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 years old.
Hanabusa died early Friday after a five-month battle with cancer, said Mike Formby, his friend and former chief of staff in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Announcing his death Friday, Gov. Josh Green ordered the U.S. and Hawaii flags to fly at half-staff until dawn Monday.
She “broke barriers” as the first female president of the state Senate and “spent decades advocating for her community with strength, determination and heart,” Green said. “His 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 owned an automobile service station.
He represented Waianae Coast and Leeward Oahu as a member of the state senate from 1999 to 2010.
She was serving in the U.S. House of Representatives 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-Lieutenant Governor Brian Schatz to fill the Senate seat.
Hanabusa later gave up his seat to run for the 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 people have really had a chance to weigh in on who they want to represent them in the United States Senate.”
He lost that 2014 election by less than a percentage point to Schatz.
He returned to Washington in 2016 after regaining the position he previously held.
At the time, he expressed his disappointment over Donald Trump’s victory.
“I just didn’t expect the rest of the nation to vote as resoundingly as they did,” Hanabusa said shortly after the results of his own election were announced. “It’s just a statement about how they feel. And when you think about the things he said and stood for, it should give everyone a reason to stop and think, ‘What are we saying to the world, what are we saying to each other?'”
She later resigned her seat to run for governor, but lost to former Governor David Ige in the 2018 Democratic primary.
In 2021, the mayor of Honolulu appointed Hanabusa to the board of directors of the city’s long-delayed and greatly 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 CEO of the Honolulu mayor’s office.
