Colleen Hanabusa is gearing up for a run for the state’s highest political office next year with the advantage of a 20-year political career behind her.
The St. Andrew’s Priory School graduate prides herself on having grown up in hardscrabble Waianae, where her great-grandparents worked on a sugar plantation and her family later ran a service station.
Hanabusa, 66, earned her undergraduate, master’s and law degrees from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and went on to spend two decades working in private practice as a labor lawyer.
She made her debut in politics in 1998 with a successful run for the state Senate, where she served for a dozen years, representing the Leeward Coast. During her time in the Legislature, she became Hawaii’s first female Senate president.
In 2010, when then-U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie stepped down to run for governor, Hanabusa vied for his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing urban Honolulu, in a special election against fellow Democrat Ed Case and Republican challenger Charles Djou to fill out Abercrombie’s term.
Djou won the special election after Hanabusa and Case split the Democratic vote, but Hanabusa emerged as the winner a few months later in the general election rematch, and again defeated Djou in 2012.
With the death of U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye in late 2012, political observers expected then-Gov. Abercrombie to name Hanabusa — Inouye’s political protege and pick to succeed him — to fill the prominent Senate seat. Abercrombie instead sent his lieutenant governor at the time, Brian Schatz, to Capitol Hill to fill out the remaining two years of Inouye’s term.
Hanabusa left her House seat to challenge Schatz in the 2014 Democratic primary election for the coveted Senate seat. After an intense and bruising showdown, Hanabusa lost to Schatz by a narrow margin and found herself out of political office.
She returned to Honolulu to practice law and was quickly appointed by Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell to the board of directors of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, the entity overseeing the city’s rail project. She served as chairwoman of the HART board until late 2016, when a political opportunity arose.
After the late U.S. Rep. Mark Takai announced he would not seek re-election to the U.S. House due to health problems, Hanabusa decided to make a bid for her old seat. She cruised to victory and returned to Congress.
