Sometimes luck is all about hard work. For more than a year, Mazie Hirono designed her campaign for the U.S. Senate around her inspiring story of fleeing Japan with her mother in 1947 to immigrate to America and live in Hawaii.
Parts of the successful 2012 campaign held up her mother’s desperate life in Fukushima; other parts were about the voyage in steerage on board the President Cleveland and upon arrival, how hard work saw them through early poverty in Honolulu.
Hirono’s story is the story of America and deserved to be retold, even if by the eighth TV commercial, voters glazed over the saga.
If there was an issue that defined Hirono, it was that she was born in a foreign country and succeeded in America and, therefore, immigration is something to be encouraged, not feared.
Imagine her good luck that immigration reform became part of the daily dialogue in the campaign for president and that afterwards, the losing Republicans realized that a way to attract Hispanic voters would be to encourage, not reject, a new immigration bill.
Hirono is far from being a decision-maker on the issue — that designation falls to the Senate’s bipartisan "Gang of Eight" — but Hiro- no is a big voice in the debate and is being recognized.
The Associated Press started off a story on the behind-the-scenes negotiations with the immigration bill: "For all the soothing words she heard from fellow Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii never had a chance to win a relatively modest change to far-reaching immigration legislation.
"Instead, the hidden hand of the Gang of Eight reached out and rejected her attempt to create an immigration preference for close relatives of citizens with an extreme hardship."
That was in May; since then, Hirono has moved her lobbying to the public arena, building coalitions and adopting a stronger tone.
On Thursday, she was tweeting: "The immigration bill is unfair for women. Help me & my female colleagues fix that by supporting my amendment."
Earlier in the week, Hirono, according to the AP, was on the attack, saying the present version of the bill was "unfair to women because of educational and career inequities in other countries."
"For this immigration bill to institutionalize and set in concrete the unequal opportunities women have in other countries is not the way to go," said Hirono.
In a Washington Post interview, Hirono referred back to her own understanding of immigration.
"There are people who come to our country with very little educational attainment or work experiences, but who come here with the avowed desire to improve their lives and that of their children. That is my own family experience," she said.
The final vote on the Senate’s version of the immigration bill has not yet been set. Because of the body’s rules, passage is likely to need 60 votes and not just a majority.
Already there is speculation that depending how that final bill is crafted, the vote in favor could be as high as 70.
Meanwhile, Hirono appears to have already won the political end of the argument because, as she sharpened the drive to change the bill, her own support grew.
"As the only immigrant on the Senate Judiciary Committee and in the U.S. Senate, Hirono offered an amendment ‘Hirono 10′ that, if adopted, would have alleviated the extreme hardship some immigrants may experience due to the prolonged separation from their brother, sister, son or daughter not in the United States," reported an Asian-American blog "Sampan."
Five Asian-American lobbying organizations then announced their support and praise of Hirono.
That’s how you make your own luck in politics.
———
Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
