Money Down the Toilet: RINO Cabal Lavishes Crony With Donor Funded Job

Honolulu, Hawaii – If you haven’t already heard the shocking rumors over at the troubled and homeless Hawaii Republican Party (HRP), then HIRA News is here to confirm these stories and provide context.

For the first time in years, HRP is hiring paid staff and is planning to raise more than two million dollars and then go and spend more than a million dollars on those staffers plus other expenses between now and the end of 2025.  You’ll be stunned at who made the cut for these party jobs and how much more money party leaders plan on lavishing on their cronies before 2026 even rolls around.

First, here’s the most recent breaking news which HRP hasn’t bothered to tell its members via email or social media or any other manner.  On June 26th, Art Hannemann’s first act as new state party chairman was to hire and start paying (or perhaps lavishing) $6,700 per month to Ronette “Ola” Souza to be HRP’s first ‘Executive Director’ in nearly a decade (since back when Fritz Rohlfing paid Jack James $4,000 per month).

So, WHO exactly is Ronette “Ola” Souza and who are the folks that picked her?  Well, Ms. Souza is a Kamehameha graduate and aa self-described “Christian single mom” plus a failed GOP candidate for state house in HD18.  HRP’s new paid leader for the Election 2026 campaign got absolutely destroyed back in 2018, losing decisively to Democrat Mark Hashem in the very Republican East Honolulu district by a whopping 36%, despite Souza receiving active support from then state chair “Big Shirl” Ostrov and campaign funds from the likes of SHOPO, the Hellreich’s, and even from Al Frenzel, Ostrov’s vice chair and a vocal opponent of Hawaii’s statehood.  In 2024, Souza toyed with running for office again; pulling papers at the state elections office.  But, she failed to file those papers, and left the very winnable district without a GOP candidate and setting incumbent Democrat Mark Hashem unopposed and on a speedy path to victory at the State Capitol.  Now, despite proving she’s good at losing, she’ll be in charge of HRP’s entire 2025-2026 campaign.

Crooked former state chair “Big Shirl” Ostrov signwaving with Ola Souza in 2018

In her own house district (HD18), Souza has quit her posts in HRP on multiple occasions after taking the jobs; quitting in 2019 and then in 2025, only days after getting elected.  Souza joined then quit the 2025 committee for planning the Honolulu GOP county convention.  She held the post of the Honolulu GOP’s ‘County Candidate Advisor’, but reportedly didn’t do the job of actually helping any candidates.

Notably, Souza illegally donated large sums of cash to several GOP candidates and then demanded reimbursement from HRP funds in further violation of state campaign finance laws, unreported, under the table cash paid on 11 September 2024 to the campaigns of Waianae politician Chris Muraoka, fellow East Honolulu politician Corinne Solomon, and Kailua politician Tim “General” Connelly.  So, that’s what we know about HRP’s new executive director.

In Team Art’s first big decision since the Hawai’i GOP state convention earlier this month, these neophyte party leaders who don’t know anything about how to win an election picked Ola Souza, who (like Art Hannemann and his fellow officers atop HRP) also lost badly.

So, WHO made this hiring decision?  Well, the folks who gave Ronette “Ola” Souza her new, cushy job working from home for $6,700 per month might not know how to win elections themselves and they sure know that Souza doesn’t either.  Here are the decision makers . . .

New HRP chair Art Hannemann
LOST by 3-to-1 in his own state senate race in 2022.

New HRP Vice Chair Shirlene Ostrov
LOST by 3-to-1 in her congressional race in 2016.

New HRP Vice Chair Bob McDermott
LOST by more than 2-to-1 in his recent US Senate race in 2024.

New HRP Vice Chair for Comms Steve Yoder
LOST by a whopping 40 percentage points in his state house race in 2024.

New HRP Finance Chair Sheila Walker
LOST by a 2-to-1 margin in her state senate race in 2024.

Together, these election losers decided to hire fellow election loser Ronette “Ola” Souza, who herself got destroyed by a 3-to-1 margin in a Republican, East Honolulu district in 2018.

Today, HRP is a homeless party run by election losers with a work-from-home executive director who can’t even win in a Republican district.  Yes, at $6,700 per month, rewarding a crony is an expensive business.

So, WHERE will this money come from?  That’s a million dollar question.  Actually, it’s a two million dollar question.

Just two days before Souza was hired by Hannemann’s team, ‘Team Art’ pushed for the hasty approval of a massive and unprecedented $2 MILLION budget for the state party with the help of their allies on HRP’s State Committee during a rushed and highly manipulated 1-hour Zoom meeting on the night of June 24th.

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Here’s that story . . .

On June 24th, new state chair and Mufi’s cousin Art Hannemann (elected at a state convention on Kauai weeks earlier) curtly informed HRP’s 72-member governing entity – the State Committee – that they could only meet for 60 short minutes to review a 100-Day plan, a $2 Million State Party budget, and also review a detailed legal challenge to the outcome of HRP’s state convention.  That’s right, only 60 minutes was allowed for all of these weighty matters, with the pledge of allegiance, roll call, a prayer, and introductions eating into a good chunk of that insanely brief time allotted.

Since Hannemann and his slate of newly-elected fellow executive officers clearly planned to ram through all of these items in less than an hour, you’d guess there’d be ZERO TIME for an obligatory presentation on the budget or any time for questions about whether it would be realistic for the new party leaders to raise the promised and extremely unprecedented $2 MILLION in the next six months . . . and you’d be right.  You’d also be right if members of the State Committee received ZERO INFORMATION about how those $2 MILLION would be spent by these drunken sailors at the helm.

Here are some highlights:  Hannemann’s proposed HRP budget presented a host of shocking spending plans . . . including financial rewards for his cronies.  $6,000 per month will go to Hannemann’s “Marketing Director”.  As already reported above, $6,700 per month will be paid to Hannemann’s “Executive Director” (“Ola” Souza).  $4,200 per month to “Young Republicans”, presumably to an individual to head up this group (such as Rocklin Youngstrom, shown in center of photo) who helped Art Hannemann with Bob McDermott’s disastrous campaign last year).  Again, no details were furnished before voting, leading to speculation about WHY (of all HRP’s auxiliary organizations) was Young Republicans about to receive its first ever infusion of money in Hawaii GOP history?  Hmmm.

Team Art leader Rocklin Youngstrom, head of the Hawaii Republicans, earmarked for a generous infusion of HRP funds, flanked by Art Hannemann, Bob McDermott and their spouses.

In addition, $4,400 per month will be spent on ‘Contracts’ for unnamed individuals.  Again, no questions were allowed and no presentation of details was given.  A parliamentarian chosen by Art Hannemann will get $1,200 per month to help ‘keep order’ at meetings so that Hypocritical Hannemann can keep ramming through his agenda using the same manipulation and weaponization of rules which produced this new spending spree.  And $10,000 per month will be spent on “Travel Expenses” so that self-important state party leaders can fly around on the party’s dime, even though each island already has party leaders (and even though past party leaders have always paid their own way).  Keep in mind that HRP has no ethics rules to prevent kickbacks, favoritism, or abuse of these funds.  If you have the votes, you can do whatever you want with party funds, legal or illegal.  Just ask Art Hannemann’s ethically challenged sidekick Shirlene “Big Shirl” Ostrov, his new vice chair for coordinated campaigns.

In addition to massive new spending budgets of a Quarter Million Dollars for “Candidate Focused Advertising” to take place in the current 2025 (even though candidates don’t file for office and don’t emerge from contested primaries until later in Election 2026), plus $420,000 in commercials between now and the end of 2025, Hannemann officially plans to spend over a million dollars of party funds before 2026 has even begun.  Call it unrealistic if you want to, but the politically inexperienced Art Hannemann has never done this before (and neither has Ola Souza), so what’s wrong with wasting yet another election cycle and wasting all this money?

As you either guessed or may have heard, Hanneman and Crooked Shirlene Ostrov weaponized the party rules to force through this wasteful, unrealistic and hastily approved budget during that one hour meeting, during which members with objections and concerns were muted, shouted down, and improperly silenced.

A huge mystery is WHERE all the money might be coming from in July, August, September, October, November and December.  Hannemann’s budget promises to raise $1,956,000 over these six months.  July 1st is this Tuesday.  Ola Souza’s first paycheck is due quite soon and HRP plans to spend nearly $167,000 by July 31st, one month from now.  Well, here’s a solid theory about the source of the monies.

Both HRP and the Ostrov-controlled Oahu League of RINO Women are EACH sitting on more than half a million dollars representing the proceeds of the 2024 sale of HRP’s longtime Honolulu headquarters on Kapiolani Blvd.  In case you forgot, HRP is homeless.  The HQ is no more.  HRP is merely a virtual party now, existing only on Zoom video conferences, with extremely short meetings where discussion is frowned upon.  There’s no physical office.  There’s no tables for phone banking and envelope stuffing.  There’s no ground game.  There’s no finance committee.  There’s no money coming in.  But, since Hannemann doesn’t want to answer any questions or provide any details while muscling his new spending plan into approval, it stands to reason that Hannemann plans to use the monies from the sale of HRP’s longtime headquarters as “seed money” rather than actually raising the promised $326,000 per month, which is nearly as much as former state chair Ostrov planned in her own ‘pie in the sky’ budget to raise over a period of 12 months in 2018, BUT NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED, even with double the time frame of Hannemann’s delusional budget.  After all, this spending spree has been approved to begin THIS WEEK, on July 1st.

WHAT’S THE LESSON HERE?:  When fake political leaders who have no idea what they are doing manufacture a fantastical, fabulist delusion which brainwashes their easily-deluded followers into approving a big-spending, big-revenue plan for a party which has been running a distant second place for decades, there’s big trouble ahead.  Big trouble and BIG disappointment.

You take a highly hypocritical ‘man of God’ who rams Ola Souza’s salary and benefits package down the throats of unwilling patriots on the state committee, while sycophantic members of that governing body eager voted ‘yes’ like they were receiving communion – even though no presentation was made to explain the ‘take it or leave it’ budget’s mysterious line items or answer any questions about the insane figures provided – you can’t help but recall how Jim Jones worked up enough of his followers to drink the Kool Aid.  Anyone reviewing this spending plan for HRP knows that it’s not anywhere near realistic, especially when HRP’s very own Jim Jones deliberately surrounded himself with some of the most corrupt, ethically challenged and downright lazy Kool Aid drinkers known to Hawaii politics.

Scott Smart (right) presides over the May 2025 HRP state convention at which Team Art was elected to all eight executive officer posts for the troubled state party while all eight members of the Team Tamara slate were defeated.

Scott Smart, Mililani’s HD37 district chair and husband of past HRP treasurer Mary Smart, is one of those who eagerly drank the Kool Aid (in the wake of the HRP state convention he just presided over) as he enthusiastically told fellow StateCom members during last week’s extremely truncated budget discussion, “We need to have a budget. The fundraising aspect seems very aggressive to me. On the expenditure side, I think some things need to be perhaps looked at in a little more detail.  We’re in a situation where we need to get this budget approved.  So that’s why I suggest that we approve it at this time. Thank you, chair.”  So, here’s how things work at HRP now.  If you’re a cheerleader for Team Art, then just ignore the obvious and serious concerns and just VOTE YES because Art wants you to.  Drink the Kool Aid and let’s spend money like crazy while pretending money will flow like wine!!!

Following this Zoom meeting to ram through Team Art’s budget, it’s became clear that ‘Hypocritical Hannemann’s phony agenda of ‘unifying’ Hawaii’s Republican Party with ‘integrity’ is Dead On Arrival.  Likewise, the rest of Team Art have come up empty.  For instance, as HIRA News recently warned, Hannemann’s vice-chair for communications, Steve Yoder, now presides over HRP’s communications wasteland.  To date, Yoder has yet to perform any strategic and political communications to lay the groundwork for any unseating of Democrats from Hilo to Hanalei.  For the past month and a half, HRP’s social media accounts controlled by Yoder and ‘Team Art’ are barren deserts filled with zero posts which could have started puting Democrats on the defensive.  Meanwhile, Democrats in Hawaii and their allies are firing on all cylinders, ensuring that the public remains educated, persuaded and mobilized to keep Democrats in power for another 70 years.  This suggests that the entire party takeover plah hatched by Team Art is designed to protect Democrats from any threat, a.k.a. Controlled Opposition.  Or it suggests these are incompetent fools who put too much faith in themselves but desire fancy titles and endless respect.  Time will tell.

In the meantime, the intramural civil war for full control of HRP continues at a lower level.  Art Hannemann recently attended a district election meeting for HD18, the same Hawaii Kai district represented for years by RINO Gene Ward.  That district election saw Tara Gregory defeat Ola Souza’s reputed boyfriend (and former Honolulu GOP county chair who bailed out early) Steve Lipscomb for the post.  Nobody at the election, including Hannemann, witnessed or reported any irregularities.  But, now the heavily attended district election is on the verge of being overturned by Hannemann and his flunkie Boyd Ready, the new ‘rules chair’ for HRP.  Since Tara Gregory is associated with the party members behind Team Tamara, which challenged Team Art at the recent state convention, it’s now time for infidels to be driven from the party so that the establishment RINOs can consolidate their power.  HIRA News is closely monitoring this story to see if and when Team Art will drop the hammer by declaring the well-attended district election to be OVERTURNED and then issue their call for a new election in HD18.  As executive director, it will presumably be Ola Souza’s job to help Team Art get revenge on Team Tamara by replacing Tara Gregory with Souza’s boyfriend.  Yes, there’s nothing like a woman’s boyfriend getting scorned and getting revenge with her help as the first order of business for a party pretending to seek ‘unity’ and ‘election integrity’ under Team Art.  Hypocrisy abounds.

In HD19, right next door to HD18, current district chair Ola Souza (you know, the new $6,700 per month executive director of HRP) is holding elections this coming week to select her replacement, since she is not able to hold these two positions simultaneously.  Indeed, it appears from a recent HRP announcement that these elections will be held this Thursday, July 3rd, that the decision to hire of Ola Souza as executive director was determined hours after the budget was approved, since the e-blast to party members about the HD19 election was sent before Art Hannemann told his executive committee about his decision to hire Souza.  Sources tell HIRA News that the contract hasn’t been signed yet, and that there’s no actual job description yet.  Odd, since how is it possible to put a dollar value on a job which isn’t even defined?  “Hey, Ola.  We have no idea what we want you to do and no idea what your responsibilities will be.  But here’s $6,700 per month.  Do you want the job even though we only really know the title will be Executive Director?”  “Sure thing, Art.  I’ll find someone to replace me as district chair and I’ll be ready to start the new cushy job right away.  Don’t forget to let me know what I’m supposed to be doing.  Make sure it’s worth the $6,700 you already promised to pay me.  By the way, are you sure you’re really a businessman?”

Would you trust these people with $2,000,000 over the next 6 months?
Would you trust them to raise $2,000,000 by the end of 2025?
Does it make sense for election losers to be running a party?
Would you pay another election loser $6,700 a month?
How could this possibly add up to victory in 2026?
Is there some OTHER agenda at play here?

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Stay tuned for HIRA News’ exclusive coverage of the implosion of Hannemann’s self-described “election integrity” and “earning trust” agenda.  If candidates break the law and cheat in elections, should they resign from office?  Should they be prosecuted and imprisoned?  If they committed felonies, should they also be barred from office going forward?  State law says “YES”.  But what if those lawbreakers turn out to be Republicans right here in Hawaii?!?  OMG.  Stay tuned.