Reversal by Hanabusa prompts criticism

Fifteen months ago Colleen Hanabusa stood before a room packed with enthusiastic supporters and TV camera crews to file papers to run for the U.S. House to reclaim the seat she formerly held representing urban Honolulu.

She described the moment as “an amazing opportunity for me to be able to go back to Congress and finish the work that Sen. (Daniel) Akaka had, Sen. (Daniel) Inouye had.”

“I am a legislator at heart, and legislating is something that I understand, something that I feel I can do better than most,” Hanabusa told the gathering. “I hate to be immodest, but that’s one of the things that I can do, and that is why when you look at the skill sets that one has, one has to match those skill sets with how to best serve the people, and it results with one equation.”

She went on to easily win the November election for the seat previously held by the late U.S. Rep. Mark Takai, but early this month Hanabusa announced she now wants to become Hawaii’s chief executive.

Hanabusa said she will soon file papers to form a new campaign committee to run for governor, confirming long-standing speculation in Hawaii political circles that she would challenge fellow Democrat and incumbent Gov. David Ige in 2018.

Her abrupt change of course is drawing criticism from some, including some Democrats who supported her in 2016. Meanwhile, Ige’s supporters appear primed to make Hanabusa’s reversal a 2018 campaign issue.

“She asked for our votes and then she won, and now she’s leaving again. For what?” asked one of Ige’s backers who has been active in Hawaii political campaigns. “What’s the agenda that she is pursuing?”

Hanabusa, a longtime labor lawyer, has an impressive political resume. She has served 17 years in elected office, including 12 years in the state Senate, and became Hawaii’s first female state Senate president. She was first elected to the U.S. House in 2010.

However, Hanabusa’s critics point out she left that U.S. House seat in 2014 to run for the U.S. Senate in a hard-fought, unsuccessful campaign against Brian Schatz. She then accepted an unpaid position in 2015 overseeing the city’s rail project as a member of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation. She became chairwoman of HART last year but left that position later in the year to run for Congress.

“She’s just an opportunist, and when you think about it, what has she accomplished in the … years that she’s been in the House? And we’re going to go to zero seniority when she leaves,” said another Hanabusa critic who supports Ige. “Why did she even run for Takai’s seat if she had thoughts of running for governor one day?”

Hanabusa, 66, said in an interview last week she ran for Congress last year because Takai asked her to run.

Takai declined to seek re-election because his pancreatic cancer had spread, and Hanabusa said Takai “asked me to basically run for my old seat back because he was very concerned as to whether his seat would be kept Democrat, and he didn’t want to have a legacy that he lost the seat.”

But even as she was campaigning and after she was elected, people told her, “‘You really have to come home,’” Hanabusa said. “So, there’s been this sense that something is not right at home.”

When asked to describe that unease, Hanabusa explained that “people are worried about the Hawaii that we have,” adding, “It’s like we’re losing the Hawaii that we have; they can’t pinpoint one thing.”

She said one supporter told her: “It’s like sand running through your fingers. You’re holding it, and then it still runs through your fingers and you’re losing, you’re losing it, and you want it to stop but the question is, How do you stop it? And that’s what this person explained to me, and he said, ‘That’s the reason I want you to come home, because you can stop it. I know you can stop it.’”

Several longtime political observers say Hanabusa was strongly encouraged to enter the governor’s race by people often described as “old guard” Democrats, including political figures who were close to Inouye. Those factions have reportedly been frustrated with Ige, whom they regard as a plodding and indecisive leader for the state.

Many in the local business community also encouraged Hanabusa to run, and one longtime local executive explained that “the business community is extremely disappointed with Ige on many, many fronts.”

That executive, who spoke on condition that his name not be used, said Ige has made no attempt to reach out to the business community during his first three years in office, and described Ige’s decision to publicly oppose the $4.3 billion NextEra Inc. purchase of Hawaiian Electric Industries as a “(expletive) disaster for Hawaii.”

Ige announced his opposition to the NextEra purchase while the state Public Utilities Commission was still considering the matter, and the PUC finally rejected the NextEra deal last year. Ige’s public rejection of the sale was seen by some as an unfair effort to tilt the outcome of the PUC’s deliberations.

“It sends a chill throughout the whole business community about the ability to bring in new capital and investors to Hawaii,” the executive said.

Hanabusa said she is returning to run for governor because “people just lack public confidence.”

“They want somebody who they feel has the experience that they want, and a person who can actually, a lot of them, stand up and fight for them and make decisions, make the hard decisions,” she said. “That’s why I decided that … it is time for me to come home, and it is time for me to try and address these concerns that they have.”

But her critics question her decision to gear up for a challenge to an incumbent Democrat in Hawaii while President Donald Trump and the Republicans rule in Washington, D.C.

“If Colleen’s a fighter, then we need her in Washington fighting for us,” said an Ige supporter. As the state attorney general and the Hawaii congressional delegation scrap with Trump and the GOP, “Colleen should be there; she should be in Washington helping us. And so why is she coming home? Why is she quitting up there?”

Hanabusa intends to serve out her current U.S. House term and does not plan to resign her seat, according to a spokeswoman.