OFFICE of Hawaiian Affairs trustees have deadlocked 4 to 4 since January over choosing a replacement member for the late Billie Beamer. It takes my memory back to 1947 and the first territorial legislative session I covered. That one spent its first three weeks deadlocked 15-15 over choosing a House speaker. Deadlock in OHA
could be healthyAt that time, most of us in Hawaii, and particularly those of us at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, were gung ho to see Hawaii become the 49th state. Our publisher, Joe Farrington, was Hawaii's delegate to Congress. We were in no way reticent about promoting statehood at every opportunity. Every significant visitor to Hawaii was interviewed on it.
The 15-15 House deadlock made us cringe. It made Hawaii seem clownish, we thought, at a time we were arguing Hawaii was better prepared for statehood than any previous territory had been at its time of admission.
Then a ray of sunshine broke our gloom. Massachusetts, an original state, was having a similar speakership deadlock -- even longer, I believe.
Fifty-one years afterward, I'm inclined to look on deadlocks as a sign of political robustness. Certainly the one in Hawaii in 1947 was symptomatic of a surge in Democratic Party strength -- the strongest sign yet that we were moving toward a real two-party system. It culminated seven years later in a sweeping Democratic takeover of both houses of the Legislature after 52 years in minority status as weak as that of Hawaii Republicans today.
The 1947 deadlock finally was broken in favor of the Republicans. A Democratic freshman bolted to their side but won agreement that the Democrats for the first time would share committee responsibilities. Some of us tended to lionize George Aguiar for his courage, but his Kauai constituents voted him dead last when he ran for re-election in 1948. There ended his political career.
During the 1947 deadlock, votes were taken almost every day, some open, some by secret ballot, but always with the same result: 15-15. The Republicans had won the House by 16-14 in the 1946 general election, but a West Hawaii Republican died soon after election. Earl Nielsen, who ran a photo shop, was a losing GOP nominee in West Hawaii in November. When the party endorsed someone else for the special election he was wooed by the Democrats, switched, won by just 16 votes and stood fast with the Democrats in the showdown.
I can still hear the tellers, reporting "15-15, Mr. Speaker." Mr. Temporary Speaker was the highest vote-getting representative elected in 1946 from the First Election District, East Hawaii -- Thomas Sakakihara. (Hawaii had multi-member districts in those days.)
His win was notable because he was one of the few Japanese from Hawaii interned in the recent war. Sakakihara was supposed to get just the ceremonial honor of opening the session but his work dragged on and on, with no significant work done on other legislative business.
OHA, at least, seems to have gone about its routine business pretty smoothly during the interim. The OHA deadlock presumably will be broken Friday. That's the deadline for a reluctant Governor Cayetano to make an appointment if the trustees can't break the standoff themselves.
TO control OHA is to control some $250 million in cash assets and their disposition to help native Hawaiian causes, plus additional funds not restricted by the 50 percent blood quantum requirement that is placed on the rental flow from ceded lands formerly held by the monarchy.
This is big business that is going to get bigger, perhaps very much bigger. Still under litigation and negotiation is a Circuit Court ceded land rent award to OHA that might wreck the state budget. It is based on an interpretation of a law that now appears to have been very sloppily written with a reach far beyond what the Legislature intended.
Thanks partly to the interest aroused by the long deadlock, OHA's voter turnout to elect trustees in November may be the biggest ever. That will be a healthy sign of democracy at work.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.