‘We Care About Issues More Than Power’
From seasoned veterans to fresh-faced rookies, the seven Republican women of the state House put differences regarding abortion aside to work together for Hawaii
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From left to right, top to bottom,
Republican state Reps. Anne
Stevens, Barbara Marumoto,
Colleen Meyer, Corinne Ching,
Cynthia Thielen, Kymberly Pine
and Lynne Finnegan
again: this time the Kahala state House seat she still holds today.
“When I first went to work at the Capitol, there was a lone woman in the Senate, Eureka Forbes. A few more women in the House,” she remembers. “Now a third of us are women.
“The culture and lifestyle of the Legislature were different then. Most of the members were lawyers. There were decanters of hard liquor in many offices, and the guys went out to lunch at the Club Chandelier or the Tropics. There were a lot of tea house parties where business was done.
“Opening day parties lasted until dark and sometimes ended in a fight. Everyone offered a full spread: sashimi, noodles and a full bar.
“Now opening day is dry. One office offers ice cream sundaes. My office serves mini bagels and salmon caught by my husband. Lox lovers make a beeline for my office.”
During her early legislative career, Marumoto balanced raising teenagers and the demands of an office-holder. “The kids were in school a lot,” she remembers. “And they were good kids. They took care of themselves. I made a point of always being home to cook them dinner. They all turned out well: Two graduated from medical school, one works for Local Motion, the fourth is a producer with Channel 2.”
Marumoto has endured a quarter-century of Republican ups and downs - mostly downs - in the state Legislature. “In 1994, we had only four Republicans in the House of Representatives,” she remembers.
It didn’t seem it could get any worse than that. Then it did. “The minority leader died,” she remembers. “We couldn’t cover all the committees. We had to send staffers to them and then bring the staffers into the caucus room to brief us on what was going on.”
Marumoto herself has twice served as House minority leader. She also watched GOP numbers in the House grow - to a high of 19, and then fall to 10 last year.
Marumoto ascribes part of the reason why Republicans have had trouble building numbers in the House to the “testosterone factor.” Former GOP colleagues Gene Ward, Quentin Kawananakoa, Mike Liu and Bob McDermott all left the House to run for Congress. Rep. Fred Hemmings left to make a bid for the governorship.
“One of them asked me just before he announced for Congress: ‘How can you stay here in the state House?’ Because there’s important work to be done here. I would have liked to have seen them stay here and build up the House caucus.
“I don’t know why we lost seats the last time out,” she says. “It’s hard to pinpoint the reason. I think people vote personality, not party. In Hawaii, most people are Democrats or Independents; a tiny minority are Republicans.
“In my Kahala district in 2004, six out of the seven precincts were won by John Kerry. So I consider it a personal victory that I was re-elected. I survey my constituents often, send them the results of the surveys, explain to them why I vote the way I do.”
Rep. Marumoto knows the history of Hawaii’s Republican Party; Rep. Lynn Finnegan may be the GOP’s future. Rep. Thielen calls Finnegan “the face of the Republican Party.”
That face, in Finnegan’s case at least, comes from Hawaii’s working class. In her much-praised opening day speech, Finnegan introduced her mother, Francisca Suan Ledesma. “My mother was born on Molokai, a daughter of a pineapple field worker who came here from the island of Cebu in the Philippines. No stranger to hard manual labor, for years my mother worked at a charcoal farm doing whatever it took to keep the business going. It meant carrying 5-, 25- and even 50-pound bags of charcoal covered in black soot.”
She also introduced her father, Douglas MacArthur Quejas Berbano, Philippines-born and a veteran of service in the United States Navy. “After serving his country,” Finnegan said, my dad worked 12-hour days in construction, six to seven days a week, also taking side jobs whenever time permitted.”
Finnegan told of the family’s progress from Kuhio Park Terrace to Pearl City to ownership of a townhouse in Waianae, and of her schooling at Makaha Elementary, Waianae High and Hanalani School in Mililani.
As a result of her working-class background, Finnegan claims that she can “speaks pidgin as good as anyone.“After high school, she attended Leeward Community College and the University of Hawaii. She left the university to sing and dance with the Al Harrington show. “I got distracted,” she says, but admits that “it was fun time.”
At 24 she met and married Peter Finnegan, a captain in the Honolulu Fire Department. They have two children, a son, 10, and a daughter, 6.
“Concern for better educational choices for our daughter got us involved in politics,” says Finnegan. Finnegan and husband Peter supported Linda Lingle in her unsuccessful 1998 gubernatorial bid. When Lingle took over as Republican chair, they began volunteering with the party. Elected to the House in 2002, Finnegan became minority leader during the last legislative session.
Finnegan admits that balancing family, home, children and the Legislature often presents her with “an inner struggle.”
“Our lives are really flowing. We’re always checking to see who’s picking up the kids, what church activities we’re going to attend. Everything we do we discuss with our children. We want them to learn to be a part civic life.
“I can definitely see how life in the Legislature can be a challenge. It would be easy to sacrifice family and responsibilities at home. But I think a legislator has to be grounded in family first.” Still, she acknowledges “always feeling guilty” that she’s ignoring either her family or her role as minority leader.
It’s a challenge faced by two of the other women in the Republican caucus. At age 40, second-term Rep. Corinne Ching gave birth to her first child. “I think motherhood has made me a better legislator,” says Ching. “When parents testify about an issue, it hits you in a way it never did before.
“Parenthood has its joys, but it changes your life. I doubt that I’ll ever have a worry-free day again. And I admit, between my 2-year-old and the Legislature, there are times when I feel tired. Before my daughter was born, I tried to do it all myself. Now I delegate more. I reach out for help”
Ching’s husband, Stuart Lerner, is an emergency room doctor who works nights. “That doesn’t hurt,” says Ching. “He brings calm to a child’s earache or fever, and he takes her during the day.”
First-term Ewa Beach Rep. Pine is engaged to “a Navy guy,” and they look forward to having children. She doesn’t see a problem. “We can’t take care of the families of Hawaii if we don’t serve our own family.”
While legislators like Marumoto and Thielen appear more concerned about gender issues, Pine and Ching are definitely district-centric. “My district in Ewa Beach has been voting Democratic for 40 years and the Democrats have given them nothing,” Pine says. “There’s still only one road going in and out of Ewa Beach. I want to change the attitude among my constituents that somehow they’re not deserving.”
Ching has become almost a one-person Liliha chamber of commerce. She touts her district’s “unmatched multicultural heritage,” and she’s lead in the organization of a heritage caucus in the Legislature. “Heritage tourists stay longer and spend more,” she contends. Ching calls Liliha “the Ellis Island of Hawaii. After recent immigrants spent a little time near Honolulu Harbor and accumulated a little money, they moved mauka into Liliha.” To celebrate Liliha’s diversity, Ching has financed a calendar featuring photographs of various Liliha landmarks and listing the various community events taking place each month.
Each Republican House caucus acknowledge the role Linda Lingle, Hawaii’s first woman governor, has played in widening the horizon for women in politics. “Gov. Lingle’s example has encouraged a lot of women into running for office,” says Colleen Meyer. “You can see Gov. Lingle’s influence in the students who come down here to shadow legislators. The governor is a role model for many of the girls.”
Rep. Pine says that, despite years of experience as a legislative staffer, she had a love/hate relationship with politics: “Then Linda Lingle came along, and she listened to me.”
Lingle listens to women, and she apparently thinks highly of their ability as legislators. Lingle has had two opportunities to fill vacant legislative seats due to resignations. In each instance, she’s chosen a woman: Bev Harbin to fill the downtown Honolulu House seat held by Ken Hiraki, and Anne Stevens as a replacement for Fox.
Stevens knows something about operating in a male-dominated society. Following her graduation from Springfield College in Massachusetts, Stevens went to the Coast Guard Officer Candidate School: “I was the only woman in my class, and I was the only woman my first two duty stations.”
Ensign Stevens wanted to go to sea. “The Coast Guard didn’t have enough ships configured for women,” she says. “I compensated by becoming a coxswain piloting small boats in search and rescue operations from shore.”
Down-sizing found Stevens in Hawaii where she worked in the maritime industry and eventually found herself staffing for Republican Sen. Gordon Trimble.
Stevens is among the rarest of the rare, an African-American female in the Republican Party: “My father was African American, my mother Caucasian. They fell in love and moved to Massachusetts. Growing up I remember my dad supporting Edward Brooke.” Brooke was black and a United States senator from Massachusetts from 1967 to 1979. He was the first African American elected to the Senate by popular vote. Stevens feels “women are more sensitive to human service-type issues.” One is of particular concern to her: eldercare. Stevens is the principal caregiver for her mother, who suffers from dementia.
So what do the Republican men of the House feel about a caucus dominated by women?
According to Leader Finnegan, “Bud Stonebraker has four daughters and a wife. He says he’s used to being outnumbered by women.”
Veteran Leeward Rep. Mark Moses doesn’t “feel dominated” in the caucus. “We get along as individual representatives,” he says. “On whether women are more sensitive, I don’t think so. We all work for the good of the people and follow Republican principles. That hasn’t changed because women have become the majority in our caucus.”
The Republican women in the House disagree.
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