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Seats in the Sun. As the economic monopoly was broken, so was the political monopoly. Before World War II, island Democrats existed largely on the sufferance of Democrats in Washington, had a hard time holding rallies on outlying islands, because owners shut them out of the plantations. Now, under ex-Cop Jack Burns, the Democrats gathered steam, most of it from energetic Nisei, who remembered the sardonic, white-haired Burns and his aloha-style defense of the Japanese-Americans in the war's early days. In 1954, Hawaii's sclerotic Republicanism crumbled in the territorial legislature before the Democrats' thrusting new onslaught-But then the Democrats, in turn, botched their sessions of the legislature and were almost laughed out of office.
The inexperienced newcomers wasted long hours arguing about whether they or the Republicans had got stuck with the sunniest seats in the legislative chambers, once flew off to the Big Island to watch an eruption along the slopes of Mauna Loa. While the Democrats fiddled, crusty, Eisenhower-appointed Territorial Governor Sam Wilder King sat back and waited for them to run out of time. On the 50th day of the prescribed, 60-day 1955 session, Sam King vetoed the only two Democratic bills. This so disorganized the bewildered Democrats that they squabbled along to the end of the session, had to stop the legislative clock while they fought in vain to override the vetoes. Legally, April 29, 1955 remained April 29th for 28 days.
Welcome Lightning. While the Democrats hobbled along, William Francis Quinn broke into a steady run. He ran a hot campaign for the territorial senate in 1956, and lost; but he learned enough to see that people liked his Irish charm and Irish tenor. As a member of the Hawaiian statehood commission, Quinn also made a good impression in Washington, where Interior Secretary Fred Seaton put him down on his list as a sure comer.
In 1957, lightning struck. Determined to exchange Sam King's standpat Republicanism for some of his own kind, President Eisenhower sent for Quinn, offered him the governorship. The young lawyer confessed his inexperience. Said Ike: "You are a fine, clean-cut young man. Now you do your best, and that will be the best thing for America."
Quinn took on the job as if he were born to it. He moved his family into the Victorian, open-porched-Governor's mansion on Washington Place. In his inaugural address, he told Hawaiians: "The realization that I assume this office not by the will of the people' prompts me to vow that I shall meet all the people of our islands and shall in fact be their Governor." In his 23 months in the office, Bill Quinn has filled 560 speaking engagements, from one end of the archipelago to the other. When there were no speaking dates, he kept moving, visiting workers in the sugar factories, families in remote villages and farms. In the ornate loloni Palace—now one of the last vestiges of Hawaii's monarchy—Quinn ran open cabinet meetings, tape-recorded them, had the recordings played on the radio. Says a Honolulu schoolteacher: "I've never known so much about the running of the territory as I have under Governor Quinn."