�鶹��ý

Andria Tupola talks about how she became involved in politics, including her husband initially discouraging her. She discusses how her mission to Venezuela convinced her to become civically engaged. She also relates how she interacts as a Latter-day Saint with other government leaders from differing religious backgrounds. This interview was conducted on July 23, 2021, by Kate Hall, a BYU student majoring in political science and minoring in civic engagement leadership.

Kate Hall: Thank you so much, Councilwoman, for being here today. Before we get into most of the questions, if you wouldn’t mind just telling us a little bit about yourself: where you grew up, went to school, a little bit about your family. Just some background.

Andria Tupola: OK, cool. My name is Andria Tupola, and I was born and raised in Hawaii. I was born in the North Shore, raised in Hawaii Kai, and I went to Kamehameha Schools, which is a school for Native Hawaiians. I graduated in 1998. I attended Brigham Young University and graduated in 2005. Before my senior year, I served a mission for my church in Venezuela. And upon graduating, I worked in Los Angeles at a Hispanic school for disabled adults. And then I taught high school in Arizona. I got married during the second semester of teaching high school in Arizona. I went back to Utah. I married someone from Hawaii. And he actually was playing for the University of Utah, which is why I moved back to Utah. And then he played some football in Texas and Michigan. Then we moved home. I have two daughters. They are currently thirteen and twelve years old. We relocated home in 2008. I was a professor of music from 2011 to 2014. I ran for office, and then I served four years in the legislature. I ran for governor in 2018. I received 33 percent of the vote. I took a little break from politics. I ran for city council in 2020. I am currently serving as a city council member for the county of Honolulu.

Kate Hall: And what made you become interested in politics?

Andria Tupola: My mission. Serving in Venezuela. You can’t be apolitical. You have to be political to survive there.

Kate Hall: Did you have any experiences that stood out to you that helped you decide to get involved?

Andria Tupola: Tons. I just learned about socialism: what it was, what it did, what it didn’t do, what incentives it took away from people. Because when you get a lot of free things, you are disincentivized to work. Because the less you work, the more you’re dependent on the government, the more they provide for you. So when I lived in Venezuela, I saw what free housing, free medical, free education looked like, and then I was able to see that the government’s philosophy of socialism is what actually put the people in the situation they were in—because years of having this type of government, having this type of leadership, actually made the people weaker. It made them more dependent. I came home from Venezuela very determined that that type of government was not good for industrious people; it was not good for families; it was not good for working; it was not good for entrepreneurs, and it was not good for freedoms—because lots of decisions are being made at the federal level and being implemented on the community level, which, I think, is not the way that government should be run. Definitely, community voices are very important. They should determine what happens in their own communities. So, because of all those experiences, I came back to Hawaii and started to see these topics, these ideas of free education, free everything, being talked about on the federal level. And so I got involved, and I decided that I was going to support somebody who was not in favor of socialism. And then, after this person I supported was not elected, I decided to still stay involved because bringing out that empowerment and that community voice was still important to me. And then I ran for office.

Kate Hall: Thank you for sharing. Were there any church teachings that inspired you to become involved?

Andria Tupola: Well, there is always talk about being civically engaged. There’s always talk about being a part of your community, to be a contributor, to be a well-versed person that is able to interact. And, of course, there are leaders in our church that served from judges to, I believe, one of our prophets actually in the US Department of Agriculture. But one of the prophets, I know, was actually working under the president. So there are many leaders in our church that got involved, not only because they wanted to get involved in their communities but also because they had a very diverse background that could contribute positively to the community, whether it’s a law degree or an agricultural degree or, you know, a business degree. So I personally feel like watching different leaders get involved and be unashamed to be a part of the government and still be strong members of the church was something that influenced me.

I would say that, as far as teachings––I mean, there are a few conference talks, especially as of recent. Dallin H. Oaks is a huge advocate of talking about the Constitution, about getting involved in government. I would say, particularly in the scriptures, there also were talks way back when the church was first getting established in the United States, about a banking system or about the bishops’ storehouse, which is welfare. And that’s what the government does is welfare. So there were a lot of things that were set up within the church that really address community needs. Which is what we have to figure out with the government, which is a balance of private industries like churches and then public industries like government and what roles they should play. So I think that church history is actually part of probably what I started to understand as an important part of being a member of our church, but still contributing. And then I would say lastly, I mean, I’ve been Relief Society president a handful of times. I would always do welfare orders. So, when I ran for office my first time, I was the Relief Society president, and sometimes I would knock doors to talk about the election and sometimes I do welfare orders; sometimes I just help people. And it kind of got me to understand that serving the community could be like being Relief Society president, where you really are asking what the needs of the people are and how you can serve them.

Kate Hall: How did you balance holding those callings while being in office?

Andria Tupola: It is very, very difficult. I was also asking my bishop, “Is there anyone better that can do this? Is there anyone else?” Because it did seem like my plate has always been full. However, I do think that in life I’ve learned that you become more successful the more you integrate your life. So the more you compartmentalize your life, like, “Oh, from 10:00 to 2:00, I’m a mom; from 4:00 to 6:00, I’m a legislator. From Sunday to Saturday, I’m a Mormon.” Like, the more you do those things, the more your life doesn’t work together. So I think, for me, being the Relief Society president and being a state House representative, it just all kind of collided. Because as a Christian, we’re supposed to be serving the community. So I actually would integrate things that I was doing for Young Women’s or whatever it was that I was involved in, in the church. And I tried to get church members to get involved in the community. I hold annual emergency preparedness fairs, and I invite church members to come to vacuum-sealing for, like, rice and to donate time to teach first aid. One of our bishops actually is a CPR instructor, and I had him give out certifications at my community fair. So a lot of what I engage in as a public servant is what our church is trying to do. I’m just trying to get our local church to expand into a community mindset instead of a ward mindset, because I think we could influence and help a lot of families.

Kate Hall: Do you seek inspiration while you’re making these decisions?

Andria Tupola: Yes. It is so nerve-racking for me. I would say, I probably pray more when I’m in a hearing. And this probably goes back to why I didn’t go to law school. So imagine if I had been a lawyer, I probably would get in those rooms, and I would just dominate. I probably just shut off because all of this is legal. I get it. I went to school for this. Well, for me, I can’t do that. When I get in that [hearing] room, I’m so nervous because it is not my playground. It is not my background; those are not words I use. So when I step into a political conversation, I’m always like [pauses]. Because I don’t know everything, right. So I feel like, for me, in those moments, especially when I speak, I’m supposed to speak for people. I am supposed to know from my heart what I mean by what I’m saying. I really have to feel it. And people who know me, they know that I don’t speak if I don’t feel passionate about it. And so those moments I’m always praying really hard because I’m like, “What if I don’t even really get what’s going on?”

How do I speak in such a way, where what I say is so important and it’s supposed to be the right thing at the right time? So what I try to do is prepare myself before I get in a room for hours. People laugh because I rehearse a lot. I go in my office. I rehearse. I try to save the speeches I’m going to give because sometimes the words are difficult for me. So I prepare because I’m not going to go in there and just pray like Heavenly Father’s supposed to just give me inspiration. I got to prepare myself, so that at least if the words that I’m supposed to say are coming up correctly, that I’ve researched them. And then I pray when I’m about to speak so that the right words are formulated and most of the time it’s not exactly what I wrote down, but it’s always, always, almost every single time, always what I’m supposed to say. It happens to me all the time that exactly what comes out of my mouth, sometimes it’s boring, but it’s always what I was supposed to say.

Kate Hall: Did your religious beliefs affect the party that you chose to affiliate with?

Andria Tupola: It’s like the most interesting thing I’ve ever experienced in my life. I thought, my whole entire growing up, that I was this superconservative person, like, because I go to church, I don’t swear, I don’t drink, I don’t do all kinds of stuff people do. So I’m thinking that I’m this really conservative person. Then I run as a Republican for office, and all of a sudden I’m a flaming liberal. People are like, “She’s so liberal.” I don’t know how that came about, but then I realized that there are some very, very extreme views that I don’t necessarily agree with. And I guess, in some people’s mind that means I’m not a conservative. But really, it’s all perspective because it’s not really whether you’re conservative or not. It’s whether or not––from my perspective of what conservative is––you are, or you aren’t. So later in life, I realized that for somebody who’s like a baby boomer that they really need to know a partisan label. But then for someone who’s from my generation, that might be a millennial, even after us, Gen Z, whatever. They may or may not even care what party you belong to. They want to know who you are and what you’re about. But they couldn’t care less what affiliation you have. They care more about the policies you represent, the groups you support, the actions you take. So I would say that for me, it was difficult because I didn’t think it was going to be hard to be Christian and be a Republican, but sometimes it is.

Kate Hall: Have your interactions with your constituents or other public officials that you work with been shaped by your religious beliefs in any way?

Andria Tupola: I would say yes. I also attend a lot of churches, not just ours. A lot of other churches asked me to come. A pastor in my community just passed away, and they wanted me to present a certificate to his wife. It was interesting for me because I did not grow up going to other churches, since I was born and raised in this church. How they worship, the format of worship, is kind of interesting. But I got better at it, like really quick. I’m better at being more open-minded. I would say, maybe I was a little close-minded. I mean my own mom was like, “Oh my gosh, you’re gonna lose your testimony.” Like, that’s not true, it’s not true. If you have a testimony, you have a testimony, right? Definitely, I still go to our church. Every now and then, I have to go to other churches and it’s fine. Like, I still do my daily stuff.

There’s been a handful of people that have been shocked because they think that Mormons don’t leave their church. They think that they are not allowed to. That they can’t mingle. But you think about it—we’re constantly inviting other people to our church, so why can’t others invite us to their church?

So I thought it was pretty eye-opening to just go out to people’s churches. And a couple times I invited some of my constituents to come to our church because there’s a lot of youth in my community that I have helped. I’m the Young Women president now, so we have activities and I try to get them to come to some of our activities, because I think they’re just good. And if other kids in our church can mingle with other Christian kids, I’m good with that. I think they should know who else in their school is of another Christian church. Like, why not?

I have a colleague in the city council who talks about God all the time, right? So he’ll pull me into his office. And he’ll be like, “Andria, did you see that shooting? That cop shooting?” You know, because there’s just a lot of public sentiment around these shootings. Whether it was a cop shooting someone else or someone shooting the cops; and we’re in the city with crime, so it taints us. Because then it becomes a topic of conversation. Is there heavy corruption? Are the cops just doing whatever they want? So he pulled me into his office. He said he felt very discouraged because the headlines were very negative. And he said, “I’m always encouraged because we have Jesus on our side.”

I said, “Yes, we do.”

He goes, “Yes, if we live good lives, it will be good for us in the end.” So we can have these conversations.

Kate Hall: We talked about this a little bit, but do you think that incivility and partisan polarization are problems in our society today?

Andria Tupola: Yes. I don’t think it’s new, though. I think it’s amplified. I do think that, looking through the scriptures, it was always there. Looking through history, it is always there. To what extent and to what degree it varied, you know. It varied in nations; it varied in cultures; but polarization, which is the word you just used, which basically just means the opposite. You think about the word partisan, the definition of partisan is literally divisive. Because you’re making a part, you’re making identifications and label markers of differences, right? So the whole world itself is kind of made up with these labels, and even when you draw country lines, you draw state lines, you’re dividing. You’re constantly dividing, everybody dividing. Very few people add or multiply. We just divide, divide, divide, divide.

So I think that idea of it being a problem is true, and obviously you combat it by trying to find more synergistic and collaborative solutions, and I also think just making personal decisions not to be divisive. Because I think it’s easy to point to and say, “Those people are so divisive. Those guys are so mean.” You can do that, but you should probably just go like [points at self]. Because we all do some stuff like that; everyone does. I had to question myself if I was being too judgmental towards other Christians, which is stupid because we’re not that different. We’re actually more of the same than different. There’s a lot of Republicans that don’t want anything to do with me, but we’re more the same than different. But they’re more conservative, and I’m more liberal, supposedly. I think in every group you’re in, it’s just like this natural human inclination to make group actions and it’s always the opposite. The Christlike thing to do is to pull people together and collaborate in love. So I think it’ll be an ongoing struggle for the rest of this time on earth.

Kate Hall: Do you think that Latter-day Saints can belong to different parties and still be good members of the church?

Andria Tupola: Oh yes. And I think it’s important to be more of who you already are. For my dad, I don’t think he should be Republican when he’s not, and he never will be. And he makes it very apparent in every speech he gives that he is not a Republican, although he supports his daughter. And I’m like, “You give that answer every single time.”

But I don’t think he should be—it’s just not what he believes. He is more of a Democratic thinker. He actually grew up in Louisiana, and he graduated high school in Texas. He went to school in Okinawa. His father was in the army, so his view of the world is different. My mom grew up in LA. She grew up during segregation. I mean, my parents’ view of politics and parties is unique because they grew up in a different time period than I did. So they should be a part of the party that at that time they thought was right, right? For me, I went to Venezuela, I had a different experience than like, I don’t know, 90 percent of the world. So I have different views, and I think that became who I am, then that’s why I fell into the category I fell into. So there are people who are very good independents. There are people who are very good Libertarians. I just think that your views and perspectives actually mold you into a party that you might identify more with, and it’s totally fine.

Kate Hall: What lessons have you learned or any advice that you have for young Latter-day Saints considering getting involved in local politics?

Andria Tupola: Well, politics is not for everyone. I would say you have to be very, very careful. It is something that can consume; it’s something that can change you. It’s something that can potentially [lead you to] stray from the path, for sure. It is something that encourages you to be dishonest. But I would say, any occupation can do that. You can fall into those gutters anywhere. I think at the political level it’s a little more tempting because you have a position, you have power, you have a title, and interestingly, I didn’t think people really cared about that. You know about how we read it in the scriptures, I was always like, “Why do people want power?”

Once I became an elected official I was like, “Holy crap!” People love power, like to the point where they do not want to retire from office until they die because they love power. And it becomes who they are. And they don’t know themselves without it, without the title. They don’t know who they are.

So I would say, for young Latter-day Saints that are thinking about that, you really have to have a strong moral compass, like strong. Luckily, for me, I think I was raised by parents who are very, very stalwart, very black-and-white. And of course, my personality is such that nobody can press on me, not even my husband. Nobody can convince me to do things I do not want to do. I am not easily convinced.

So I think my encouragement for those young Latter-day Saints is to know who you are very, very well. Be so sure of who you are. Have that strong moral compass, and if you feel prompted to get into office, you’ll be OK.

Kate Hall: Thank you so much. Is there anything else? Any other stories or experiences that you have that we haven’t necessarily talked about yet?

Andria Tupola: I would just say that the only story I should share is how I decided. Because I think that that is the one that led me to where I am today. So I helped that one guy that was not running on socialism, right? So he’s running for president. He ends up not winning. And I just wanted to stay involved. And then people said, “You should run for office.” And, of course, my kids were two and three years old, so I was thinking, “This is a really bad idea. No mom should be running for office. I have a family to take care of.” So more people talked to me, and more people asked me, and then I actually went to an event with Mike Lee, who is a senator from Utah, and he went to BYU, so I was like, “Oh, cool. I went to BYU.” Then he was like, “Oh, I was in student government.” And I was like, “I was in student government.” And then he speaks Spanish, and I speak Spanish. So I was like, “OK, so it’s kind of cool.” I listened, you know. He talked about stuff that it felt like it resonated with me, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I just loved it, I was like, “That was strange.” And everyone’s like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you’re here.” Because I was the youngest person in the room. I was the only Native Hawaiian. It was a bunch of lawyers that were my parents’ age. So I was like, “Should I even be here?” And they were like, “Yes, you should be here!”

The next event that I got invited to, it was the same feeling. A lot of people who knew my parents, my dad. They’d say, “I was in law school with your dad.” And it was people I don’t know, but they’re talking about stuff that resonates with me. One of the groups that was there, they call it the League of Republican Women. They sew quilts and stuff. And I was like, that’s cool, that’s Relief Society stuff. And they serve the community. So there were certain things that kept resonating with me, but I still was just like, “I don’t even know why I’m here. Why I am at these places?”

So a guy came up to me at that event, and he asked me who I was, where I was from, and if I went on a mission. He was LDS, actually. And I told him, and then at the end I was like, “Why are you asking all these questions to me?” He’s like, “You should run for office.” I was like, “Pfffft.” And that was like the tenth time somebody asked me that. I was just about to crack a joke about, I don’t know, running for PTA or something and I just felt the Spirit, like stop me super strongly. And the Spirit told me, “Don’t talk.”

So I just didn’t say anything. And then he said, “I think you should sit down with me and my wife and learn what it means to run for office.” And I was like, “OK.”

And he said, “You will?” And I was like, “I guess.”

I mean basically the Spirit was constraining me because I seriously thought it was a joke. Every time someone brought it up, I was like, “That’s a joke.”

So I left, and I just had a burning in my chest. I just had this really strong burning that I needed to do it. And I was like, “Why? Why would I do this? I don’t even know what this is.”

I went home. I told my husband, and he was like, “That was not the Spirit.” He was like, “Do not do that.” He was like, “You should not be running for office. This is the stupidest idea you ever had.” And I was like, “Yo, all they said was that we’re going to go to dinner with this guy and his wife. We are not committing to anything.”

And he was like, “Good, I’ll go to dinner, and I’ll tell him to his face that you’re not going to run.” I was like, “Fine.”

So we went to the temple actually the next day and then went to lunch with this guy I didn’t know. He talked to me about it. I didn’t feel any burning. I just thought in my mind, “This is so easy!” Because I ran for student government at BYU, and that was super hard. I was student body vice president. That was hard for me. We were campaigning in the snow. We had to get like six thousand votes. I looked at my area, and I only needed like three thousand in order to win and I was like, “I can do this. I have this.” My husband was like, “You got this? You’ve never even done this before!”

So I prayed about it. I told him he needed to pray about it, and he said he didn’t want to pray about it. I was like, “What church do you even go to?”

He was like, “There’s some things in life you don’t need to pray about. This is one of them.”

I was like, “Right, right. You pray about it.”

I let some time pass, and he went and talked to his sergeants. He’s a police officer. He went and talked to his union guys, and he sat me down and he said, “I need to tell you what everyone said about your idea.”

I was like, “What?”

He said, “They all think it’s a good idea.”

“So are you going to support me?”

“You’re just going to do what you want, anyway.”

I was like, “I know. But are you going to support me?”

It was so, so, so hard for him. So he begrudgingly said yes, but I would say it took him a good six years to get on board. And I’m telling you that story, because I think for a lot of people who are considering getting involved, it is not easy. You do not have family members that agree with you. You might not even have a support system. The Spirit might be telling you one thing, your spouse might be telling you something else. There’s just all kinds of stuff that happens. My kids were growing up. I was serving in callings. You just have to kind of balance your life and realize that Heavenly Father’s never going to put you on a path that’s harder than you can handle. He’s never going to inspire you to do something that’s going to hurt you.

So I had to leave my career. I had to put my degrees on the shelf. I just stepped into an arena that I had no clue what I was doing, and I just trusted. And here I am.