HONOLULU — Former U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa won her bid for Congress and will return to the seat she once held in the U.S. House.
The Democrat won the Hawaii election Tuesday.
Hanabusa had served in the U.S. House from 2011 until 2015, but gave up her seat to run for Senate, hoping to fulfill the dying wish of the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye. She lost that 2014 election by less than a percentage point to U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz.
The late U.S. Rep. Mark Takai replaced Hanabusa, but he decided not to seek re-election while battling pancreatic cancer. Hanabusa chose to run for her old seat, with Takai’s blessing. Takai died in July.
Hanabusa also won the special election to fill Takai’s seat between now and January, when the next term begins.
Hanabusa, an attorney who recently began serving as chairwoman of the board of Honolulu’s troubled rail transit project, was largely seen as a shoo-in for the seat in largely Democratic Hawaii.
While in Congress, Hanabusa served on the House Armed Services and the Natural Resources committees, and she hopes to serve on them again.
Hanabusa beat Republican challenger Shirlene Ostrov, a retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force who served for 23 years. She also beat non-partisan candidate Calvin Griffin and Libertarian Alan Yim.
Hanabusa says she wants to steer federal dollars to Hawaii, including funding to build two nuclear submarines a year and financing renewable energy projects in the military.
U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard defeated Angela Aulani Kaaihue, who ran as a Republican in this race, to represent Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District.
Gabbard was elected to the U.S. House in 2012 as one of the first female combat veterans to serve in Congress, after deploying to Iraq and Kuwait.