What I learned from reading The Island Edge of America by Tom Coffman.
What I learned from reading The Island Edge of America by Tom Coffman.
[4:15] We tend to forget the losers.
[8:20] Elections pose real choices.
[11:00] Pay attention to the sparrows.
[14:15] Don't trust the polls.
[16:06] It's about control.
“In simplest terms, Hawai‘i’s political history has been about control. Overrun by America, the nation of Hawai‘i lost control of its government, resources, and ability to shape its future. With statehood, Hawai‘i regained a measure of control. The 1960s were about celebrating control. The 1970s and well into the 1980s were about maintaining control and about expanding control if possible through such devices as the Hawai‘i State Plan, the revised Hawai‘i constitution, and challenges to the U.S. Constitution. The story since then has been progressively about loss of control, most obviously for economic reasons. The exception to this trend has been the inconclusive attempt by native Hawaiians to regain greater autonomy, which has been romantically described as sovereignty.”
Hello and welcome to the third episode of the Hawai‘i Reader.
I’m your host, Sterling Higa. And together, we’re learning from the stories of Hawai‘i.
Today we’re reading and responding to The Island Edge of America: A Political History of Hawai'i by Tom Coffman.
Coffman is perhaps the most prolific writer of political history in post-statehood Hawai‘i.
His work includes:
I’ve read these four books and recommend them all, especially if this episode piques your curiosity.
Coffman also had a hand in helping Governor George Ariyoshi publish a memoir, With Obligation to All.
The Island Edge of America is Coffman’s most ambitious work. Published in 2003, Island Edge attempts to outline a political history of Hawai‘i in the 20th century.
It falls short of this goal, as the book stops with the election of Waihe‘e in 1986. But I laud Coffman for his ambition.
This is the kind of grand history that academics rarely attempt. And it’s a book that few other writers are qualified to write. Coffman had privileged access to archival materials, oral histories, and his own memories of working as a journalist and writer during the last third of the 20th century.
Because of his intimacy with the subject, some critics might argue that Coffman can’t write an objective account. After all, Coffman counts some of the political figures discussed as personal friends, and if you read through a few of his books, it’s not hard to figure out which figures he views with affection, Ariyoshi chief among these.
I say, “Who cares?” The subtitle is a history, not the history. The danger we have isn’t that Coffman’s book is viewed as the definitive political history of Hawai‘i in the 20th century. The danger is too few histories have been written and not many young people bother to study Hawaiian history at all.
In fact, while preparing to record this episode, I bounced Coffman’s name off my friends, many of whom are keenly interested in Hawai‘i politics. Many had heard of Catch A Wave, some knew Nation Within, and a few knew about Coffman’s more recent book Inclusion, but fewer still had heard of or read The Island Edge of America.
My hope is that this episode inspires more readers to pick up Coffman’s book. Love it, hate it, agree or disagree with it. Just read it.
And now, on to the five lessons. Feel free to skip ahead using the shownotes if there’s a lesson that interests you.
If not, listen on.
Most people under the age of 40 don’t know who Frank Fasi is except as the name on Fasi Municipal Building in Honolulu.
But Frank Fasi was Honolulu’s longest serving Mayor, 22 years in total.
I propose that Fasi accomplished more in his time as Mayor of Honolulu than any of his predecessors or successors.
Fasi’s legacy includes creating TheBus, which for a time was a national-award-winning public transportation system.
Fasi oversaw the construction of the Neal S. Blaisdell Center which includes an arena, concert hall, and conference center. He also established the neighborhood board system and was a leading advocate for H-Power.
Honolulu City Lights? Fasi. Summer Fun? Fasi. The shaka? As crazy as it sounds, Fasi is credited with popularizing the shaka as his campaign symbol.
Fasi was ambitious. Coffman reports that in 1968, Fasi’s goals were highlighted in his campaign office, “facing his desk, a five-step projection of his imagined future was written on a board: Step one was mayor of Honolulu. Step two was governor of Hawai‘i; step three, United States senator; step four, vice president; and step five, president of the United States.”
Fasi never made the jump from Mayor of Honolulu to Governor of Hawai‘i, though he came close. Four times.
In 1974, Fasi won 62,000 votes in the Democratic primary to Governor Ariyoshi’s 71,000, only 9,000 votes shy of winning. Tom Gill took 59,000. So Governor Ariyoshi advanced to the general election with 36% of the vote.
In 1978, Fasi came within 3,622 votes of beating incumbent Governor Ariyoshi in the Democratic primary.
And in the 1982 gubernatorial race, Fasi won 89,000 votes as an independent, beating the Republican candidate D.G. Anderson who took 81,507 votes. Together, Fasi and Anderson’s 170,000 votes dwarfed the 141,000 that Governor Ariyoshi won on his way to a third term in office. It’s quite possible that if Fasi had run as a Republican, he would have beat Ariyoshi and become Governor.
In other words, Fasi was always within striking distance of Washington Place.
And he was an extraordinary politician by any account.
During his career, Fasi won elections as a Democrat and as a Republican. He also ran as an independent.
And later in his career, pushed out of the Republican party in favor of younger candidates like Pat Saiki, Fasi established his own political party, the “Best Party.” That’s not a joke. He literally named it the “Best Party.”
Third party candidates are rarely competitive in gubernatorial races, though in the 1994 gubernatorial election, as the “Best Party” candidate, Fasi beat the Republican candidate Pat Saiki with 30% of the vote.
Again, it’s possible that if Fasi had run as a Republican, he would have beaten Ben Cayetano, as Fasi and Saiki together totaled 58.6% of the vote to Cayetano’s 35.8%.
But most people under the age of 40 don’t know who Fasi is or what he accomplished, in part because few authors bothered to write him into the history books.
This was because Fasi’s prickly personality drove away would-be biographers.
Coffman explains that Fasi and Jim Hall “set out to write a book about Fasi’s amazing political career,” but “the book project floundered on a disagreement between Fasi and Hall.”
Alas, Fasi reminds us of the mythical king Ozymandias:
“Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Fasi ran for Governor against George Ariyoshi three times and lost three times in 1974, 1978, and 1982.
It’s worth reflecting on what those election results meant for Hawai‘i.
Fasi was a proponent of population growth and urban development. Ariyoshi, by contrast, was a proponent of managed growth.
To understand managed growth, we have to rewind fifty years to the 1970s.
By the 1970s, quoting Coffman, “...the issue of rapid growth had become more intense. Excessive population, [Ariyoshi] told the legislature, “seems to be central to nearly every problem in our state.” He listed competition for jobs, agricultural land, parks, and scenic vistas. Too many people translated to increased crime, “too much pressure” on public institutions, and the erosion of “the aloha spirit.” In short, “too many people can spell disaster for this State.””
Ariyoshi’s solution was to limit population growth by limiting development.
In this approach, Ariyoshi was channeling widespread dissatisfaction with the effects of growth. Continuing from Coffman, “When the consensus supporting rapid growth came unstuck around 1970, many forces and interests had to be involved in creating a new plan.”
“To the curious visitor, Hawai‘i may have seemed intoxicated with the making of plans. The young state conceived of itself as a place of dreams and visions,” writes Coffman. “Planning was the rational way to make visions manifest and the State of Hawai‘i, from the beginning, was devoted to planning. Hawai‘i was just small enough, centralized enough, separate enough, and otherwise self-contained enough to tempt intelligent people to believe they could see Hawai‘i as a whole. Hawai‘i could be planned. The most strategy-conscious agency of its government, the Department of Planning and Economic Development, fused at least nominally its two often-conflicting pursuits into one effort. Implicitly, planning was on a par with economic development.”
This was the context for Ariyoshi’s State Plan, which had as its backbone an emphasis on growth management. In other words, limiting the population of Hawai‘i.
Of course, Fasi as a candidate for governor offered a different approach: growth.
Fifty years later, in 2024, growth is no longer the dominant political issue.
After all, the population of Hawai‘i is stagnant or declining, depending on the island.
In part, this is because Ariyoshi succeeded.
During his administration and afterwards, policies were put in place to limit development.
Development slowed, and so did population growth.
Voters made decisions in the 1970s, and we inherit the consequences.
In his essay Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote “An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.”
If so, then all political campaigning in Hawai‘i takes place in the shadow of Robert Oshiro.
Governors Burns, Ariyoshi, and Waihe‘e were each elected thanks to Bob Oshiro, the ultimate campaign manager.
Oshiro compiled the best record of victorious big ticket campaigns in post-statehood Hawai‘i. And with his combination of new media savvy and grassroots engagement, he created a blueprint for campaigning which still inspires political operatives in Hawai‘i today.
Coffman’s book does a decent job of outlining the Burns campaigns, the Ariyoshi campaigns, and Waihe‘e’s first campaign in 1986.
For a more focused examination of the practice of political campaigning, I recommend reading Campaign Hawai‘i: An Inside Look at Politics in Paradise by Rick Tsujimura, an acolyte of Bob Oshiro.
Anyhow, Oshiro was the man.
And Coffman reminds us that behind every politician is an organization of people who work together to place them in office.
In recent years, some people have become cynical about the political process.
Campaigning is no longer as glorious as it once was.
And today’s political organizers pale in comparison to Oshiro.
Let’s consider one example of Oshiro’s excellence.
The year is 1978.
Incumbent Governor Ariyoshi is facing a tough challenge from Frank Fasi in the Democratic primary.
Ariyoshi is down in the polls.
In response, “Oshiro set his sights on filling the cavernous Aloha Stadium,” which seats 50,000 people.
Oshiro organized a rally two weeks before the election.
That rally attracted 49,701 people.
“After hours of performance by Hawai‘i’s top entertainers, Ariyoshi appeared on stage, buried in a mound of leis, with a second bank of leis at his feet. He said, “I am what I am because of you.” Okage sama de.”
The number is impressive, but the organization moreso. Entertainers were booked. Transportation was arranged. And volunteers made meals for all 49,000 guests.
One week later, Ariyoshi was still trailing Fasi in the polls.
“Oshiro quickly set a campaign goal of making one hundred thousand telephone calls in the final week. The calling campaign was based on the organic image of a tree, in which one branch of calls created another then created another. Everyone called everyone about calling everyone. Some people received a half dozen calls, and some probably more.”
Oshiro wasn’t the only campaigner, of course. Dan Aoki and others are profiled in the book.
And of course, for every Bob Oshiro recorded in a history book there are dozens more nameless campaign volunteers who work for months: sign-waving in the sun, canvassing in the rain, cooking meals for campaign events.
These are the sparrows that lift politicians into office.
To use a theater metaphor, our focus on the actor in the spotlight distracts us from the team working backstage on the production.
There is no show without that team.
Pay attention to the sparrows.
As mentioned before, Ariyoshi was down in the polls in 1978, but he came back to win.
This is a common theme in this book: a candidate is down in the polls, their team rallies, and they win.
It’s a reminder that it isn’t over until it’s over.
For example, when John Waihe‘e ran for Governor in 1986, he was the underdog in the Democratic primary. On August 4 of that year, the Honolulu Advertiser published a poll that showed Waihe‘e polling at 18% while his main opponent Cece Heftel polled at 54%.
As Coffman writes, “numbers that bad can crush candidates.”
Waihe‘e rebounded, with his campaign staff surging in response to the poor results.
“More than anything the campaign was about Waihe‘e’s being young, capable, and filled with energy,” writes Coffman. “Where many candidates turn over their time to schedulers grudgingly, Waihe‘e was out shaking hands and talking to people day and night. His goal was three coffee hours a night. If he did not have three coffee hours on his schedule each night, he would go to headquarters to find out why.”
He eventually beat Heftel in the primary with 106,000 votes to 84,000.
In our data-obsessed culture, it’s easy to defer to pollsters.
But history teaches that pollsters are often wrong, and sometimes fabulously so.
In part, this is because polls are not real life. A phone call is not a ballot. Nor is an online survey.
But the primary reason history doesn’t follow polls is because of human agency.
Sometimes a team responds to bad polling by collapsing. Other times, they respond with a surge of activity.
Committed advocates can adopt an unpopular cause and make it mainstream.
This works for issues as well as candidates.
Total commitment, conviction, hard work–this is the stuff victory is made of.
Don’t trust the polls.
To close this podcast, I’d like to leave the last words to Coffman.
“In simplest terms, Hawai‘i’s political history has been about control,” he writes. “Overrun by America, the nation of Hawai‘i lost control of its government, resources, and ability to shape its future. With statehood, Hawai‘i regained a measure of control. The 1960s were about celebrating control. The 1970s and well into the 1980s were about maintaining control and about expanding control if possible through such devices as the Hawai‘i State Plan, the revised Hawai‘i constitution, and challenges to the U.S. Constitution. The story since then has been progressively about loss of control, most obviously for economic reasons. The exception to this trend has been the inconclusive attempt by native Hawaiians to regain greater autonomy, which has been romantically described as sovereignty.
“Although the Democratic Party has served as a sympathetic environment for Hawaiians, neither the Democratic governors nor the Democratic congressional delegation have resolved the issues of dispossession resulting from annexation. While the formation of OHA and the elections of Waihe‘e and Akaka have reflected concern and commitment, these steps have been undertaken as coalition-building in an American political context, when the underlying issues of Hawaiians are about nationality and nation. Thus far neither native Hawaiians nor the U.S. government have defined a new relationship. Yet, that which is re-emerging, an indigenous Hawaiian nation, was in historic terms only recently submerged. What will ultimately be resurrected will force a redefinition of the State of Hawai‘i, with ramifications for the federal government, particularly the military. It will also have ramifications for other indigenous people in America and around the world, many of whom are watching the sovereignty debate in Hawai‘i with interest.
“The resurgence of Hawaiians, interrelated with the dramatic achievements of Asian immigrants in America, underscores the existence of not only a multiethnic history in Hawai‘i but a multilayered transnational history. As the island edge of America, Hawai‘i begins the twenty-first century as both the fiftieth state and a submerged nation, as a passageway of Pacific cultures and peoples, and as a semiseparate, mixed society that function somewhere beyond conventional definition, the possibilities of which have only been glimpsed.”
Twenty years later, Coffman’s words still ring true.
The possibilities of Hawai‘i have only been glimpsed.
If you found this episode interesting, I hope you’ll buy The Island Edge of America and read it.
This is an underrated book about Hawai‘i’s political history, and it’s well worth a read.
I’ll leave a link to buy the book in the description along with a link to the full transcript.
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Thank you for listening to the Hawai‘i Reader.
I’m your host, Sterling Higa. And together, we’re learning from the stories of Hawai‘i.
A hui hou.