‘Tom Gill’ by Tom Coffman
Delivered on the occasion of Tom Gill’s congressional papers being archived at the UH Research Library.
We are still talking about Tom Gill, a person who served in the legislature of Hawaii three years, the United States Congress for two years, and as lieutenant governor four years.
We have no fewer than eight living lieutenant governors, several ex-members of Congress and uncountable numbers of former State legislators, yet Tom Gill remains a unique figure in Hawaii’s story.
Without today in mind, I recently wrote: “Fatefully, on my rounds (as a young newspaper reporter) I became acquainted with Thomas P. Gill, by reputation one of the brightest and feistiest of the young Democrats. You quickly accepted his reputation as fact because of the authenticity and wit of his conversation.
“After serving in the State House and the U.S. House, he had stumbled briefly attempting to unseat an incumbent Republican from the U.S. Senate. As I got to know Tom, he was holding forth in a modest niche in the State Health Department, where he was in charge of adapting the so-called War on Poverty to Hawaii.
“Having worked on the anti-poverty legislation in Washington DC, Tom got the Hawaii program off to a running start. He sometimes worked eighteen hour days. He got Hawaii’s grant proposals to Washington while other states were still reading the manual. Tom knew what the liberal Washington of that day wanted to hear (such heady concepts as ‘maximum participation of the poor’). The funds came shooting across the ocean.
“The results of this work stirred my hope that America might actually fulfill what I understood to be its great potential. Along the way, Tom Gill handed me a statement confirming that, contrary to the wishes of then Governor John A. Burns, he was running in the next election for lieutenant governor. This was big excitement. Since Burns had given him the anti-poverty job, it naturally provoked a discussion that Tom lacked an appropriate level of loyalty. One of my many new Japanese friends took me aside and explained to me that loyalty was particularly valued in traditional Japanese culture, and that the word to remember was ong. Tom lacked ong. What Tom did not lack was conviction about what direction Hawaii should be taking.”
When Tom overwhelmed Burns’s candidate for lieutenant governor, it was taken as evidence that Hawaii’s future lay with him. I myself became known as a Tom Gill man and forty years later am still described as such in certain circles of people. (As in, “You’re a nice fellow, although you were a Tom Gill man.”)
Looking back, I realize that what Tom had done in his brief period as head of the Anti-Poverty program, he replicated during at least four other points in his life. He displayed a great capacity to make a telling difference in a short period of time — through intellectual vigor, deep conviction, and very hard work
First was as Oahu County chairman between 1952 and 1954, where — as a young war veteran recently returned from law school — he played a major role in organizing the infrastructure of the Democratic Party in preparation for its historic victory. While John Burns received the lion’s share of the credit, the extent to which Tom recruited people, built the card file, developed the precinct organizations, and got out the vote was comparatively little known.
After being elected to the Legislature in 1959, he substantially took over direction of the majority faction of House Democrats. Per the famous account by Lawrence Fuchs, he demanded to chair both the Land and Judiciary committees with the aim of passing far-reaching land reform legislation. In the organization of the House this effort was outflanked by a coalition of minority Democrats and Republicans but nonetheless his Land Use Law passed — the law we still live under today, to which we owe the preservation of conservation districts, open space, agricultural lands, rural scenic areas and relatively compact urban areas. Of course its implementation never satisfied its author, and is in constant jeopardy today, but imagine what the landscape of Hawaii would be without it.
Tom’s early crusade for conversion of leasehold to fee simple home sites was thwarted initially but was to pass in 1967. The leasehold conversion law was different in approach from Tom’s bills but nonetheless resulted in the goals he had been so instrumental in setting — the pervasive conversion of leasehold house sites to fee simple, at reasonable costs to the owner/occupant.
His brief but extraordinary time in Congress will be discussed by my dear friend Marsha Joyner.
After witnessing Tom’s success with the anti-poverty program, I soon was covering the state capitol for the Star-Bulletin, which at the time meant Iolani Palace. The tension between him and Burns during the 1966 campaign had been so intense that it nearly resulted in the Democratic Party losing the governorship. This continued the next four years, during which Tom arguably did his most important if least documentable work.
His research, his thinking, his drafting of programs and legislation, his public advocacy, and most importantly the creative tension he generated in the public arena laid indispensable groundwork in the following areas: Consumer protection, extensive State involvement in low- and moderate-priced housing, protection of air, water and scenic dimensions of the environment, protection of Hawaiian cultural sites, and even the regulation of the oil duopoly. Glance through the Session Laws of 1970. It reflects a massive outpouring of legislation in most of these areas in context of the contested Democratic primary for the governorship between John Burns and Thomas Gill. Burns Democrats wanted the resulting political protection of this legislation, and Tom wanted the tools for effecting the changes in which he so deeply believed.
The net effect was the framework of State law in all those areas I mentioned, under which we live to this day. I should add that if mass transit is ever built in Hawaii, someone should pause to acknowledge Tom Gill’s early advocacy.
Much was made of the Burns-Gill rivalry, and ultimately of Burns’s election victory in 1970. In this conservative and as it is called euphemistically “neo” conservative desert, through which we are now passing, we can see John Burns and Tom Gill as two different types of liberals. John Burns wanted to consolidate a new middle ground, organized around liberal principles, while Tom Gill wanted to advance and in his vision complete the commitment to the proposition that fair play, equal opportunity and the realization of each person’s inherent potentials can only be realized by a vigorous, engaged government. Tom wanted to drive to the left, and he wanted to be in driver’s seat. He continued to be a great and unreconstructed liberal when the era of liberalism was waning.
His political flaws — the sarcasm, the sheer stubbornness — were likewise extraordinary. Having tried unsuccessfully to write speeches for him in his last campaign, in 1974, I can assure you of how frustrating he could be, but I can also assure you that he was the pure and unscripted politician who we crave to know today. I remember Tom sitting at his little manual typewriter, pecking out the pithy, searing phrases that mapped one to two generations of Democratic Party thinking. Though you may squirm at the sentiment, Mr. Gill, I must say, on behalf of many people, how much we respect you and admire you and hold dear the clarity and the passion that you brought to public life. Thank you.