Above photo: Deputy DAB director Dean Matsukawa, DAB director Sharon Hurd, and DAB legislative liaison Cedric Gates meet with Rep. Mike Gabbard in this photo from April 2025. Credit: Gabbard Instagram
Until Cedric Gates ran for state Senate in 2024, he seemed to be a rising young star in the Hawaiʻi Legislature and Democratic Party. He had served four terms in the House of Representatives and, in his last term, he had served as chair of the House Committee on Agriculture and Food Systems.
In 2024, he lost the race to represent the 22nd Senate District – a district stretching along the western edge of Oʻahu, from Koʻolina up to Makua – to Republican Samantha DeCorte. It wasn’t close. DeCorte won 53 percent of the vote, Gates 44 percent, despite DeCorte having been outspent by a 3-1 ratio.
Gates was not long unemployed. On January 21, 2025, the Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity hired him in a series of five 89-day temporary hire stints, not ending until February 28, 2026. According to the DAB, he was hired as a planner V, with a salary range of $6,667 to $7,629 per month. Although planning positions generally require applicants to have a bachelor’s degree at a minimum, Gates’ higher education ended with an associate degree from Leeward Community College.
Throughout the 2025 legislative session and the first two months of the 2026 session, Gates regularly appeared at hearings and met with legislators as DAB’s legislative liaison.
On February 18, while Gates was still on the payroll of DAB, the department entered into a contract with a company called Sunrise Strategies USA, LLC, to take effect March 6 and run through September 6, 2027. Cost for the 18 months of work: $250,000. The scope of services stated specifically that it was not to include any lobbying, yet in other respects, the usual type of work performed by lobbyists seems to have been anticipated in the contract.
Soon after notice of the contract award appeared on the state HANDS website (Hawaiʻi Award and Notices Data System), Environment Hawaiʻi filed with the department a request for information about the contract. At 3:51 p.m. on March 16, the same day the department received the request, Marci Clingan, an assistant to DAB chair Sharon Hurd, notified the Department of Accounting and General Services’ Procurement Office that the contract had been cancelled, citing as the reason “incorrect process of procurement.”
When DAB finally responded to the request for information on March 30, it included the cancellation notice, suggesting that the contract had been closed out.
Resurrection
No sooner had the department cancelled the first contract than it began preparing a second. Once more, it was seeking Procurement Office approval for issuing the contract under the bid exemption allowed under Chapter 103D, Hawaiʻi Revised Statutes.
On March 24, the department forwarded to the Procurement Office the revised contract with Sunrise Strategies. The description of work did not seem to change much, but the term of the contract had dropped to twelve months, while the payment decreased to $180,000.
The Procurement Office had questions about the contract. For more than two weeks, numerous email exchanges occurred between that office and DAB. Finally, on April 11, notice of the approved contract was posted on HANDS. Although the department had wanted to have the contract term run from March 15, 2026 (a day before the previous contract was even cancelled) through March 15, 2027, the Procurement Office stated that it could not approve post-dated contracts. As a result, the term is given as from the “date of CPO approval to 4/10/27.” (The CPO is the chief procurement officer.)
On the exemption request form, the department was required to “explain in detail why it is not practicable or not advantageous for the department to procure by competitive means.”
DAB responded: “the services being procured requires a well-rounded, diverse, unique skillset unique to agricultural matters in the state. The agency selected [Sunrise Strategies] can put forward an individual that has demonstrated effective advocacy with agricultural issues, having served as the Chair of the Agriculture and Food Systems Committee (AGR) in the Hawaiʻi House of Representatives.” The only individual meeting this description is Cedric Gates.
Once more, Environment Hawaiʻi filed requests for information from DAB and the Procurement Office.
An Employee
While processing the exemption request, Pauline Yang of the Procurement Office asked DAB director Sharon Hurd on March 31, “Has the vendor provided any advisory, advocacy, or legislative coordination support to the department prior to this exemption request? If so, please describe the nature of that work.”
Hurd replied as though the vendor – Sunrise Strategies – and Gates were one and the same. In describing the work Sunrise Strategies had done for DAB, she basically listed the tasks that Gates carried out during his series of 89-day hires from January 2025 through February 2026.
Sunrise Strategies, she stated, “provided advisory support and legislative coordination to the department prior to the exemption request.” The vendor also “met with administrators and managers of the six Divisions and Administrative Services Office to learn the challenges of the Divisions/Branches and to put together legislation. … Reviewed legislation with deputy and director to prioritize bills (Operations and CIP) and budget items. Set up meetings with Senate and House leaders. Arranged for meetings with Senate and House AEN/AGR agriculture committees and committee chairs. Tracked legislation important to Department,” she stated.
Carey Ann Sasaki of the Procurement Office followed up with additional questions, wanting to know details about the department’s relationship to Sunrise Strategies.
Sasaki asked DAB to clarify “whether the advisory and legislative coordination support previously provided by Sunrise Strategies LLC was performed under a contract or any other form of arrangement.”
Hurd replied: “Previously provided advisory and legislative coordination support was performed by employee of Sunrise Strategies LLC who was a DAB 89-day temporary staff.” The response, while not grammatical, affirms that throughout Gates’ five 89-day terms with DAB, he was actually employed by Sunrise Strategies.
“Just to confirm,” Sasaki asked, “has the DAB 89-day temporary staff who provided advisory and legislative coordination support ended his/her temporary term with DAB?”
“Yes, his temporary employment terminated in February,” Hurd replied.
“Is he/she still employed by Sunrise Strategies USA LLC? If so, is that why DAB would like to contract with Sunrise Strategies USA LLC?” Sasaki asked.
Hurd’s response: “Yes.”
Contradictory Accounts
To win Procurement Office approval of the Sunrise Strategies contract, Hurd needed to show it was uniquely qualified. To do this, she had to attribute the work done by Gates to Sunrise Strategies, describing Gates as its employee.
One problem with this is that 89-day hires are available only to individual persons. Inquiries with the Department of Human Resources Development confirmed this. No one there had ever heard of a department hiring a company on an 89-day basis.
Also, if Sunrise Strategies had been hired by DAB as a contractor, with Gates as its employee, then there would need to be some record of that contract. Sunrise Strategies first makes an appearance on the list of contracts awarded by the state in March.
Companies that contract with the state must file a certificate of vendor compliance, showing that they are in good standing with respect to federal and state tax laws, state business registration requirements, and labor laws. Sunrise Strategies did not file a certificate of compliance with the Procurement Office until April 9, 2026. There’s no record of any earlier contract with Sunrise Strategies on the HANDS website. Moreover, Gates was retained by DAB as an 89-day hire before Sunrise Strategies had even organized as an LLC (February 2025).
Environment Hawaiʻi asked DAB directly: “When Cedric Gates was employed as an 89-day hire, was he directly employed or was he instead working as an employee of Sunrise Strategies?”
The answer is puzzling: “We do not have records with that information.”
Email Evidence
Environment Hawaiʻi asked DAB for any email correspondence between Gates and DAB from February 18 through April 22, roughly the time in which the two contracts were being negotiated.
In response, Marci Clingan, who works in the office of the DAB chairperson, stated that no such exchanges existed.
But on February 19, Clarine Orodio, in DAB’s Human Resources office, emailed “Cedric,” asking, “Could we please get a proposal for this contract?” The response came from admin@sunrisestrategiesusa.com, forwarding what DAB represents as a draft proposal. This email came a day after the contract was already awarded.
Sunrise Strategies
Among other records, Environment Hawaiʻi obtained a “Contractor’s Standards of Conduct Declaration,” signed by Sunrise Strategies’ administrative officer, Jason Henderson, in connection with the first (cancelled) contract and the second (ongoing).
Among the attestations are two that would seem to relate directly to the involvement of Cedric Gates.
Declaration 2: “Contractor has not been represented or assisted personally in the matter by an individual who has been an employee of the agency awarding this contract within the preceding two years and who participated while so employed in the matter with which the Contract is directly concerned.”
Declaration 4: “Contractor has not been represented on matters related to this Contract, for a fee or other consideration by an individual who, within the past twelve (12) months, has been an agency employee…”
Declaration 2 relates to Section 84-15(b), HRS, while Declaration 4 relates to Sections 84-18(b) and (c), HRS. Both are part of the state’s Standards of Conduct law.
Section 84-15(b), relating to contracts, says: “A state agency shall not enter into a contract with any person or business which is represented or assisted personally in the matter by a person who has been an employee of the agency within the preceding two years and who participated while in state office or employment in the matter with which the contract is directly concerned.” It is hard to imagine that Gates was not involved in the discussions leading up to both the contract entered into in February, while he was still employed by the DAB, and the later contract, signed after the first contract was cancelled. Gates, after all, fits the description of a “person … who has been an employee of the agency within the preceding two years and who participated while in state office or employment in the matter with which the contract is directly concerned.”
Many of the statements from Hurd justifying Sunrise Strategies’ contract refer specifically to the work that had been done by Gates while he was employed by the department.
Section 84-18 deals with restrictions on former employees. Paragraph (c) states: “No former employee, within twelve months after termination of the former employee’s employment, shall represent any person or business for a fee or other consideration on matters in which the former employee participated as an employee or on matters involving official action by the particular state agency or subdivision thereof with which the former employee had actually served.”
The proposal for services that Sunrise Services provided to DAB includes a “budget breakdown” describing the duties and anticipated pay for the senior advisor. Though not named, again, this can only be Cedric Gates, given the statement that the “advisory leadership” described in the budget states this person has “experience working from within the legislative process itself – not as an outside advocate, but as a principal participant in the committee deliberations, budget negotiations, and interagency coordination that shape how agriculture and biosecurity policy is made and implemented in this state.” The budget calls for payment of $81,000 for the person in this position for the duration of the contract.
A Newly Registered Lobbyist
Until February 18, 2025, Sunrise Strategies USA, LLC, did not exist. On that day, Jason Henderson filed articles of organization for the company, whose sole member was Oceania Marketing Group, LLC. That entity was itself formed by Henderson on November 20, 2023.
Last August 25, Oceania Marketing Group, filed its annual report with the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, adding a second name – that of Devin Gates – to the list of members. An obituary of Cedric Gates’ mother, Easter Asuega-Gates, lists Devin as a grandson, suggesting Devin is a nephew of Cedric. (Sunrise Strategies did not respond to an email from Environment Hawaiʻi asking whether Devin was related to Cedric and what the relationship was between Oceania Marketing and Sunrise Strategies.)
Sunrise Strategies USA, LLC, has an online presence – more a framework than a fully fleshed out website. Though the firm is barely more than a year old, its website describes itself as “Your Bridge to Hawaii’s Decisionmakers” and boasts of more than 25 years of “combined experience,” “1000+ legislative bills passed (cumulative experience),” and $250M+ Grants & Funding secured (cumulative experience).” In small type at the bottom of the page is this: “Figures shown reflect the combined prior professional experience of team members and affiliated work over time, and are not limited solely to activities undertaken by Sunrise Strategies since its formation.” A search of the website for the names of any team members, or anyone at all, does not bear fruit. The phone number provided on the website is the same as that for Oceania Marketing Group and as that used by Cedric Gates in connection with his company, Manehu Tech, LLC, while he was trying to drum up sales of residential solar power in the Waiʻanae area. (Manehu Tech is not in good standing, having failed to provide annual reports to the DCCA for the last two years.)
Until March of this year, Sunrise Strategies had no official lobbying presence at the state Capitol. On March 4 and 5, however, Benjamin Gates (brother to Cedric) registered as a lobbyist with Sunrise Strategies on behalf of three companies: Kalshi, Inc., the firm recently in the news for accepting bets predicting current events; VGW Corporate Services Australia Pty Ltd., an online gaming company; and Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA, more commonly known as Big Pharma). On April 20, Cedric Gates registered as a Sunrise Strategies lobbyist, also on behalf of VGW Corporate Services Australia. The two brothers are the only registered lobbyists affiliated with Sunrise Strategies, according to state registration records.
— Patricia Tummons
Note: The March edition of Environment Hawaiʻi reported on the first (canceled) contract. We erroneously stated that the term of the contract was for six months instead of eighteen.
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