Wahiawa’s New ‘Ad Hoc Mayor’ Has The Vision And The Power To Help His Hometown 4 Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz has used his political clout to set in motion a major revitalization of the former plantation town.
Wahiawa, once a global agricultural center and now a down-on-its-heels urban hub in the middle of Oahu, has an important benefactor: Hawaii Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz, the often controversial chairman of the state’s powerful Senate Ways and Means Committee.
Ambitious and determined, creative with a well-earned reputation for political tenacity, Dela Cruz has made delivering an economic lifeline to Wahiawa his personal crusade.
In the past 10 years, Dela Cruz has funneled almost $400 million in development funds to the community that has been his family’s home for three generations, ever since his grandfather immigrated there from the Philippines in 1940 and went to work on a pineapple plantation.
He loves the place. Born at Wahiawa General Hospital, he grew up in plantation housing in the town’s Whitmore Village, a housing complex where Dole pineapple workers once lived in ethnically differentiated compounds, creating a melange of cultures. He talks about those early years fondly, recalling nostalgically how the fathers marched off together to work in the morning when the plantation bell rang.
