Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color elected
to Congress, participated in the passage of much of the
1960s Great Society legislation during the first phase of her
congressional career. After a long hiatus, Mink returned to
the House in the 1990s as an ardent defender of the social
welfare state at a time when much of the legislation she
had helped establish was being rolled back. As a veteran
politician who had a significant impact on the nation
during both stints in the U.S. House of Representatives,
Mink’s legislative approach was premised on the belief
that representation extended beyond the borders of one’s
congressional district. “You were not elected to Congress,
in my interpretation of things, to represent your district,
period,” she once noted. “You are national legislators.”1
Patsy Matsu Takemoto was born in Paia, Hawaii
Territory, on December 6, 1927, one of two children
raised by Suematsu Takemoto, a civil engineer, and
Mitama Tateyama Takemoto. She graduated from Maui
High School in 1944 as class president and valedictorian
and went on to attend Wilson College in Chambersburg,
Pennsylvania, and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln
before graduating with a BA in zoology and chemistry
from the University of Hawai‘i in 1948. Mink originally planned to pursue a medical degree but turned to law school
after several medical schools turned down her application.
Three years later, she earned a JD from the University of
Chicago Law School, the first Hawaiian nisei woman to
do so. In 1951 she married John Francis Mink, a graduate
student in geology at the university. The couple had one
child, a daughter named Gwendolyn, and moved to
Honolulu. Facing discrimination from bigger firms due
to her interracial marriage, Patsy Mink went into private
law practice and lectured on business law at the University
of Hawai‘i.2 In 1954 Mink founded the Oahu Young
Democrats and worked as an attorney for the territorial
house of representatives in 1955. Mink won election to that
chamber in 1956 and 1958 before winning a seat in the
territorial senate, where she served from 1958 to 1959.
In 1959, when Hawaii achieved statehood, Mink set
her sights on the new state’s lone At-Large seat in the U.S.
House of Representatives and began to campaign for the
post. Hawaii’s Delegate and Democratic “boss,” John
Anthony Burns, remained in Washington, DC, until June,
when he suddenly began working behind the scenes to
rearrange the Democratic ballot to his liking. He convinced
Daniel Ken Inouye to abandon his Senate campaign and file for the House seat instead, frustrating Mink’s efforts and
forcing a primary. Though Mink was also one of Burns’s
protégés, she frequently broke with party leadership in
the territorial legislature. Throughout her career, Mink
never had a warm relationship with the state leaders of
her party; she attributed their lack of support to her
unwillingness to allow the party to influence her political
agenda.3 Additionally, Burns viewed Inouye as his successor,
and the two worked together atop the state Democratic
Party for many years. The famously liberal International
Longshore and Warehouse Union switched their
endorsement from Mink to Inouye, who won by a two-to-one
margin in the primary, leaving Mink to focus on her
legal career.4 Mink returned to politics in 1962, winning a
seat in the Hawaii state senate, where she served from 1962
to 1964 and eventually chaired the education committee.
In 1964, after reapportionment created a second At-Large seat for Hawaii in the U.S. House, Mink again
mounted a grassroots campaign that relied on a staff
of unpaid volunteers; her husband, John, served as her
campaign manager, “principal sounding board,” and “inhouse
critic.”5 She ran without the blessing of the state
Democratic Party leadership, raising campaign funds largely
in small individual contributions. Mink barely edged out
two other Democrats in the October primary to secure her
spot on the ballot alongside Spark Masayuki Matsunaga,
Daniel Inouye’s successor in the House. Mink stressed
her independence in the general election even as many
Democrats arranged deals to support one of the Republican
nominees to defeat her.6 With help from President
Lyndon B. Johnson’s landslide victory in the presidential
race, Mink and Matsunaga were elected as the state’s two
At-Large Representatives. In a four-way race, she received
27 percent of the total to become the first Asian-American
woman and just the second woman from Hawaii to serve
in Congress.
In her subsequent five campaigns for re-election, Mink
faced a number of difficult primaries in which the local
Democratic Party tried to oust her, twice by running
women candidates, which Mink interpreted as an effort
to deprive her of the gender issue.7 She proved a durable
candidate in the general elections, however, despite being
viewed initially as a presidential coattail rider. In 1966
and 1968, in a four-way race for the two House seats, she
garnered slightly more than 34 percent of the vote. In the
1966 race, she collected more votes than any of the other three candidates. In 1970 Hawaii was divided into two
geographically distinct congressional districts. Representing
the outer islands and suburban Oahu, Mink began traveling
back to her district every other week to combat the notion
that she was a purely national figure with little interest in
the local needs of her constituents. The configuration of
the new district also forced Mink to shift her campaigning
methods, since she could no longer rely on the Honolulu
media market to spread her message.8 Her efforts paid off,
however; Mink ran unopposed in 1970 and won 53 percent
of the vote in 1972 and 63 percent in 1974.9
In the House, Mink successfully sought a seat on the
Committee on Education and Labor, on which she served
from the 89th Congress (1965–1967) through the 94th
Congress (1975–1977). In her second term, she also joined
the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs and, in the
93rd (1973–1975) and 94th Congresses, served on the
Budget Committee.
Mink’s committee assignments allowed her to
concentrate on the same issues that had been the focus
of her attention in the Hawaii legislature. Among the
education acts Mink introduced or sponsored in the
U.S. House were the first childcare bill and legislation
establishing bilingual education, student loans, special
education, professional sabbaticals for teachers, and Head
Start. Starting in 1967, she also put significant effort
into passing a bill to institute a national daycare system
to support low-income households. The Comprehensive
Child Development Act was folded into the Economic
Opportunity Act (S. 2007) in 1971. But it failed to
become law, in part, because opponents objected that it
offered too many incentives for mothers to work outside
the home and that it promoted a “communal” approach
to rearing children. Though the Economic Opportunity
Act passed both houses of Congress, President Richard M.
Nixon vetoed it in December 1971.10 Mink later called
the bill’s failure “one of the real disappointments” of her
political career.11
Mink maintained a focus on national issues, especially
those affecting Asian Pacific Americans (APA) and the
Pacific region. She fought to preserve family reunification
provisions in several proposed immigration reform bills
and worked alongside Representative Matsunaga to educate
Americans about the internment of Japanese Americans
during World War II.12 As a member of the Interior and
Insular Affairs Committee, she supported the economic and political development of the Trust Territory of the
Pacific Islands. As chair of the Subcommittee on Mines and
Mining, she helped author the landmark Surface Mining
Control and Reclamation Act of 1975, and in the following
year helped to pass a major overhaul of the Mineral Leasing
Act of 1920. The House failed to override President
Gerald R. Ford’s veto of the Surface Mining Control and
Reclamation Act, though a similar measure was eventually
signed into law in 1977.
During the Johnson presidency, Mink strongly supported
the administration’s domestic programs that were part
of the Great Society legislation, but she was a critic of
America’s increasing involvement in the Vietnam War. In
September 1967, she refused to support the President’s
request for an income tax increase because she feared that
the new revenues would be used for military action rather
than the expansion of social programs. It was, she said, like
“administering aspirin to a seriously ill patient who needs
major surgery.”13 If inflation threatened the economy, she
suggested, the administration should raise taxes on big
business and not just the average working taxpayers.14 In
April 1972, she cosponsored Massachusetts Representative
Michael Joseph Harrington’s concurrent resolution
(H. Con. Res. 589) calling for an immediate termination
of military activity in Vietnam, but the House took no
action on it. Her views clashed with those of the three other
Members of the Hawaii congressional delegation as well
as with those of many of her constituents in a state with a
heavy military presence. Years later, however, Mink recalled,
“It was such a horrible thought to have this war that it really
made no difference to me that I had a military constituency.
It was a case of living up to my own views and my own
conscience. If I was defeated for it, that’s the way it had to
be. There was no way in which I could compromise my
views on how I felt about it.”15
Mink also advocated many women’s issues in Congress,
including equal rights. One of her great legislative triumphs
was the Women’s Educational Equity Act, passed as part of
a comprehensive education bill in 1974. It provided $30
million a year in educational funds for programs to promote
gender equity in schools, to increase educational and job
opportunities for women, and to excise gender stereotypes
from textbooks and school curricula. She realized early in
her House career that “because there were only eight women
at the time who were Members of Congress, that I had a
special burden to bear to speak for [all women], because they didn’t have people who could express their concerns
for them adequately. So, I always felt that we were serving
a dual role in Congress, representing our own districts and,
at the same time, having to voice the concerns of the total
population of women in the country.”16
Working with Representative Edith Starrett Green
of Oregon and Senator Birch Evans Bayh of Indiana,
Mink built critical support for Title IX of the Education
Amendments of 1972, which barred sexual discrimination
in institutions receiving federal funds and opened
opportunities for women in athletics. Though the broad
strokes of the legislation were relatively noncontroversial at
passage, the House and Senate worked for several months to
hammer out more than 250 differences—11 of which dealt
specifically with sexual discrimination—between their bills.17
As enforcement of Title IX took effect, the full
ramifications of the act became clear and many supporters
of public school men’s sports programs objected to it,
believing that their funding was being cut in favor of
women’s sports under the new statute. In 1975 opponents
filed an amendment to the appropriations bill for the
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare that would
exempt school athletics from Title IX. Despite heavy
lobbying by Mink, the amendment survived the House
version of the bill. After the Senate struck the amendment
in conference, the House faced a tight vote on whether to
stand by its position. Just before voting, Mink received an
emergency call informing her that her daughter had been in
a life-threatening car accident in Upstate New York. Mink
rushed to her daughter’s side while the voting commenced,
ultimately ending in a narrow 212 to 211 victory for Title
IX opponents. When newspapers characterized Mink’s
tearful exit as a result of the vote, her allies leapt to the
Congresswoman’s defense. Speaker Carl Albert of Oklahoma
and Representative Daniel John Flood of Pennsylvania
explained the circumstances of Mink’s absence the following
legislative day, and the House voted to “recede and concur”
with the Senate, with Mink in attendance. Mink’s daughter
(and Title IX) survived.18
Mink garnered national attention for her fervent
support of liberal causes. In 1971 she received an invitation
from Oregon Democrats to appear on the Democratic
presidential primary ballot in that state in order to draw
attention to the antiwar movement. Mink committed
to the symbolism of her place in the race with seven
weekend visits to Oregon. “My candidacy offers a real and tangible alternative,” she said, “based—if any one word
can be singled out—on humanism.” Ultimately, Mink
received only 2 percent of the vote and withdrew her
candidacy afterward. However, she continued to receive
votes in Wisconsin and Maryland even after she had
ceased campaigning.19
In 1976, passing up a bid for what would have been
certain re-election to a seventh term in the House, Mink
sought the Democratic nomination for a seat in the U.S.
Senate. She lost the nomination to fellow House Member
Spark Matsunaga.20 Her supporters criticized Mink for not
running a more aggressive campaign, but Mink insisted
she had been running for the nomination and not against
Matsunaga, a respected colleague.21 She remained active in
politics, serving as Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans
and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs
from 1977 to 1978. For the next three years, she was
president of the Americans for Democratic Action, a liberal
political lobbying organization founded in 1947 by an
array of scholars, activists, and politicians.22 Mink returned
to Hawaii and was elected to the Honolulu city council,
serving from 1983 to 1987 (from 1983 to 1985 as its chair).
She ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1986 and then for
mayor of Honolulu in 1988. “Life is not based on being an
elected politician,” she said during this period. “Politics is a
constant involvement in the day-to-day working of society
as a whole, one part of which is government.”23
Despite these electoral setbacks, Mink kept her sights
set on returning to public office. An opportunity to return
to Congress arose in 1990 when Hawaii Governor John
Waihee III appointed Representative Daniel Kahikina
Akaka to replace the recently deceased Senator Matsunaga.
Mink announced her intention to seek both the Democratic
nominations for the special election to fill the vacancy
created by Akaka’s departure from the House and the
November general election for the new term in the 102nd
Congress (1991–1993), though she was not the party’s
choice in either case. Hawaii Democratic Party leaders
backed Mufi Hannemann, whose youth and business
connections they found appealing. Mink countered by
using the campaign slogan “The Experience of a Lifetime,”
a message that resonated with Hawaiian voters who tended
to prioritize seniority and expertise in their representatives.
Both the special election and the primary for the new term
were held on September 22, 1990, and Mink edged out
her nearest competitor, Hannemann, in both contests by less than 3 percent.24 She easily won the November general
election to the full term in the 102nd Congress and was reelected
comfortably to five subsequent terms with winning
percentages ranging from a high of 73 percent in 1992 to a
low of 60 percent in 1996.25
Mink was once again appointed to the Committee on
Education and Labor (later Education and the Workforce)
and was assigned to the Government Operations (later
Government Reform) Committee. During the 103rd
Congress (1993–1995), she was on the Natural Resources
and Budget Committees, serving on the latter through the
105th Congress (1997–1999).
Mink continued to pursue legislative reform in health
care and education. Believing that voters cared more about
quality health coverage than any other domestic issue, she
advocated a universal health care plan that would allow
people of all economic backgrounds to receive medical
treatment. Mink combined two of her long-standing
interests when she cosponsored the Gender Equity Act in
1993. Disturbed that gender discrimination persisted in
the United States 20 years after the passage of Title IX,
Mink asserted that targeting gender bias in elementary
and secondary education would help reduce inequalities
between the sexes. She told the House, “We must assure
that schools all across this country implement and integrate
into their curriculum, policies, goals, programs, activities,
and initiatives to achieve educational equity for women and
girls.”26 Mink continued to crusade for women’s rights by
co-chairing the Democratic Women’s Caucus in 1995.
In May 1994, Mink joined Representative Norman Y.
Mineta of California and other colleagues in forming the
Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. “We have felt
that we have not been consulted on important steps taken
by this administration and ones in the past,” Mink declared.
With so few APA Members of Congress, the caucus
welcomed Representatives and Senators as full members,
regardless of ethnicity, as long as they represented a district
with a large APA constituency.27 Mink won election as
chairwoman of the caucus when Mineta resigned from
Congress the following year, and she served in that capacity
through 1997.28
Throughout her political career, Mink remained true
to her liberal ideals. Previously in the majority both in her
party affiliation and her political ideology, she often found
herself in the minority during her second stretch in the
House. During the 1990s, Mink expended considerable effort opposing conservative legislation that challenged
the agenda she had promoted in the 1960s and 1970s. An
outspoken critic of the welfare overhaul legislation that the
Republican-led Congress and the William J. (Bill) Clinton
administration agreed upon in 1996, Mink exclaimed,
“Throwing people of f welfare and forcing them to take
the lowest-paying jobs in the community has created a
misery index for millions.”29 As Ranking Member of the
Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Oversight
and Investigations during the 105th Congress, Mink
butted heads with conservative Republicans regarding a
proposed $1.4 million investigation of alleged fraud within
the Teamsters union. As a loyal supporter of organized
labor, Mink accused Republican leadership of sponsoring a
“fishing expedition” that wasted “taxpayers’ money for sheer
partisan political purposes.”30
After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,
Mink also raised concerns about the establishment of
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2002.
Created in response to the perceived failures of various U.S.
intelligence agencies to uncover plots against the homeland,
DHS was charged with preventing further domestic
terrorist strikes. Mink feared the sprawling new agency
might undermine civil liberties by violating the privacy of
American citizens in the name of national security. In favor
of full disclosure of government attempts to safeguard the
nation from international threats, she proposed that no
secrets be kept from the public.31 “She had already been
through that as a Japanese American, seeing people put into
detention camps on the basis of what they supposedly were
as opposed to what they had actually done,” said fellow
Hawaii Representative Neil Abercrombie.32
On September 28, 2002, after a month-long
hospitalization with pneumonia, Patsy Mink died in
Honolulu, Hawaii. Her name remained on the November
ballot, and she was re-elected by a wide margin. Democrat
Ed Case defeated Patsy Mink’s husband and more than 30
other candidates in the special election to succeed her in the
remainder of the 107th Congress (2001–2003) and later
won election to the 108th Congress (2003–2005).33 Shortly
after Mink’s death, John A. Boehner of Ohio, chairman
of the Education and the Workforce Committee, reflected
upon Mink’s congressional service: “Patsy Mink was a
vibrant, passionate, and effective voice for the principles
she believed in. Her passing is a significant loss for our
committee, the people of Hawaii and the people of the United States.”34 Norman Mineta, her colleague and a
co-founder of the Congressional Asian Pacific American
Caucus, called Mink “an American hero, a leader and a
trailblazer who made an irreplaceable mark in the fabric of
our country.”35
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
[ Top ]