This is a reprint from The Honolulu Advertiser for educational purposes. ( We added extra links from other publications for more information.)
By Dan Nakaso and Andrew Gomes
March 6, 2026
STAR-ADVERTISER / JAN. 8, 2018
U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa formally announces she is running for governor during a gathering on the east lawn of the State Capitol building with dozens of her supporters in 2018.
Colleen Hanabusa, a formidable Hawaii politician and prominent labor lawyer from Waianae who served in Congress but failed to become Hawaii’s governor and Honolulu’s mayor, died early Friday morning at the age of 74.
Hanabusa had been hospitalized for five months with cancer, her family said.
Gov. Josh Green ordered the U.S. and Hawaiian flags be flown at half-staff at the state Capitol, all state offices and agencies, and all Hawaii National Guard facilities in honor of Hanabusa, a former U.S. representative and president of the state Senate who more recently chaired the board of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation.
“Colleen Opens in a new tab Hanabusa dedicated her life to serving the people of Hawaii Opens in a new tab — from the Waianae Coast she proudly called home, to the halls of the Hawaii State Capitol and the United States Congress,” Green said in a news release. “She broke barriers as the first woman to serve as President of the Hawaii State Senate and spent decades advocating for her community with strength, determination and heart. Her legacy of leadership and public service will continue to inspire generations to come.”
Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi, who appointed Hanabusa to the HART chair, said in a statement, “Hawaii has lost a remarkable leader, and we all have lost a friend. Managing Director Mike Formby and I had a close relationship with Colleen, and she dedicated her life to serving the people of Hawaii with intelligence, determination, and an unwavering sense of purpose.”
City & County of Honolulu flags also will be lowered today through Sunday to honor her.
Hanabusa ended her political career at HART after she, Blangiardi and Lori Kahikina — HART’s executive director and CEO — proposed truncating the route to regain the confidence of the Federal Transit Authority, got long-awaited federal dollars flowing back to the project and opened the first leg of the Skyline system in June 2023.
Asked why Hanabusa would agree to serve as an unpaid volunteer while the rail project faced intense criticism at home and in Washington, D.C., Blangiardi told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Friday that “It speaks volumes about her. What it says is that she put Hawaii first.”
Kahikina said, “On behalf of myself and the entire HART Ohana, we are deeply saddened by the news of Colleen Hanabusa’s passing. My deepest sympathy goes out to the Hanabusa ohana. I greatly appreciate her contributions to the Honolulu rail project, and respect and admire her work as a tireless advocate and public servant. HART extends its sincere condolences to all who had the privilege of knowing Colleen.”
Hanabusa was born May 4, 1951, and raised in Waianae where her great-grandparents worked on a sugar plantation and her family later established a service station, Hanabusa Service, in 1948.
Because her parents, June and Isao, devoted so much time to the family business, Hanabusa was raised largely by her maternal grandmother.
After graduating from St. Andrew’s Priory in 1969, Hanabusa earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology and economics from the University of Hawaii in 1973, and followed it with a master’s degree in sociology in 1975 and then a law degree in 1977 also from UH.
As a labor lawyer during the 1980s and early 1990s under her married name at the time, Colleen Sakurai, Hanabusa represented some high-profile clients who were politically powerful and others who were politicians or intersected with politics.
Clients from that time included the Hawaii Teamsters Union in a legal fight to represent state corrections officers, and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 5 union in a dispute over picketing during a statewide hotel strike.
Hanabusa also represented Honolulu City Council members in a 1993 legal skirmish with then-Mayor Frank Fasi to stop him from using Oahu Neighborhood Board elections as an “advisory referendum” on tax funding for a $2 billion Fasi rail transit plan.
One of those Council members, Arnold Morgado, ran for mayor in 1994cq special election and 1996 with Hanabusa as a campaign strategist and attorney. Morgado lost both times to Jeremy Harris.
In 1998, Hanabusa sought political office herself. She ran for a state Senate seat against Sen. James Aki, the Democratic incumbent who a year earlier had been granted deferred acceptance of a no-contest plea to two felony gambling charges. Hanabusa won the primary and went on to win the general election to represent Nanakuli, Waianae and Makaha.
As a first-term lawmaker, Hanabusa quickly made a name for herself by helping organize the rejection of Margery Bronster as then-Gov. Ben Cayetano’s nominee for attorney general.
Then in 2001, she spearheaded efforts to reform state civil service laws, an action that stirred up politically powerful public worker unions.
“While the effort won quick public praise, it immediately drew the opposition of public employee unions, and Hanabusa, although being a labor lawyer, was never a favorite daughter of the public unions,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin reporter and political columnist Richard Borreca wrote in a column a few years later.
Hanabusa caught some heat and tangled with Cayetano again a few years later over legislation she introduced to provide Jeff Stone, developer of Ko Olina Resort & Marina, with $75 million in state tax credits to build a “world class” aquarium to enhance the resort.
The Legislature passed the bill in 2002, but Cayetano vetoed it. In response, Hanabusa sued Cayetano and reintroduced the bill in 2003 after Republican Linda Lingle beat then-Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono to succeed Cayetano. The bill passed again and was signed by Lingle.
A year later, Hanabusa drew flack after it became publicly known that the home she shared at Ko Olina with her fiancee at the time, state Sheriff John F. Souza III, was sold to Souza by Stone, and that Souza also rented an office from Stone that Hanabusa rented from Souza for her law practice. Souza, a friend of Stone’s, had a trucking company that helped build homes at the resort.
Hanabusa, Souza and Stone said at the time that the real estate deals were at market prices and unrelated to the tax-credit legislation. Hanabusa shortly thereafter married Souza. Later, the aquarium project fizzled.
Higher power
While serving in the Legislature, Hanabusa pursued ambitions for higher office that resulted in two unsuccessful runs for Congress that didn’t put at risk her position in the state Senate.
Hanabusa’s first attempt in 2003 was to fill a vacancy representing urban Honolulu created by the death of U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink. Ed Case won the special election featuring 43 candidates. Hanabusa placed third.
Three years later, Hanabusa challenged Hirono to replace Case, who gave up his U.S. House seat representing rural parts of the state in an unsuccessful bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka.
Touting her deep westside roots, Hanabusa announced her campaign in front of her family’s service station. “I believe I’ve been a loud voice for the people of the Waianae Coast,” she said. “I hope that the rest of the 2nd Congressional (District) will want to see a Waianae girl there.”
The primary election drew nine Democratic competitors. Hanabusa placed second to Hirono, who was born in Japan and moved to Hawaii when she was 8.
As an unrelated sort of consolation prize, Hanabusa was named Senate president in 2007 and became the first woman to lead the Senate or House of Representatives in Hawaii’s Legislature.
Hanabusa had angled for the Senate’s top position for several years, and succeeded despite early negative feedback.
Local historian Bob Dye wrote in a 2001 Honolulu Advertiser column that Hanabusa was told her goal was unattainable in part because she was a freshman at the time but also because she was a woman and had a “take no prisoners” political style.
Hanabusa’s time in the Legislature and as Senate president lasted until 2010 when then-U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie resigned to take office as Hawaii’s governor.
Abercrombie’s vacancy in Congress resulted in a special election that was won by Republican Charles Djou due to Hanabusa and Case splitting many Democratic votes, but Hanabusa defeated Djou with 53% of the vote in a regular election five months later to represent urban Honolulu.
Spurn and return
When Hawaii’s revered U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye died in late 2012 at age 88, Hanabusa as his political protege saw a good opportunity to fill the seat, especially because Inouye before death conveyed his “last wish” for her to succeed him.
Abercrombie, however, as governor would pick Inouye’s interim successor, and named his lieutenant governor at the time, Brian Schatz, to fill out the last two years of Inouye’s term.
Two years later, Hanabusa did not seek reelection to her House seat and instead challenged Schatz for his Senate seat, in what became an intense and bruising showdown.
Some Schatz supporters and Hanabusa critics made a case that Schatz, then 41, was positioned to establish longer-term seniority in Congress compared with Hanabusa, then 63.
Hanabusa discounted the notion, telling the Washington Post, “It’s almost like saying that somebody would be anointed for 40 years.”
Schatz won the 2014 primary election by a narrow margin, and Hanabusa returned to Honolulu to practice law.
Honolulu’s mayor at the time, Kirk Caldwell, quickly appointed Hanabusa to the board of directors of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation overseeing the city’s overdue and over-budget rail project.
UH also selected Hanabusa to teach a course on civil liberties in times of crisis in 2016 as a visiting scholar funded by the Daniel K. Inouye Institute.
Hanabusa was HART’s board chair until 2016 when she returned to Capitol Hill after easily winning an election to succeed then-U.S. Rep. Mark Takai, who decided not to seek reelection due to cancer that led to his death soon after.
Back to HART
Just a year later, in 2017, Hanabusa declared that she wouldn’t seek reelection to the U.S. House so that she could to run for governor in a bid to prevent then-Gov. David Ige from being elected in 2018 to a second four-year term.
During a televised debate, Hanabusa criticized Ige for his handling of a January 2018 false missile alert from the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, calling the incident that generated widespread public panic “a systemic failure of leadership” by Ige’s administration.
“You had no plan to begin with, and you didn’t know when something went wrong,” Hanabusa said. “Will you finally take personal responsibility for the missile fiasco?”
Ige won the primary contest, and Hanabusa finished out her congressional term in January 2019.
Out of office once again, Hanabusa mounted a campaign in 2020 to succeed term-limited Caldwell as mayor amid a crowded nonpartisan field of 15 candidates who included former Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann, then-City Council member Kym Pine, former state high school athletics chief Keith Amemiya and former local television station general manager Rick Blangiardi.
Hanabusa finished third in the primary behind Amemiya and Blangiardi, who won the general election. Blangiardi in 2021 reappointed Hanabusa to HART’s board.
On Sept. 23, Hanabusa offered her letter of resignation to Blangiardi, effective Sept. 30, following her absence from the August HART board meeting. In the letter she said she could no longer effectively serve on the board where her term was to have run through June 30, 2026.
“Colleen and I once stood on opposite sides of a mayoral race, but what grew from that experience was a relationship built on mutual respect and friendship,” the mayor said Friday. “I came to appreciate her insight, her honesty, and her deep commitment to this community. I was grateful when she agreed to serve as Chair of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation Board. Her leadership and steady guidance were instrumental during an important time for the Skyline project.”
Hanabusa is survived by her husband John Souza.
Star-Advertiser reporter Peter Boylan contributed to this report.