While we were a territory there were no Asian governors. The idea of Asian equality hadn't filtered back to the presidents who appointed our governors and judges.
Statehood gave us the kind of rainbow of chief executives Hawaii's mixed ethnic community deserves: William Quinn, Caucasian who had been our last territorial governor, too; Jack Burns, Caucasian; George Ariyoshi, Japanese; John Waihee, Hawaiian-Chinese; and Cayetano, Filipino.
Our self-chosen state governors and judges affirm an important civil rights point: Talent isn't allocated ethnically. Our state governors also have chosen cabinets and judges of mixed races whereas Asians rarely served pre-statehood.
Business reigned before statehood. It called the political tune until Jack Burns' Democrats captured the Legislature in 1954 and provoked some 75 vetoes from Gov. Samuel W. King in 1955.
Democrats have ruled since Burns moved to Washington Place in 1962, shocked the elite by inviting controversial union leaders to parties there, and kept close touch with the political alliance of labor and war veterans of Japanese ancestry that he used to topple the old order.
Burns was the greatest change-maker of all. This was somewhat surprising because even some of his close friends wondered if he had "the stuff" to be governor. His strength was a strong inner direction and sense of purpose undeterred by political defeats. He wanted Hawaii to follow a more egalitarian path and his team helped make it happen.
It was one of our most idealistic times, later soiled by "Land and Power" politics that the territorial elite had practiced, too.
Ingram Stainback, governor from 1942 to 1951, was a starchy, crusty lawyer out of Tennessee who privately preferred commonwealth status for Hawaii. He was silenced while in office because President Truman, who gave him a second term, was deeply committed to statehood.
Stainback helped get World War II military rule lifted in 1944. He used a public hearing process to cool overheated emotions in the angry six-month dock strike of 1949.
Oren Long, 1951-53, was an educator with a prim, affable manner who appointed the first Japanese cabinet member.
When the Republicans recaptured the White House, it was one term and out for Samuel King because Senate politics forced President Eisenhower to appoint him in 1953 instead of Randolph Crossley, whom Ike preferred. King, one-eighth Hawaiian, was our only non-Caucasian territorial governor.
In 1957 Ike turned to William Quinn, just 38, as part of an effort to put promising young Republicans at the helm of all U.S. territories.
Quinn, a political neophyte, was a quick learner. He was the only governor to speak to his constituents on his own TV shows.
HE beat Burns to be our first elected governor and thus allowed Republicans to oversee forming a new government.
Our territorial governors delegated power broadly to cabinet officers. They had tiny personal staffs, a sharp contrast to post-statehood, perhaps explainable by elective politics.
Because of Burns' illness and no two-term limit, George Ariyoshi was acting governor and governor from 1973 to 1986 - 13 years of earnest, colorless, solid fiscal conservatism.
Waihee (1986-94) came in when the state treasury was flush. He and the Legislature pushed the state payroll up 40 percent and were especially kind to friends. Waihee is apt to be longest remembered for using land and cash to help Hawaiians as never before.
Cayetano, Waihee's under-wraps lieutenant governor, broke away once elected in 1994. He announced major financial shortfalls, dug in to downsize government and laid the blame on Waihee. Cayetano has not been strong on "the vision thing" but he's tough and decisive at a time such qualities are welcome.