Features
Tauese: a Samoan Man in Full
He Loved To Tell Jokes and Count Votes
During the loving eulogies to Tauese Sunia, speaker after speaker labeled the former Governor as a Samoan hero and skilled orator who possessed the “people skills” that enabled him to be equally comfortable in a formal gathering of chiefs, a Congressional hearing room, or an informal ukulele session at a fiafia.
All true, but it’s not the whole story.
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Simply, Tauese was a rascal and, simply, you just had to love him regardless of whether you supported him politically. When I received the news that he had unexpectedly passed away, for a moment I simply couldn’t breathe. I think most American Samoans had the same sensation.
Tauese loved Samoa and he enjoyed a life in the public arena. In other words, he was a born politician.
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His government office was officially a no-smoking facility and Governor Tauese kept up appearances by refraining when acting in an official capacity. But when the camera lights were off and the formalities were over, Tauese would call an aide for his cigarettes and proceed to light up with relish. I never got the sense that it was nicotine he craved. He just enjoyed the smoke. Because when he smoked, he talked story.
Besides a joke, and island gossip, his favorite topics were Samoan psychology and Samoan politics, and he completely understood that there was no separation between the two. When Tauese talked story, told a joke or shared gossip, he was usually elaborating on a lifetime of fascination with the Samoan psyche.
Tauese was famous for his skills as an orator, but he was as good one-on-one as he was in front of an audience. Perhaps because he was so competitive, Tauese loved to tell stories that amusingly revealed the weaknesses of his closest allies.The stories he would tell, privately and off the record, about his cabinet members were not pretty, but they were always damn funny. They had the effect of making Tauese look good, while the others looked a little shabby. Or very shabby.
After all, who was Governor and who was merely a cabinet member?
Tauese’s favorite sport was counting votes. He didn’t use a computer, and he didn’t trust his own advisers. The former professional educator kept his voting analysis in a school exercise book that never left his side during the long campaign seasons. It recorded his analysis of the voting proclivities of every village, every family. His vote counts were not always accurate, but he won elections regardless.
In his quest to govern American Samoa, Tauese was successful, but he did not overwhelm the electorate. Although he was the first American Samoa governor to be re-elected to consecutive terms, his victories were by narrow margins of less than 1 percent.
After barely defeating his opponent in a 1996 run-off, he spent several years digging the government into a financial pit.
A year before the 2000 elections, an island-wide poll revealed the voters were ready to toss him out by a wide margin, but by the time election day rolled around, fresh money had materialized from off-island and Tauese was able to turn the tables: “a family can’t eat a balanced budget,” he said without apology.
Against the same opponent, Tauese won re-election by another razor-thin margin.
I think he won simply because people wanted Tauese to be their governor. He was a reflection of the Samoan people. He embodied their desires. He was strong in ways they wanted leaders to be strong. He was humble in ways they wanted leaders to be humble. He had weaknesses that Samoan people wanted to forgive.
He loved life, he relished it, he was a man in full, a Samoan man in full, and we’re all going to miss him for a long time.
