HIRA News
MASS EXODUS CONTINUES: Hawaii GOP National Committeeman and Top Honolulu GOP Officer Nolan Chang Resigns in Disgust
Honolulu, Hawaii – Just days after HIRA News chief correspondent Kai Lorinc raised critical questions with Hawaii GOP national committeeman and Oahu GOP chairman Nolan Chang, Mr. Chang tendered his resignation effective immediately and shut down the county party organization indefinitely.
Nolan Chang with Laura Nakanelua in 2024 when they were elected national committeeman and national committeewoman respectively at the Hawaii GOP state convention held in Mililani, Oahu
On the heels of state chair Art Hannemann and several other top Hawaii GOP officers who bailed after only a few weeks in office, Nolan Chang jumped ship on his county chair job after less than eight months and simultaneously said ‘goodbye’ to his national committeeman job (a four-year term) after less than 18 months. His top reason? The “sustained pattern of misconduct, mismanagement, and abuse of authority” by the state GOP’s top executive officers and “their close collaborators”. Whoa!!!
Citing some of the very same reasons as Hannemann when he resigned, Chang pointed his finger at the remaining party leaders whose loyalty is primarily to failed former state chair, Shirlene “Big Shirl” Ostrov, who now leads the struggling organization as its ‘interim’ state chair following her campaign to be Hannemann’s second fiddle on “Team Art” back in May at the Hawaii GOP’s most recent state convention. That was before Ostrov stabbed Hannemann in the back and pushed him out the door with the help of her cronies on Oahu and the Big Island.
Just before 7pm Saturday night, November 15th, party insiders and members of the news media were greeted with Chang’s sudden e-mail resignation from both high level party posts.
Chang – who publicly blamed government space lasers for the Maui fires that killed more than 100 people and destroyed homes and businesses two years ago – listed more than a dozen powerful reasons for vacating the top party posts after riding his notoriety into both offices with the support of other tinfoil hatters. His surprisingly sane reasons for quitting are summarized here.
You can read Chang’s entire resignation letter HERE, which is posted on the Oahu GOP county website; a site which the country club establishment RINO wing of the Hawaii GOP has long hoped to force offline as it usually conveyed more conservative sentiments than the very nonthreatening state party website.
Visitors to the Oahu GOP’s official website got to see this page (shown above) which boldly asserts that Chang’s departure renders the work of the Honolulu county party “paused until further notice”. Moreover, both the new web page and an auto-reply email sent by HIRA News to OahuGOP@gmail.com stated that “official county business is on hold”. It also contained the directive that urgent inquiries and urgent matters are now being handled by the state party’s highly compensated ($6,700/month) executive director Ronette “Ola” Souza. Ms. Souza should have time to assist the defunct county party since it’s not known if she’s actually done anything to earn her salary for the past four months; not even updating the party’s own outdated state GOP website which contains names of party officers who have long been gone since the mass exodus began with Art Hannemann’s departure (still listed as state chairman).
With the 2026 general election taking place less than one year from now, it’s unknown if the party can make up for lost time since the 2024 election. Or if party leaders plan to ask the state elections commission for more time to organize, recruit candidates and campaign by pushing the general election back until mid-2027 (if that’s even legal). According to the party’s official budget, nearly $800,000 was supposed to have ALREADY been spent on political advertising since July 1, 2025 through the end of November 2025 in order to soften up Hawaii voters and make them more open to voting Republican. However, absolutely NONE of that money has been spent and is still sitting in the bank (with the exception of funds blown on Ronette Souza’s insane salary to oversee a campaign of nothingness). This means that Hawaii voters only know about what Republicans stand for when they hear it from the mouths of Democrats and their mouthpieces at Hawaii News Now, Civil Beat, and the Honolulu Star-BirdCageLiner. Perhaps that was Team Ostrov’s plan all along, like it was during her previous stints as state chair during the disastrous 2018 and 2020 election campaigns.
After Nolan Chang was backed for the top jobs by BJ Penn’s dubious campaign team Andy Crossland and Lynn Surayan (pictured above and below) over at Surfing 4 Truth – as well as failed Hawaii GOP chair Tamara McKay and other ‘iffy’ endorsers – Chang led an internal campaign in recent weeks which demanded financial transparency, adherence to party rules, and an end to the turf warfare which has plagued the troubled Hawaii chapter of the Republican National Committee for decades.
However, his sad echo of concerns about the Hawaii GOP raised perennially by HIRA News made no impact as a party insider who was regarded by many as a nutjob, possibly because he believes that government space lasers destroyed Lahaina, rather than state and county government incompetence and longstanding Democrat failure to prepare for wildfires. Those who wish to join Nolan Chang on the crazy train can learn from the many YouTube videos showing how to make your very own tin foil hat.
In fact, Chang’s internal campaign for change at the state party appears to have petered out (leading him to prematurely terminate his own unproductive tenure in office); with crooked interim state chair Shirlene Ostrov fully expected to seize a golden opportunity to remake the Hawaii GOP in her image now that Art Hannemann and Nolan Chang and other former top leaders are out of her way thanks to a flurry of resignations reported on by HIRA News. In fact, Ostrov has already begun installing RINO loyalists like Jill “Lani” Stone-Kaaa, Sheila “chief election interference coordinator” Walker, Fenton “Kaulana” Lee, and Boyd “Not-So” Ready. More Ostrov loyalists are expected to be named in the near future so the internal destruction of the party can accelerate with all hands on deck pouring gasoline and lighting matches.
Since the sale of the only existing headquarters for the state party was engineered by Ostrov and former state chair Tamara McKay last year, the now homeless party exists solely as an occasional and highly choreographed Zoom meeting in cyberspace. For all practical purposes, there is no ‘party’ other than an online spreadsheet containing some names and ‘titles’, a Zoom videoconferencing subscription, and several mysterious bank accounts which nobody seems to have answers about.
Rumors are swirling that Chang’s own resignation serves as a signal for even more disaffected party officers to abandon their posts. This rumor seems confirmed by reports that Chang sent his resignation letter to allies (self-described “patriots”) in the party along with instructions on how they too can formally resign their posts as he did. Given the overwhelming number of party posts already held by those on Team Ostrov, you can bank on the Hawaii GOP returning to its roots of being liberal, incompetent, corrupt, and no threat to the Democrat stranglehold on Hawaii. Tamara McKay did a great job during her term as state chair in achieving those four traditional goals of RINOs. But Shirlene Ostrov is expected to be even more masterful in her ‘controlled opposition’ approach to libtard leadership of the state party going forward. While the rats might be jumping off the sinking ship, new rats are needed to help Ostrov ensure the Hawaii GOP reaches the very bottom of the ocean and stays there; right where Democrats want us to be.
Finally, as to those very serious questions from HIRA News put to Nolan Chang – but left decidedly unanswered by him – only a few days before he pulled the plug on his own career at the Hawaii GOP, it appears we may never know more about the sordid tales of how party leaders affiliated with Chang and McKay unlawfully campaigned and raised secret, unreported funds for an illegal noncitizen to run for office in Hawaii in order to assist ‘statehood deniers’ to pursue their anti-American ‘sovereignty’ agenda to separate Hawaii from the USA.
HIRA News’ Kai Lorinc worked to expose illegal fundraising for a noncitizen campaigning to “overthrow the Hawaii Republican Party to aid in overtaking the State of Hawaii for implementation of a Political Kingdom”
Sadly, Shirlene Ostrov did the same thing in 2018, using party resources to assist an illegal noncitizen (who had already voted illegally in Hawaii elections) to run for state house until HIRA worked with state elections authorities to have that illegal candidate hoping to replace corrupt liberal gubernatorial aspirant Andria Tupola in the State House removed from the ballot. Chang’s associates also tried (with some success) to install anti-American activists into party leadership posts across the state in furtherance of their ‘statehood denier’ agenda. Wait until Donald Trump hears about this treachery!
Likewise, as to HIRA’s unanswered questions, we may never uncover the full story about how secret and very NON-TRANSPARENT Signal communications were used by Chang, McKay and other party officers to improperly circumvent Hawaii GOP committees and secretly coordinate ‘actual’ party policies which rivalled the corrupt and nontransparent machinations of past and present party leaders, including Gaudencia “Lynn” Finnegan, Diamond “Still No Wife or Girlfriend” Garcia, and “Big Shirl” Ostrov-Blackburn.
Ultimately, there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the failed ‘leadership’ brought by ‘Surfing 4 Truth’ and the always terrible ‘leadership’ brought by the old guard RINO’s who appear poised to take back 100% of the power in the powerless organization.
In the end, one clear answer that HIRA News did obtain merely by watching all of this unfold is that fake patriots like Nolan Chang never intended to stick around to do the heavy lifting of unseating Democrats and elected Republicans; the work of repealing bad liberal policies and enacting solid conservative reforms. Hawaii is now nowhere closer to realizing a successful Republican movement with wasted year after wasted year spent watching unqualified influencers and political neophytes pretend to have leadership skills and political experience. We are all victims of the Hawaii GOP’s failed experiments with rotten leaders rearranging deck chairs on this sinking ship. Until every last one of these RINOs is gone from leadership of our party, don’t waste a penny of your money or a second of your time if they come asking. From our perspective, every single reason Nolan Chang just gave for quitting is 100% true. With his departure, every single problem he pointed out just became 1,000 times more intractable. Campaign 2026 in Hawaii Nei is nothing more than pure hype now. Going through the motions to put more Kurt Fevella and Kanani Souza types into office is still the plan. Stay tuned for HIRA News’ assessment of the “Republican” candidates being fielded next year. It’s not pretty. And Hawaii Deserves Better.
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