Daniel Akaka will never be forgotten, and not in small measure because he shone a light on others who otherwise might have been overlooked. In the noisy, fractious, unyielding place that Washington has become, that kind of spirit is sorely lacking.
First and foremost, the retired U.S. senator, who died Friday at 93, served as a leading advocate for his own Native Hawaiian community, as its first member to be elected to the Senate.
“He fought for people who didn’t have a voice,” said Jesse Broder Van Dyke, who worked as Akaka’s communications director for six years in the Senate.
These would include not only Hawaiians but other groups, such as Native Alaskans and Native Americans; Akaka chaired the Senate committees on Indian Affairs and Veterans’ Affairs.
The plight of native people everywhere resonated with him, Broder Van Dyke added, from the Maori, to the indigenous groups in China and the small Pacific island nations whose residents “viewed Senator Akaka as their U.S. senator.”
There were other causes that he embraced. A World War II veteran himself, Akaka fought against what he saw as discrimination against Asian-American veterans, ultimately securing the awards of nearly two dozen Medals of Honor to members of the celebrated 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 100th Division, and to other Asian-American war heroes.
He helped win compensation for a Filipino and Filipino-American unit that fought alongside Allied soldiers in the war but did not qualify for veterans’ benefits. As much as veterans were in his sights, however, Akaka also was known for being one of the few in his chamber to oppose the Iraq war from its inception.
But it’s his longstanding campaign for Native Hawaiian interests and especially for the population’s federal recognition as an indigenous group that absorbed his full attention.
He lobbied for and won an official apology, issued by President Bill Clinton in 1993, for the U.S. role in the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Principally, it was the federal-
recognition measure that came to be known as the Akaka Bill that drew all the attention, but he never got the votes it needed to overcome the filibuster.
Akaka took pointed criticism for failing to get major legislative works through the Capitol Hill hoops. However, his supporters said he took great satisfaction from watching the initiatives he launched come to fruition elsewhere.
The federal-recognition push led former President Barack Obama to create an executive-branch process for that same purpose; it could resurface yet, even if that’s doubtful to happen under the current administration.
The late senator followed a political path that started in the state Department of Education. He became principal at Kaneohe Elementary School and held various state administrative posts before seeking election to the U.S. House of Representatives. Not surprisingly, securing more resources for education became a particular focus.
All through the course of his 36-year congressional career, from which he retired in 2012, Akaka was known as a conciliator. An advocate for labor and other liberal causes, he was able to win votes from across the partisan aisle, on the basis of his personal geniality and good will.
And nice guys don’t always finish last, it seems. It was that quality of being liked and respected that may have warded off Akaka’s most serious political challenge. In 2006, then-U.S. Rep. Ed Case sought to oust him from the Senate; the voters simply wouldn’t hear of it.
In the cynicism that has festered since he left D.C., and the vitriol that has come to a boil, it’s logical to wonder whether a politician in the Daniel Akaka mold would fit in anymore. We have to hope so — hope that someone could demonstrate how finding the middle path, as he often did, could restore health to America’s ailing democracy.
