Current Hawaii County Prosecutor Mitch Roth will likely face political newcomer Ikaika Marzo in a runoff to be Hawaii County Mayor on November 3, 2020.  Roth has been the Hawaii County Prosecutor for 8 years, after being a Deputy in the same office and a Deputy Prosecutor in Honolulu.  Marzo made his name by helping establish The Hub in Puna during the 2018 lava flow and ran a lava tour boat company out of Kalapana.

As of the second printout at 9:30 p.m., Roth was in the lead with 31.4% of the vote and Marzo second with 20.8%.  Because the Mayor position is nonpartisan, if any candidate had gotten more than 50%, they would win the race; because nobody did, the top two vote-getters meet November 3.

The second printout with election returns that came from the State Election Office at 9:30 p.m. is not the final set of results; there will be at least one more printout early Sunday morning.  State Elections Administrator Scott Nago said this does not include ballots deposited in the Voter Ballot Dropboxes today, as those had to be picked up and taken to the County Elections Office and will be included in a later printout.

The top vote-getters as of the 9:30 p.m. printout ** Printout 3, at 1:17 a.m. on Sunday 8/9, had a few more votes counted but the results are essentially the same:

Mitch Roth   19,449 or 31.4%

Ikaika Marzo  12,893 or 20.8%

Harry Kim 9,590 or 15.5%

Neil Azevedo 6,919 or 11,2%%

Stacy Higa 5,635 or 9.1%

Tante Urban  1,887 or 3.0%

Bob Fitzgerald  1,501 or 2.4%

 

The Big Island Press Club will hold a Mayor Candidate Forum to which both candidates Roth and Marzo have been invited,  on Thursday, October 1, 2020, 4:30 p.m. until 6 p.m., with New West Broadcasting’s Sherry Bracken moderating.   Because of COVID-19, there will be no audience at the forum, which will be at the Grand Naniloa Resort.  It will be carried on bigislandvideonews.com, and live-streamed via the Facebook Page for KWXX FM.  It will also be submitted to Na Leo TV, the island’s public access television station, for them to broadcast.  There will be more detail coming out on where viewers might see the two candidates in a face-to-face forum.

The number of Hawaii County residents who registered to vote in this 2020 Primary Election is 122,125.  As of the 9:30 p.m. printout, 61,900 votes were counted, or 50.7% of those who registered.

There will be at least one more printout, early Sunday morning.