Face of GOP in Hawaii
grows more feminine
Six of 10 Republican seats in
the House are held by women
While critics like to portray the Republican Party as a group of rich, white men, the GOP's membership in the Hawaii state Capitol might beg to differ.
At the top there's Gov. Linda Lingle, a Jewish woman who is the first female chief executive in this traditionally Democratic state. And while there are no Republican women in the Senate, six of the 10 GOP House members are women.
"I believe, really, that the face of the Republican Party is women," said Rep. Cynthia Thielen (R, Kaneohe-Kailua). "What that means for the people of Hawaii is we're going to focus on ways to help working families to help our economy."
Hawaii's Democratic Party has dominated state politics for 50 years. And according to exit-poll data from the Nov. 2 general election, 57 percent of women voters in Hawaii backed Democrats John Kerry and John Edwards.
In Hawaii, nine of 41 House Democrats are women, as are six of 25 senators, including Senate Vice President Donna Mercado Kim and Senate Majority Leader Colleen Hanabusa.
While Lingle recognizes the 3-2 ratio of women to men in the GOP House membership, she said it hasn't been a conscious effort on her part to bring more women into the party.
"I expect they're attracted because they see a woman governor and I do relate well to them -- I can share experiences with them," Lingle said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We didn't go and say we want to have so many women or anything like that, it's just whoever comes forward.
"The Republican Party -- the philosophy of personal responsibility -- is something that women believe strongly."
The party's philosophy attracted Pat Saiki, a trailblazer among GOP women in Hawaii.
Saiki, a former state party chairwoman, served in the Legislature for 14 years before becoming the first Republican from Hawaii to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. She served two consecutive terms before losing to U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka for the Senate in 1990.
The only other Hawaii Republican to serve in Congress was Sen. Hiram Fong, one of the islands' first two senators after statehood in 1959.
"I chose to run as a Republican because I believed in its core principals of low taxation, equal opportunity, that sort of thing," Saiki said. "The Republican party has always been open to women and has always encouraged women to run for office.
"I guess I'm one of those pioneers that tried to do the best we can for this state to get women involved."
Political analyst Neal Milner, however, is at a loss to explain the rise of women in the Hawaii GOP.
"I don't know if there's any kind of general explanation for it," said Milner, a political scientist at the University of Hawaii who's been observing local politics for more than 30 years.
Milner said he believes it has been Lingle's ability to regenerate interest in the party that has attracted more people in general, not just women.
"I just don't think that Linda Lingle and gender and these women's success are tied together in a very neat package," Milner said. "I think it has more to do with Linda Lingle coming forward as a strong candidate at a time when the Democrats in the state were weakening."
