Feisty Faith faced off with 2 governors

Faith Tomoyasu already had made a name for herself as a politically active educator before revealing her connection to comedian Rap Reiplinger’s famed song parody “Fate Yanagi.”

The feisty 63-year-old cackled with glee when recalling the state ethics complaint she filed against then-Gov. Linda Lingle in 2004 when Tomoyasu was a teacher at Lehua Elementary School in Pearl City. The Hawaii State Ethics Commission upheld the complaint, issuing an informal opinion that Lingle improperly used state workers and equipment for Citizens Achieving Reform in Education, a nonprofit, tax-exempt advocacy group, to lobby the Legislature.

“After that (Lingle) would say to me every year, ‘Are you going to hit me with something?’” said Tomoyasu, who headed the political action committee for the Hawaii State Teachers Association.

“I kept her on her toes.”

She said she also had choice words for Gov. Neil Abercrombie after his administration imposed a contract in 2011 that effectively cut teachers’ pay. Tomoyasu said she told the governor to his face that he would serve only a single term as a result of the action. (Abercrombie lost the 2014 Democratic primary to HSTA-backed David Ige.)

Tomoyasu was also known for preparing props for the award-winning Pearl City High School marching band (“I made 50-yard flags, can you believe it?”) and for the NFL Pro Bowl at Aloha Stadium, where she said she struck up a conversation with guitarist Carlos Santana while waiting in the tunnel for halftime at the 1995 game.

She retired from teaching three years ago to care for her husband, Jason Tomoyasu, a Honolulu Emergency Medical Services paramedic and Federal Emergency Management Agency volunteer who helped with Hurricane Katrina relief in Louisiana. He died last year from diabetes.

The Pearl City resident loves to travel — she bicycled through Europe in her 20s and just returned from her first jaunt to Branson, Mo.

She has two children and is awaiting the birth of her third grandchild.