaʻi council member Gary Hooser said. “And Mel Rapozo is a former policeman who can speak to issues in a populist kind of way. He’s very driven in reaching the community and getting them fired up, whereas Carvalho is more of a huggable kind of guy.”
Carvalho and Rapozo count many of the same land developers, tourism advocates and labor unions as donors. They’re also backed by some of Hawaiʻi’s most politically influential unions, including those representing police and public workers, and executives from Grove Farm, the island’s third-largest landowner.
In the past, both candidates aligned in strong support of Kauaʻi’s biotech industry. They effectively blocked a hotly debated bill in 2013 that called for prison time or fines against agriculture workers who don’t abide by pesticide disclosure rules. Rapozo cast the council’s lone vote against the bill, saying it unfairly targeted the four biotech companies operating on Kauaʻi at the time — Syngenta, DuPont-Pioneer, Dow and BASF. The measure passed but was vetoed by then-mayor Carvalho who said it was legally flawed.
Given the similarities, University of Hawaiʻi political scientist Colin Moore said it will be difficult for either candidate to distinguish himself.
“They’ve been around a long time so people either like them or they don’t like them and there’s not a whole lot a campaign can do to change people’s minds,” Moore said. “This is one of these races where it’s hard to know how people are going to make up their minds. It may fall to idiosyncratic things, like whether or not people know them or whether they’ve had good face-to-face experiences with them in the past.”
Carvalho, 63, took over as mayor in 2008 after incumbent Bryan Baptiste died while recovering from bypass surgery. He then was elected to two subsequent terms before stepping down. Rapozo, 60, has lost multiple mayoral bids, most recently in 2018 when he lost to Kawakami.
Housing Crisis
The business community has high expectations for the next mayor to shift the economy’s focus on tourism toward a wider range of sectors and tackle the workforce housing shortage at a time when many local businesses struggle to stay open amid staffing shortages.
“Derek Kawakami has done a great job bringing more affordable housing and workforce housing than has previously been done and that record needs to not only continue but it needs to rapidly accelerate because businesses can’t find employees,” Kauaʻi Chamber of Commerce President Mark Perriello said.
The island’s affordable housing stock has increased roughly 26%, with 384 new units raising the islandwide total to 1,857, according to Kauaʻi Housing Director Adam Roversi. Another 310 affordable units are under construction and 1,130 units are planned.
The Kawakami administration also has worked to incentivize private developers to commit units to longterm affordability to prevent them from being resold at market rates, Roversi said.
Even with this progress, many in the island’s workforce — ranging from chefs and bank tellers to teachers and lifeguards — remain priced out of the market.
Face-Off Between ‘Best of Friends’
Rapozo launched an exploratory committee for a mayoral run on May 1. When rumors started circulating on this tight-knit island of 74,000 people that Carvalho would soon throw his hat in the ring, Rapozo clarified his intent on May 12: He plans to run, not just consider it.
Carvalho declared his candidacy two days later at the Kauaʻi War Memorial Convention Hall. In a nod to his two years playing in the NFL, he uses the Dolphins’ signature aqua and orange as his campaign colors.
“Bernard and I are best of friends, I love this guy like a brother,” Rapozo said in a recent episode of Coconut Wireless, the current events YouTube show he co-hosts with Charlie Iona, a fellow former cop.
“A lot of people are confused,” Rapozo added, acknowledging the candidates’ similar politics. “Well, simply put, the two of us want to be mayor.”
The closely timed announcements from Rapozo and Carvalho could serve to block one candidate from scooping up all the endorsements and donations early on, especially since they share so many supporters, Moore said. Their campaign announcements within days of each other may also have the effect of scaring off potential competitors.
When he termed out of the mayor’s seat, Carvalho, who is 6 feet, 3 inches tall, ran an unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor using the campaign slogan “Think Big,” a play on his giant stature. Since 2020 he has served on the council. His political platform over the years has centered on building housing for Kauaʻi families, revitalizing the Līhuʻe town core and making the island more pedestrian and bicycle-friendly.
Rapozo served 13 years with the Kauaʻi Police Department after retiring from the Hawaii Air National Guard. He also worked as an investigator for the county prosecutor. At council meetings and on his YouTube show, he is tenacious, brutally honest and unafraid of saying something controversial.
Over the years he has championed housing that local families can afford, bringing down the exorbitant cost of living, reducing traffic congestion and upgrading the island’s aging infrastructure.
His campaign priorities remain largely unchanged. But it’s the mayor, he said, who can best translate political promises and legislation into action, such as finding a new site for a landfill to house the island’s municipal garbage.
“It’s nothing new,” Rapozo told Civil Beat in an interview. “But there’s a lot of priorities I have that I don’t have the power to execute as a councilor.”
Carvalho did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
With Carvalho and Rapozo vying for mayor, the council is expected to have four open seats in the 2026 election. Council members KipuKai Kualiʻi and Felicia Cowden can’t run again because of term limits.
It’s been decades since the council has had so few incumbents seeking reelection, according to Hooser.
