HONOLULU — Former U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, who was the first woman to serve as president of the Hawaii State Senate, has died. She was 74.
Hanabusa died early Friday after a five-month battle with cancer, said Mike Formby, her friend and former chief of staff in the U.S. House.
In announcing her death Friday, Gov. Josh Green ordered the U.S. and Hawaii flags to be flown at half-staff until sunrise Monday.
She “broke barriers” as the first woman president of the state Senate and “spent decades advocating for her community with strength, determination and heart,” Green said. “Her legacy of leadership and public service will continue to inspire generations to come.”
Hanabusa was a lawyer who grew up in Waianae, on the west side of Oahu, where her family ran an auto service station.
She represented the Waianae Coast and Leeward Oahu as a member of the state Senate from 1999 to 2010.
She was serving in the U.S. House when U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye died in 2012. Inouye had sent then-Gov. Neil Abercrombie a hand-signed letter dated the day he died, saying he would like Hanabusa to succeed him, calling it his “last wish.”
But Abercrombie appointed then-Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz to fill the Senate seat.
Hanabusa later gave up her seat to run for Senate, hoping to fulfill Inouye’s dying wish.
“Brian was not elected. He was appointed,” she said at the time. “And I don’t think the people have really had an opportunity to weigh in on who they want to represent them in the United States Senate.”
She lost that 2014 election by less than a percentage point to Schatz.
She returned to Washington in 2016 after recapturing the seat she previously held.
At the time, she expressed disappointment in President Donald Trump’s win.
“I just didn’t expect the rest of the nation to vote as resoundingly as they did,” Hanabusa said shortly after results of her own election were announced. “It’s just a statement about how they feel. And when you think about the things that he said and he stood for, it’s got to give everyone cause to just pause and think about, ‘What are we saying to the world, what are we saying to each other?’”
She later gave up her seat to run for governor but lost to former Gov. David Ige in the Democratic primary in 2018.
In 2021, Honolulu’s mayor appointed Hanabusa to the board of the city’s long-delayed and massively over-budget rail line.
She is survived by her husband, John Souza, and her beloved dogs named Frannie and Pupper, said Formby, who is now managing director in the Honolulu’s mayor office.
