HONOLULU — Colleen Hanabusa, who became the first woman to serve as president of the Hawaii State Senate and later represented Hawaii in the U.S. House of Representatives, died Friday after a five-month battle with cancer. She was 74.

Mike Formby, her friend and former chief of staff in the U.S. House, announced her death. Formby now serves as managing director in the Honolulu mayor’s office.

Hanabusa spent more than two decades navigating Hawaii’s highest political offices, breaking gender barriers in the state legislature and mounting a competitive bid for a U.S. Senate seat once promised by the dying wish of Sen. Daniel Inouye, Hawaii’s most storied political figure.

A trailblazer in the state Senate

Gov. Josh Green ordered U.S. and Hawaii flags to be flown at half-staff until sunrise Monday. Hanabusa “broke barriers” as the first woman president of the state Senate and “spent decades advocating for her community with strength, determination and heart,” Green said. “Her legacy of leadership and public service will continue to inspire generations to come.”

A lawyer, Hanabusa grew up in Waianae, on the west side of Oahu, where her family ran an auto service station. She represented the Waianae Coast and Leeward Oahu as a member of the state Senate from 1999 to 2010, before winning a U.S. House seat.

The Inouye succession and a razor-thin Senate race

When U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye died in 2012, he had sent then-Gov. Neil Abercrombie a hand-signed letter — dated the day he died — saying he wanted Hanabusa to succeed him, calling it his “last wish.” Abercrombie instead appointed then-Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz to fill the seat.

Hanabusa gave up her House seat to challenge Schatz in the 2014 Democratic primary. She argued that voters had been denied a voice in who represented them in the Senate. “Brian was not elected. He was appointed,” she said at the time. “And I don’t think the people have really had an opportunity to weigh in on who they want to represent them in the United States Senate.”

She lost that race to Schatz by less than a percentage point.

Return to Congress and later career

Hanabusa returned to Washington in 2016 after recapturing her former House seat. On election night, with her own race decided, she expressed unease at Donald Trump’s presidential victory. “I just didn’t expect the rest of the nation to vote as resoundingly as they did,” she said. “It’s just a statement about how they feel. And when you think about the things that he said and he stood for, it’s got to give everyone cause to just pause and think about, ‘What are we saying to the world, what are we saying to each other?’”

She surrendered her House seat a second time to run for governor in 2018 but lost to former Gov. David Ige in the Democratic primary. In 2021, Honolulu’s mayor appointed her to the board of the city’s long-delayed and massively over-budget rail line.

She is survived by her husband, John Souza, and her dogs, Frannie and Pupper, Formby said.