Alan Arakawa
Encyclopedia
Alan M. Arakawa is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 politician who is currently the Mayor of the County of Maui in Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

. He previously served as Maui mayor from 2002 to 2006., Arakawa graduated from Maui High School and attended the University of Hawai'i at Manoa
University of Hawaii
The University of Hawaii System, formally the University of Hawaii and popularly known as UH, is a public, co-educational college and university system that confers associate, bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees through three university campuses, seven community college campuses, an employment...

 as a business major. He then entered civil service in 1984 as a wastewater plant worker for Maui County. He rose to the post of supervisor in the wastewater division of the Department of Public Works and he was both a United Public Workers Chief Steward and a Hawai'i Government Employees Association Union Representative.

In 1994, Arakawa first ran for office to become a member of Maui's county council. He won and was subsequently re-elected in 1996 and 2000. He served as Chair of the Planning, Parks and Land Use committees during his tenure. Arakawa also was one of the members that spearheaded a movement to create nonpartisan elections for Maui County government seats. In November 2002, Arakawa was elected in a nonpartisan race to become county mayor.

Arakawa is married to Ann Arakawa, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Maui Community College. They both are parents of two daughters, Jan and Jodi.

2006 Mayoral Election

In 2006, Alan Arakawa ran for re-election. In the primaries he faced former Mayor Kimo Apana and popular City councilwoman Charmaine Tavares
Charmaine Tavares
Charmaine Tavares is an American politician and politician. Tavares has served as the Mayor of Maui since January 2007. She unsuccessfully sought a second four-year term in office in the 2010 Maui mayoral election.-Early life:...

, daughter of the late mayor Hannibal Tavares
Hannibal Tavares
Hannibal M. Tavares was an American politician. Tavares served as the Mayor of Maui from 1979 until 1991. He holds the distinction of being the longest-serving Mayor of Maui in history....

. In the primary results, he was trailing Tavares
Tavares
-People:Tavares is a common surname in the Portuguese language, namely in Portugal and Brazil and other places – especially very common in the Cape Verde islands. It was originally a toponym...

 by about 100 votes. In the general election, he was defeated by Tavares.

2010 Mayoral Election

On June 18, 2010, Arakawa filed to run for the Mayor of Maui County. He placed second in the mayoral primary election
Primary election
A primary election is an election in which party members or voters select candidates for a subsequent election. Primary elections are one means by which a political party nominates candidates for the next general election....

 on September 18, 2010. Incumbent Mayor Charmaine Tavares narrowly won the primary election taking 7,307 votes, or 25.4% of the total votes. She defeated Arakawa by just 268 votes. Arakawa earned 7,039 votes, or 24.4% of the vote. Arakawa won 23 of Maui's 39 election precincts, mostly in South and West Maui, while Tavares won 11 precincts in Central Maui.

Both Mayor Tavares and Arakawa qualified for the 2010 mayoral general election on November 2, 2010. The race was a rematch of the 2006 mayoral election, in which incumbent Mayor Arakawa was defeated by Tavares. In the final vote tally, Arakawa trounced Tavares with nearly 59% of the vote to her 41%.

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