In 1986 Hawaii had been a state for 27 years and had never sent a Republican to the US House of Representatives. That November, Pat Saiki, a former schoolteacher from Hilo, became the first.
Saiki died peacefully of natural causes at her home in Honolulu on September 30, 2026. She was 96. Flags in Hawaii were ordered lowered in her honour.
Hilo and the classroom
She was born Patricia Hatsue Fukuda on May 28, 1930, in Hilo, then in the Territory of Hawaii, into a Japanese American family. She graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1952 and became a teacher, working at Punahou, Kaimuki Intermediate and Kalani High schools, and in Toledo, Ohio, while her husband, Stanley Saiki, completed his medical residency there.
The legislature
Saiki entered the Hawaii House of Representatives in 1968 and moved to the state Senate in 1974, serving until 1982. She was a Republican in a state dominated by Democrats, and in the legislature she was an advocate for women’s rights.
Washington
Her 1986 victory made her the first Republican to represent Hawaii in the House since statehood in 1959, and only the second woman to represent the state in Congress. She served two terms, from 1987 to 1991.
In 1990 she ran for the Senate and lost to Daniel Akaka. President George H. W. Bush then appointed her administrator of the Small Business Administration, a post she held from 1991 to 1993. She ran for governor of Hawaii in 1994 and lost.
Decades later she returned to party work, chairing the Hawaii Republican Party from 2014 to 2015.
She and Stanley had five children.
Her House seat was the first won by a Republican in Hawaii since statehood. She held it for four years.