Jarrett Keohokalole walked into his UH Mānoa journalism classes wanting to be a sportscaster. He left knowing how to ask the questions that change things.
That instinct—to push past the first answer, to demand the truth, to never mistake silence for the full story—has propelled Keohokalole from the newsroom to the statehouse and, now, to a campaign for Hawaiʻi’s First Congressional District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. This year’s Distinguished Alumni Award recipient has carried the lessons of journalism school into every chapter of a career defined by service, advocacy, and an insistence on asking why.
He arrived at UH with his mind on sports highlights. But the journalism program had other plans.
“I quickly fell into hard news and realized that there was a world happening around us,” Keohokalole said. “I learned how to ask the right questions and to not be afraid to go and seek out the answers, and to not feel guilty about pushing for the truth.”
After graduating, Keohokalole wrote for the Honolulu Weekly and did freelance work when he moved to New York with his now-wife. It was a brief stint—what he called “a cup of coffee” in journalism—but the habits of mind it built would prove durable. In New York, disillusioned by the recession and five years of the Iraq War, he and his wife channeled their energy into a different kind of storytelling: political organizing. They volunteered for Barack Obama’s campaign, traveling to swing states like Pennsylvania to canvas and make the case for change.
After Obama’s election, Keohokalole worked in the Manhattan Criminal Court for a public defender before he and his wife decided to return home to start a family. He enrolled at the University of Hawaiʻi William S. Richardson School of Law, focusing on policy. He graduated in 2013.
When a seat opened the following year in House District 48—representing the Windward Oʻahu communities of Kāneʻohe and Kailua—he ran as a long shot. He won. He would serve in the state House from 2014 to 2018, eventually ascending to the state Senate, where he brought the same coalition-building instincts he had honed both on the Obama campaign trail and in journalism school.
Those who know his work in the legislature say they can see the reporter’s training in the legislator’s methods. Keohokalole himself is direct about the connection.
“Asking why is probably the most important thing I learned in journalism school,” he said. “Not just taking the first answer as the answer—using thoughtful follow-up to really peel back the layers and see what’s actually going on, what the big picture is. All of that is critical for what I do now with legislating and trying to lead coalitions to make things happen.”
Now he is carrying that approach into the biggest race of his career. Keohokalole is running for Hawaiʻi’s First Congressional District, a seat that covers urban Honolulu—a race that will test whether the skills forged in a journalism classroom and refined in the state legislature translate to the national stage. His campaign centers on economic opportunity, housing, and the concerns of working families across Oʻahu.
For students still in the program he came up through, Keohokalole’s advice is unambiguous.
“Journalism is the first draft of history,” he said. “It’s an amazing time to be involved in it because history is happening right now.” He paused, then offered two words that might double as the motto for his own career: “Go hard.”
The kid who wanted to call games never stopped calling them. He just moved to a bigger arena.