Jackie Keefe : Community Advocate & Candidate for State Senate
Jackie had her political awakening in 2020, and she hasn’t been able to temper that enthusiasm. She spent the 2 years prior to the August 2023 wildfires as the General Manager of Macadangdang, a new restaurant in Ka’anapali that wasn’t able to reopen after the fires. Jackie has known for years that her passion is helping people, and she realized in the summer of 2023 that she was ready to step up to run for office to have a positive effect on her community.
On August 9, 2023, Jackie was driving around to check out the community hubs that sprung up in response to the needs of west Maui residents – this was the only way to charge her cellphone – and realized that KPOA was doing their best to share information with the westside. That was when she became obsessed with information sharing. Since then, Jackie has continued to seek out various ways that she could to communicate information to the community. She started driving between the hubs to see if they could help each other and driving around her neighborhood telling everyone that KPOA was sharing information.
Not knowing what else to do, Jackie stopped by Napili Market and asked to speak to the person in charge of that Hub. That’s how she met Amos Lonokailua-Hewitt, who was a retired Battalion Chief for MFD. She told him that she wanted to help, “be community outreach… whatever!” He allowed her to tag along to the command post that had been set up by many of Lahaina’s Native Hawaiian leaders, and she became his note-taker for the next few weeks. This experience opened a door for Jackie to make connections with community members, nonprofit organizations, County workers, state and federal partners. Since then, she has learned a lot about that the strengths and weaknesses within our government.
Jackie believes that we deserve to have young people with fresh ideas who fight for the working class in office. It’s time to prioritize people over profit and work to make Hawai’i a place for your ‘ohana to live and thrive rather than a playground for billionaires.
We hope you’ll join us to volunteer, spread the word, or donate to the campaign!