Something about serving in Congress makes Hawaii representatives not want to serve in Congress.

Maybe it feels like being stuck in the back of a huge choir. It makes some people yearn for the coveted solo in the spotlight.

There is a long list of representatives from Hawaii who couldn’t make themselves sit still in that crowd, who saw an opportunity for career advancement, figured they had it in the bag, rushed for an open seat with the belief that their time on the Hill would boost them to greater heights, only to face-plant in the next election.

In Hawaii’s 1st Congressional District, Spark Matsunaga had served from 1971 to 1976 when he ran for U.S. senator. Matsunaga won and served in the Senate until his death in 1990.

But after that, the track record of leaving a congressional seat to reach for a more high-profile spot has shown what a risky move it can be.

Rep. Patsy Mink ran against Matsunaga in 1976, lost, and did not reclaim a seat in Congress until 1990.

Cec Heftel was in the House from 1977 to 1986, resigned to run for governor, lost in a particularly dirty race and never held office again.

Republican Pat Saiki served in the House starting in 1987, resigned to run for U.S. Senate in 1990, lost, and never held office again.

Neil Abercrombie went to Congress in 1991, came home to run for governor in 2010, won and served one term before being defeated by David Ige in 2014 and hasn’t held office since.

Mazie Hirono may have worked out her wanderlust earlier in her career. After serving as Ben Cayetano’s lieutenant governor, Hirono announced her campaign for Honolulu mayor in 2002. Then incumbent Mayor Jeremy Harris ended up not leaving to run for governor, so Hirono switched races midstream and said she was a candidate to be Cayetano’s successor. She ended up losing to Republican Linda Lingle. Hirono was elected to the U.S. House in 2006, ran for Dan Akaka’s seat in the Senate when he retired in 2012, and seems quite content in the role, treating that post as her best and highest purpose.

But Hirono, who figured out how to bloom where she had been planted, is the exception.

Tulsi Gabbard tried to pull off the unlikely vault from congressional obscurity to the Oval Office, succeeding mostly in refining her sideshow act and being caricatured on SNL. She’s out of office now, but not out of ambition, so expect the unexpected.

Colleen Hanabusa’s track record of campaigning hard for the House of Representatives and then losing interest once there is the most perplexing of all.  Elected to Hawaii’s 1st Congressional District in 2010, she left in 2014 to run for the late Dan Inouye’s seat in the U.S. Senate. She lost that bitter battle to Brian Schatz and ended up out of office.

When Hawaii Rep. Mark Takai died in office in his first term, Hanabusa ran in the 2016 special election to replace him. She won that, won reelection to the next term, but got itchy again. In 2018, Hanabusa again resigned from Congress to run for governor, but managed to lose to the unpopular incumbent David Ige in the primary. In 2020, she placed third on the primary ballot for Honolulu mayor. The offices keep getting smaller for Hanabusa and the losses keep getting bigger.

And now, there is speculation that Rep. Kai Kahele may be Hanabusing himself.

He’s been publicly criticizing Ige as if he’s campaigning to be his successor, meeting with state legislators and making public statements about being asked by his constituents to run for governor, like it’s not his idea, more like a popular request he is obligated to consider.

Maybe Kahele is homesick. He recently posted a video of himself making canned corn beef and cabbage in his D.C. digs, kind of a classic sign of missing home (gotta say, though, I hadn’t thought of adding bacon, so that was a nice touch.)

He might be frustrated with the humbling experience of being a freshman congressman, just one guy in a room of 435 people, with only unfun Ed Case to hang out with.

He most certainly is frustrated by Gov. David Ige’s lack of hard-charging leadership back home in Hawaii, both in terms of the pandemic and the recent Navy fuel spill near Oahu’s major aquifer, but as a member of Congress, Kahele has much more sway over the Navy than the governor. The Navy agreed to empty the fuel tanks only after congressional pressure, not because of anything the state did. The military is all about chain of command, and the state is not even in the chain, but Congress is.

Perhaps the more genteel way to frame a calculated jump from the crowded Congress to a more high-profile gig is the desire to serve the people in the most effective way possible.

But it’s hard to imagine ambition isn’t always part of the equation. Ambition is like jet fuel. Not enough, and a person doesn’t go anywhere. Too much or badly managed, it leaks out and starts to poison the area around it, just like Red Hill, or it explodes, like the many Hawaii politicians who left their congressional seats and never won another election again.