A Personal Interview with Mazie Hirono, Hawaii’s First Woman Senator

Following is an excerpt from Hirono’s interview on “Women’s Media Center Live With Robin Morgan,” which aired November 23 and is available by podcast at wmclive.com and iTunes. In it, the senator talks about the women who have inspired her, and her commitment to support other women in politics.

When I was running for the seat, at one of the first rallies that I had, I said that the U.S. Senate could use a lot more diversity, and that I brought quadruple diversity to the U.S. Senate because I am a woman, I would be the first Asian woman ever to be elected to the U.S. Senate, I'm a Buddhist, and I'm an immigrant—and someone in my crowd yelled out, “Yeah, but are you gay?” And I said, “Nobody's perfect.” And here we are, Hawaii having just passed marriage equality, something that I have supported for a long time.

[There are now 20 women senators, which is an historic number, but in order to increase those numbers] we need to support women and minorities to run at the local level. We need to get into the pipeline. I don't think that we just come full-blown and say, “Hey, I think I'll run for the U.S. Senate now,” from nowhere. That's pretty tough, so I've said we need to find good people to run, particularly at the local level, get us all into the pipeline, and then for women to support qualified women, [including] with money. 

Read the entire piece here: http://www.womensmediacenter.com/feature/entry/a-personal-interview-with-mazie-hirono-hawaiis-first-woman-senator