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Thomas P. Gill — former county chairman, state legislator, U.S. Congressman, and lieutenant governor of Hawaii — appeared on Price of Paradise in November 1993 to offer an unsparing account of the state's Democratic Party. Gill argued that the party's 1954 electoral breakthrough was founded on genuine ideological purpose but that subsequent victories led the leadership to prioritise winning over governing. What remained, he said, was not a party but a machine: a shifting coalition of officeholders and civil servants sustained by patronage and public employment rather than any governing programme. He traced the corruption of political fundraising to the rising cost of television advertising after the late 1950s, contending that campaign contributions had become a form of payoff by those seeking contracts or government appointments. The standing question is whether Hawaii's Democratic establishment constitutes a party in any meaningful sense or has simply become an apparatus for holding power. Gill also criticised the Supreme Court's politically driven appointments to the Bishop Estate board of trustees, and concluded that public office should be held briefly, as a trust, not a vehicle for personal advancement.
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