I'm liking Mazie Hirono - a lot

I first heard of her watching the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, and I was immediately impressed. Now, moreso.

Mazie Hirono used to be known as the "good girl" of Hawaii politics.

She was seen as polite, never in-your-face, not a boat-rocker. But now, that view has changed.

As one Hawaii columnist put it, she is a "badass."

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The Senate's only immigrant takes that fight to President Trump, whom she openly calls "xenophobic" and a "liar." "To call the president a liar, that is not good, but it happens to be the truth," the soft-spoken Hawaii senator told Time recently.

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There are lots of big-gun Democrats on the [Senate Judiciary] committee, senators who get a lot more attention than Hirono. But she is perhaps the most dogged, albeit polite, questioner.

That doggedness will be even more important this summer because Republican leader Mitch McConnell has just canceled most of the August recess, mainly to push through more Trump judicial nominees before the midterm elections. McConnell's aggressiveness about judges is galling to Hirono.

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"As long as we're going to be here," Hirono said with a twinkle, "maybe we should pass something important like DACA or an infrastructure bill."

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Despite her often cool affect, she is no stranger to determined badassery.

She recalls a breakfast in 1994 when the Democratic candidate for governor, Ben Cayetano, tried to talk her out of running for lieutenant governor. He argued that she wouldn't help the ticket.

After Cayetano finished, Hirono said she looked him in the eye, "and I said, 'Well, that's all fine and good, but it's all bulls***. And I'm running.' "

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Hirono actually wound up getting more votes in that election than Cayetano himself.

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In the Senate, Hirono is known as a "workhorse, not a show horse," as one of her colleagues put it. But she is the only senator who asks every nominee, for any position, whether they have ever been accused of sexual misconduct and whether they have ever signed a nondisclosure agreement. She wants these answers on the record in case future information shows a nominee lied.

  NPR

And indeed, she asked Kavanaugh. I thought it was because she knew something behind the scenes, but she said, no, she asks them all.

She is the Senate's only immigrant and its first female Asian-American, and she had kept a pretty low profile. But she has put herself out there more, doing more media interviews, for example, in hopes it would help her advance causes she cares about. "As I tell my staff," she said, "people are getting screwed in this country every single second, minute, hour of the day. And, by our efforts, if we can decrease that number, we will be making a difference. We will be doing our jobs."

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Born on a rice farm in Japan, she lived with her mother and three siblings in harsh conditions. Her father, who had problems with alcohol and gambling, left the family with his parents, and by the time Hirono was 7, her mother was plotting an escape for herself and her children.

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...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.