On Politics: Remembering ‘Dickie’ Wong: politically savvy, from Senate president to Bishop Estate trustee

Once he became president of the state Senate, Richard “Dickie” S.H. Wong really started to grow.

In all, Wong ran the Senate for 14 years, a hard-to-beat record of political longevity.

Wong died last week at the age of 88.

During his time, Wong’s political battles were not settled — instead they bloomed, with Wong defining himself with his deft political skills. He was first elected to the state House in 1966, moving to the Senate in 1974 and becoming Senate president in 1979.

Wong’s transition to Senate president and his political future were measured by his ability to always have the minimum of 13 votes out of 25 needed to support his presidency.

Wong held the Senate presidency from 1979 to December 1992. It is still the record. And it contained a remarkable footnote. Wong was the pro-labor, tough liberal from Kalihi who did the unthinkable for a Democratic leader: forming the first and only governing coalition with Senate Republicans.

Former U.S. Rep. Pat Saiki was a Republican state senator back in 1981. Unable to take over the Senate with his group of unaligned dissidents, Wong turned to the eight senate GOP members to form a coalition. In doing so, Wong actually had to take committee chairmanships away from Democrats to give to Republicans.

“He was an amazing guy. A true negotiator with a realistic sense of the Legislature. He has a sense of what he wanted to accomplish and would then just find ways to accomplish it,” Saiki said.

“When he said something, you could trust him; that made him a leader.”

Part of Wong’s political skill was the ability to know how to adjust, not stand firm when giving a little would preserve his power. State Rep. Bertrand Kobayashi, who was a senator when Wong was in the Legislature, recalls the political savvy of his Senate colleague.

“Dickie distributed considerable power from the Senate president to the committee chairs, though partly because of necessity as his group of younger dissidents were headstrong and willful,” Kobayashi said in an interview.

At the same time, Wong also knew in politics there was both reward and punishment.

“Dickie was a power figure in that committee chairs knew that they were chairs because of Dickie, and Dickie held that power to appoint chairs for all of his record-long 14 years as Senate president,” Kobayashi said, recalling how once during a mini political revolt led by then-Sen. Ben Cayetano and others, Wong quickly removed his opponents from power.

“Dickie gathered the votes, (and) yielded nothing to Cayetano’s clique, which were ousted from their chairmanships and their offices, given the smallest offices and less desirable committee assignments.”

Several times when he was Senate president, I asked Wong: What was his political goal? What did he want to do besides win elections? Wong always said he wanted to be a Bishop Estate trustee. And not only did he want the position, which carried a million-dollar annual paycheck, Wong expected it to happen.

As it turned out, politics was the key, as both House Speaker Henry Peters, Wong and former Hawaii Supreme Court Chief Justice William S. Richardson were appointed to the Bishop Estate, one of the most sought-after political plums in the islands. Besides the wealth, estimated at one time at more than $9 billion, legal observers labeled Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate “arguably the most powerful private entity in Hawaii.”

The glory days for Wong and Peters ended when then-Attorney General Margery Bronster sued for the removal of trustees Peters and Wong, plus two others, alleging that the trustees jeopardized the estate’s tax-exempt status and withheld $350 million in trust income from the Kamehameha Schools.

A Bronster-convened grand jury indicted Peters for theft. The indictment alleged Peters took a $192,500 kickback from developer Jeff Stone, a brother-in-law of trustee Wong. A separate grand jury indicted Wong for theft, conspiracy and perjury in the same scheme.

The charges were dropped, and Wong countersued, alleging wrongful prosecution, which was also dropped.

For Wong, the one-time Hotel Street shoeshine boy who rose to confirm Hawaii Supreme Court justices and control Hawaii’s most powerful financial institution, the ride to power had ended — although he is still remembered as a major player in Hawaii politics.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.