Honda, Mike, 1941-

<p>Michael Makoto Honda (born June 27, 1941) is an American politician and former educator. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in Congress from 2001 to 2017.</p>

<p>Initially involved in education in California, he first became active in politics in 1971, when then San Jose mayor Norman Mineta appointed Honda to the city's Planning Commission. Mineta later joined Bush and Clinton cabinets. After holding other positions, Honda was elected to the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors in 1990, and to the California State Assembly in 1996, where he served until 2001.</p>

<p>In November 2003, Democratic National Committee chair Terry McAuliffe appointed Honda as deputy chair of the DNC. In February 2005, Honda was elected a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee under the chairmanship of Howard Dean. In 2009, Honda was reelected for a second term as DNC vice chair, under the chairmanship of former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine; he served in this role until 2013.</p>

<p>Honda became the subject of an ethics investigation by the United States House Committee on Ethics in 2015 for the alleged use of taxpayer resources to bolster his 2014 re-election campaign. He lost the election for California's 17th congressional district election in 2016 to Ro Khanna.</p>

HONDA, Mike, a Representative from California; born in Walnut Grove, Solano County, Calif., June 27, 1941; graduated from San Jose High School, San Jose, Calif., 1959; B.A., San Jose State University, San Jose, Calif., 1968; M.A., San Jose State University, San Jose, Calif., 1974; United States Peace Corps, 1965-1967; member of the San Jose, Calif., planning commission, 1971-1981; member of the San Jose, Calif., unified school board, 1981-1990; member of the Santa Clara County, Calif., board of supervisors, 1990-1996; member of the California state assembly, 1997-2000; elected as a Democrat to the One Hundred Seventh and to the seven succeeding Congresses (January 3, 2001-January 3, 2017); was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection to the One Hundred Fifteenth Congress in 2016.

<p>Over the course of his 16-year career in Congress, the affable Mike Honda quietly attained positions of authority in the House Democratic Caucus, serving on the party’s Steering and Policy Committee and rising to a seat on the House Appropriations Committee. An advocate of tolerant and inclusive policies, Honda led the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and helped found the LGBT Equality Caucus. According to a political scientist based in Honda’s hometown of San Jose, Honda “really puts the K in ‘Kumbaya.’”</p>

<p>Mike Honda was born on June 27, 1941, in Walnut Grove, California. His parents, Giichi (Byron) and Fusako Honda, worked on farms in the Bay Area. When Honda was six months old, the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration incarcerated thousands of Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Honda’s family was among 7,000 individuals sent to the Granada War Relocation Center in Colorado. Honda remained imprisoned even after his father joined the U.S. Military Intelligence Service (MIS) in 1943 to teach Japanese to American servicemen. Nearly 70 years later, the elder Honda and the MIS received a Congressional Gold Medal for their service during the war.</p>

<p>After the war, the family returned to the Bay Area and settled in San Jose. Mike Honda graduated from San Jose High School in 1959 and served with the Peace Corps in El Salvador from 1965 to 1967. He graduated in 1968 from San Jose State University with a bachelor’s degree. Honda married Jeanne Yoshida in 1967, and they had two children, Mark and Michelle. A longtime educator, Jeanne died in 2004 after battling cancer.</p>