Tom Cook (left) and Kelly King (right)

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that Tom Cook leads with 26,315 votes to Kelly King’s 26,198.

As of Wednesday morning, Maui County Council member Tom Cook held a narrow lead of less than 1% over biodiesel executive Kelly King in a race that could tip the scales on major issues involving hundreds of millions of dollars in future development.

On Wednesday, King said she expects an automatic recount because the tally is so close.

Cook led in votes with 26,315 over King’s 26,198, based on the third printout from the state Office of Elections released Wednesday morning. Other County Council incumbents appeared on their way to re-election.

Cook, a former president of the Maui Contractors Association, is the council’s chair of the Water and Infrastructure Committee, which is poised to look at rebuilding plans for the Lahaina area that lost more than 2,000 homes and businesses to the August 2023 wildfire, and also the proposed Honua’ula housing project, formerly known as Wailea 670.

King has been involved in promoting sustainability in agriculture and energy. She stepped down from her council seat in an unsuccessful bid to run for mayor in 2022.

Through October, the political action committee For A Better Tomorrow with ties to the Hawaii Carpenters Union paid for at least three separate mailings to support some Maui candidates including Cook, Tasha Kama and Nohe U’u Hodgins.

More than $15,000 was spent for each mailing, according to a Nov. 4 report filed with the state Campaign Spending Commission.

Kama, who holds the Kahului seat for Maui County Council, is the chair of the House and Land Use Committee. U’u Hodgins, who holds the seat for the Makawao-Ha’iku-Pa’ia area, is the chair of the Government Relations, Ethics and Transparency Committee.

In the primary election on Aug. 10, Cook led King by less than 1% with 10,136 votes compared to 9,911.

A large number — about 3,497 ballots — were blank votes in which voters chose not to cast their vote for candidates in the South Maui race. In the general election, the number of blank votes rose to 16.9% or 10,688 ballots.

Through October, the political action committee For A Better Tomorrow with ties to the Hawaii Carpenters Union paid for at least three separate mailings to support Cook. Mailings also supported Kama and Hodgins.

More than $15,000 was spent on each mailing, according to the Nov. 4 campaign spending report.

Council members elected for the next two years will help determine the direction of rebuilding in Lahaina, a popular town that once generated an estimated $2.7 million in daily revenue, according to state economists.

King is vice president of Pacific Biodiesel, a renewable energy company she co-founded with her husband Robert King in 1995.

Pacific Biodiesel was created to alleviate the disposal of waste cooking oil at Maui’s landfill and has built 13 biodiesel plants in the United States. King also grows sunflowers on Maui used in creating biofuel.

King has served multiple terms as a council member and also was elected a member of the state Board of Education from 1994 to 1998.

She has lived on Maui for more than 40 years with her husband and two children.

Before his election to the Maui County Council in 2022, Cook served as a former president of the Maui Contractors Association and worked as a general contractor on Maui as well as a journeyman carpenter, a mason and a structural concrete worker.

He has served on the Maui General Plan Advisory Committee and the Salvation Army Advisory Board and is a former chair of the Construction Industry of Maui.

Cook is married and has five children.