History
Hawaii’s territorial Democratic Party convention of 1907 passed a
resolution in favor of I&R, but until the 1950s the territorial government was
dominated by Republicans who opposed the initiative process. After the
Democrats gained power, however, most of them turned against I&R, and
it was not included in the state constitution when Hawaii became a state
in 1959. In the state’s 1978 constitutional convention, initiative advocates
attempted to pass an amendment enacting I&R, but they were narrowly
defeated.
Until 1982 the county of Honolulu, on the island of Oahu, allowed
initiative charter amendments, but not ordinances. State Senator Mary
Jane McMurdo, who routinely sponsored bills in the legislature to get
statewide I&R, led a campaign for a Honolulu initiative charter
amendment to authorize citizens to pass ordinances by initiative. Voters
approved it in November 1982 by a 55 percent margin, despite strong
opposition from labor unions. Sen. McMurdo then led a drive for an
initiative ordinance to save a block of moderate-income Honolulu
apartments that were slated for destruction by high-rise builders. Voters
approved this measure in 1984.
In 1986 McMurdo helped place another Honolulu initiative on the
ballot, to prevent conversion of Fort DeRussy’s 45 acres of mostly open
space into a hotel - convention center complex. After a campaign in
which pro-development forces spent $200,000, outspending initiative
backers by a ratio of 20 to 1, voters turned it down. In 1988, Senator
McMurdo and conservationists sponsored an initiative to restrict
development at Oahu’s Sandy Beach. This time, despite a campaign
spending advantage by pro-development forces, voters passed the
measure.
On the island of Kauai, voters approved an initiative in 1980 to stop
construction of a hotel-condominium complex at Nukoli’i Beach, but the
developer sponsored another initiative, which passed in 1984, to authorize
completion of the half-built project.
Since 1984 there has been a tremendous amount of interest in trying
to get the initiative process in Hawaii. However, the state legislature has
remained openly hostile to its adoption.
Excerpted from the Initiative & Referendum Almanac by M. Dane Waters.