For 35 years, Democrat represented Hawaii in D.C.

Daniel Akaka, a liberal Democrat from Hawaii who served in both houses of Congress and quietly devoted himself to looking after the interests of his home islands during more than 35 years on Capitol Hill, died April 6 in Honolulu. He was 93.

The death was confirmed by a former spokesman, Jesse Broder Van Dyke. He had been hospitalized for several months, but the cause of death was not immediately disclosed.

Akaka, who did not seek reelection in 2012, was the firstever nativeborn Hawaiian elected to Congress. Avuncular and with a penchant for giving hugs, he was widely liked in Washington but was not a power broker in the mold of Hawaii’s former senior U.S. senator, Daniel K. Inouye.

“He has a very strong spirit of aloha that he carries in him to Washington,” retired University of Hawaii political scientist Neal Milner said of Akaka, “and that’s important for a politician from Hawaii.”

Akaka was a teacher and school principal in Hawaii in the 1950s and 1960s and rose to head Hawaii’s antipoverty efforts in the early 1970s.

He was first elected to the U.S. House in 1976 and, as a member of the Appropriations Committee, directed money to Hawaii for education and military installations.

In 1990, the governor of Hawaii appointed thenRep. Akaka to fill the seat of U.S. Sen. Spark M. Matsunaga, who had died in office. Elected to his first full Senate term in 1994, Akaka went on to chair the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and sit on the Indian Affairs Committee.

Though Akaka served on a number of committees with wide purview — including Armed Services, Homeland Security and Energy and Natural Resources — he rarely ventured onto the Senate floor and had little national impact.

In 2006, Time magazine called Akaka “a master of the minor resolution and the bill that dies in committee,” and chided him for being so politically inoffensive that even James M. Inhofe, a conservative senator from Oklahoma, called him “a lovable person.”

Akaka’s supporters said Washington was simply not accustomed to his humility or respectful of his quiet persistence on behalf of Hawaiians, particularly Native Hawaiians.

“I was taught not to be a showhorse but a workhorse” Akaka told a Honolulu newspaper in 2006. “So, in a way, it’s been a part of me not to brag.”

Daniel Kahikina Akaka was born in Honolulu on Sept. 11, 1924.

His father was of Chinese heritage, and his mother was Native Hawaiian.

After graduating in 1942 from the Kamehameha School for Boys, a private college prep school specializing in Native Hawaiian language and culture, he joined the Army Corps of Engineers and served as a mechanic for two years during World War II.