Patricia Saiki’s revitalization of the Hawaiian Republican
Party propelled her to election as the first GOP
Representative from the state since 1959, when it entered
the Union. As a Member of Congress, Saiki focused on
economic and environmental legislation important to
her Honolulu constituency as well as the international
Asian community. In 1990 Saiki left the House to
campaign for a Senate seat in a race that many political
observers believed might signal a shift in the balance of
political power in Hawaii. “Before Pat Saiki was elected to
Congress, it was hard for us to relate to young people and
tell them, ‘It’s great to be a Republican,’” noted a Hawaii
Republican. “Now we can begin to spin the tale that will
make people interested in supporting the Republican Party
in Hawaii.”1
Patricia Fukuda was born to Kazuo and Shizue Fukuda
on May 28, 1930, in Hilo, on the big island of Hawaii. She
graduated from Hilo High School in 1948 and received a
bachelor of science degree from the University of Hawai‘i
at Mānoa in 1952. In 1954 she married Stanley Saiki, an
obstetrician, and they had five children: Stanley, Stuart,
Sandra, Margaret, and Laura. Patricia Saiki taught history
in Hawaii’s public and private schools for 12 years.
Her path to politics began with her work as a union
organizer and research assistant to Hawaii senate
Republicans. “I was always interested in organizing people
so that we would have a say…. But I assumed leadership
positions because I wanted to move our status ahead, but
I didn’t think of it as a political career until I was faced
with having to abide by the rules that were installed on
me by an entity over which I had no control. So I felt
that the only way to do this is change the control.”2 In
the mid-1960s, Saiki served as the secretary and then the
vice chair of the state Republican Party. She attended the
state constitutional convention in 1968, and that year won
election to the Hawaii house of representatives, where she
served for six years. In 1974 Saiki won election to the state
senate, where she served until 1982. In 1982 Saiki left the
legislature and made an unsuccessful bid for lieutenant
governor. She subsequently oversaw a three-fold expansion
in party membership and helped the party raise $800,000
during her two-and-a-half-year tenure as party chair. Her
work contributed to the revival of the Republican Party in
the strongly Democratic state, which led to the victory of
Democrat-turned-Republican Frank Fasi in the Honolulu
mayoral race and helped President Ronald Reagan win Hawaii in the 1984 presidential election. The only previous Republican presidential candidate to carry the state was
Richard M. Nixon in 1972.
After spending nearly two decades in state politics, Saiki decided to run for the U.S. House seat vacated in
July 1986 by five-term Democrat Cecil Landau Heftel,
who left to run for governor. As the state’s population
center, the district encompassed Honolulu, its suburbs,
and the Pearl Harbor naval base (Hawaii’s only other
congressional district included the rest of Oahu and the
other islands). Tourism and commercial shipping were the
lifeblood for the cosmopolitan population of white, Asian-American, and Native-Hawaiian residents, most of whom
were registered Democrats. The potential for influence in
Washington as well as the war on drugs were the major
issues leading up to the September special election to fill
the remaining four months of Heftel’s term in the 99th
Congress (1985–1987). Liberal Democratic state senator
Neil Abercrombie was the early favorite; however, a third
candidate, Democrat Mufi Hannemann, a 32-year-old
corporate lobbyist and former White House fellow, entered
the race, siphoning off a portion of the liberal vote. Saiki
benefited from the Democratic intraparty warfare but
she was unable to best Abercrombie in the September 20
special election. He prevailed over Saiki by fewer than
1,000 votes, 30 to 29 percent; Hannemann trailed by
about 2,200 votes (28 percent). On the same day, Saiki
won the Republican primary to run for a full term in the
100th Congress (1987–1989), while Abercrombie and
Hannemann battled for the Democratic nomination for
the full term. As the two Democrats faced off in the closed
primary, several thousand Saiki supporters temporarily
registered as Democrats to give Hannemann a narrow win
and instantly reduce Abercrombie to lame-duck status in
the 99th Congress.3
In the general election for the 100th Congress,
Hannemann had history on his side: ever since the
state entered the Union in 1959, Hawaii had sent only
Democrats to the U.S. House of Representatives. But
Hannemann also faced several obstacles. First, the acrimony
from the primary carried over as Abercrombie withheld
his endorsement. Saiki was also popular among Japanese-American voters, who made up one-third of the district.
Saiki won the general election with 59 percent of the vote,
a 33,000-vote advantage; no previous Hawaiian Republican
candidate for the U.S. House had ever polled more than
45 percent of the vote.4 She became the first Republican
to represent Hawaii in the House since Mary Elizabeth
Pruett Farrington won election as a Territorial Delegate
in 1954 (Republican Hiram Leong Fong served in the
U.S. Senate from 1959 to 1977). Two years later, Saiki ran
unopposed in the 1988 Republican primary. In the threeway
Democratic primary, Mary Bitterman, a former director
of the Voice of America, emerged as the convincing winner;
however, she spent the bulk of her campaign funds securing
the nomination, leaving her little money for the general
election. She was not able to dent Saiki’s record, and the
incumbent won comfortably with a 55 percent majority.5
Throughout her career, Saiki established a fiscally
conservative voting record on economic issues, in line with
most of her GOP colleagues. She also supported much of
the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations’ foreign
policy programs—voting for aid to the Nicaraguan Contras,
funding for the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the
death penalty for drug-related murders. Where she parted
company with many Republicans was on her moderate
stance on touchstone social issues, chief among them
reproductive rights. Saiki supported women’s reproductive
freedom.6 Saiki emphasized that “anything that involves a
woman’s life or career, it’s very personal, very close to us….
We’re the ones who experience it. We’re the ones who have
to pay for it.”7
Saiki received seats on the Committee on Banking,
Finance and Urban Affairs, the Committee on Merchant
Marine and Fisheries, and the Select Committee on
Aging. Her seat on Merchant Marine and Fisheries,
with assignments on its Oceanography and Fisheries
Subcommittee, was particularly important to her district.
Saiki worked to preserve Hawaii’s natural beauty and
unique resources. She persuaded the Bush administration to
suspend military test bombing on the island of Kaho‘olawe,
situated just offshore from Maui.8 Claimed by U.S.
officials in the early 1950s, the island nevertheless retained
significant cultural relevance for Native Hawaiians.9 In 1990
she supported an amendment to revise the annual accrual
method of accounting for pineapple and banana growers,
whose longer growth and production cycles distorted
their income statements and exposed them to excess
taxation.10 Saiki also advocated a ban on environmentally
unsound driftnet fishing in the Pacific, urging the U.S.
Secretary of State to call an international convention to
discuss the topic.11
Representative Saiki’s extended family had been interned
by the U.S. government during World War II.12 In 1987
she signed on to support H.R. 442, a measure with broad
bipartisan support that called for monetary reparations and
an official apology to the Japanese Americans who were
incarcerated during the war. Saiki and 62 other Republicans
joined 180 Democrats to approve the legislation later that
year. After the measure passed the Senate, Saiki was present
when President Reagan signed it into law in 1988. She
recalled that Reagan’s staff “insisted that I be right there
next to the President because they knew the history of
this. That’s the one thing that I am so proud about, that
I had something to do with it and make things at least—not equal, but acceptable under the circumstances.”13 She
subsequently pressed Congress to expedite payouts.14
As an Asian American representing a district in the
middle of the Pacific, Saiki also was involved with Pacific
Rim issues. She served on congressional delegations that
visited Tonga for the birthday of the South Pacific island’s
monarch and attended the funeral for the Emperor of
Japan. In May 1989, several weeks before the Chinese
military’s massacre of student protestors in Beijing’s
Tiananmen Square, Saiki introduced a resolution in the
House declaring congressional support for democratic rights
in the People’s Republic of China. “I have been deeply
moved by the determination and idealism of the Chinese
students,” she said. “Fighting in a nonviolent way for what
one believes to be true has been a cornerstone of many civil
rights movements.”15
In April 1990, popular, long-serving Hawaii Senator
Spark Masayuki Matsunaga died of cancer. Urged by her
friend President Bush, Saiki entered the election to fill
the islands’ vacant seat. “Hawaii needs a Senator who can
make the people on Pennsylvania Avenue and Constitution
Avenue understand the people on Kamehameha Avenue,”
Saiki said while announcing her candidacy.16 Democratic
Governor John Waihee III appointed Hawaii Congressman
Daniel Kahikina Akaka to serve as interim Senator until the
November special election. Akaka’s new position made him
the favorite to hold onto the seat in the fall.
Yet Saiki proved a formidable opponent. She won the
primary against four other Republican candidates with a
strong 92 percent of the vote. In the general election, both
candidates supported the key economic issues that many
Hawaiians favored: maintaining price supports for cane
sugar, promoting increased tourism, and halting target
practice on Kaho‘olawe. Saiki proved a more dynamic
candidate than the sedate Akaka. She also had repeatedly
proved her ability to draw votes from the Japanese-American community. Moreover, the growing suburban,
conservative white population allowed her, in the words
of one political strategist, to “cut into the Democratic
establishment.”17 Political observers believed Saiki might be
among a handful of candidates to help Republicans regain
control of the Senate. However, Akaka had the support of
the well-entrenched Hawaiian Democratic establishment,
and his warm personality appealed to voters. Saiki lost
to Akaka by a healthy margin of about 33,000 votes,
54 percent to 45 percent.
After Saiki left Congress, President Bush appointed her
director of the Small Business Administration, where she
served from 1991 to 1993. In 1993 she taught at Harvard
University’s Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy
School of Government. The following year, she became
the first woman candidate on a major party ticket for
Hawaii governor. Saiki lost a three-way race to Democratic
Lieutenant Governor Ben Cayetano.18 Patricia Saiki
returned to teaching and lives in Honolulu.
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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