About Jarrett

Jarrett Keohokalole is running for Hawaiʻi’s 1st Congressional District because he believes it’s time for leadership that meets the urgency of the moment.

Jarrett was born in Honolulu in 1983. His father Adrian is a retired construction worker. His grandfather was the first taxi driver in Kāneʻohe and later captained the glass-bottom boat in Kāneʻohe bay. His grandmother, Emma Hoapili, worked at the Libby Pineapple Cannery, and taught Hawaiian language and culture through the public school kupuna program.

Jarrett’s mother, Marilyn (Stewart) Keohokalole, was born in Medford, Oregon, and is the granddaughter of Scottish immigrants. Her career spanned over three decades as a neonatal intensive care nurse at both Kapiʻolani Medical Center and Kaiser Permanente Moanalua. Adrian and Marilyn raised Jarrett and his brothers Phillip and Dane, and have been married for over forty years.

A 2001 graduate of Saint Louis School, Jarrett was an honor roll student and Commander of the JROTC Battalion. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 2006. There, he met his future wife, Kuʻulani Miyashiro. After graduating, Kuʻulani pursued a Masterʻs degree at New York University and Jarrett worked for a public defender in the New York City Criminal Court and later in administration at a public school in Brooklyn.

Disillusioned by the Iraq War and the Great Recession, Jarrett and Kuʻulani volunteered for the 2008 Obama presidential campaign. They phone banked, attending rallies, and knocked door-to-door in swing-state city, Philadelphia.

With a desire to come home and start a family, they returned to Hawaiʻi in 2010. Jarrett graduated from the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaiʻi and worked as a legal fellow at the Department of Land & Natural Resources before being nudged to run for office in 2014. Since then, he has spent the last 12 years as a devoted father of three keiki and policymaker focused on lowering costs for local families, protecting public health & safety, and transforming government.

Jarrett serves on the Senate Leadership team as an Assistant Majority Whip. He is the Chair of the Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee (CPN), which is responsible for business regulation, including insurance, banking, telecommunications, public utilities, licensing, and consumer protection.

He also serves as a member of the Hawaiian Affairs (HWN) and Transportation, Culture and the Arts Committees (TCA), and is the Co-Chair of the Native Hawaiian Caucus.