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Civil Beat has been covering Tulsi Gabbard since we launched our news site in 2010. Back then, Gabbard was a Honolulu City Council member from the downtown, Punchbowl and Makiki areas. 

We followed her as she rose to become, at one point, Hawaii’s most popular politician and then as she took the national stage to run for president of the United States. There’s been a lot of political water under the bridge along the way and we haven’t always been her BFF. 

But it’s been a heck of a trip, and looking back through our archives has been a good reminder of just how far the 43-year-old former congresswoman has come, from the youngest ever Hawaii state lawmaker to President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for the country’s director of national intelligence. 

No Civil Beat reporter has known Tulsi Gabbard longer than Denby Fawcett, our longtime columnist. A former Vietnam War correspondent, television news reporter and anchor, and author, Fawcett has been reporting on Gabbard for more than 20 years as she wrote in this 2019 piece for Civil Beat, “Understanding What Drives Tulsi Gabbard Is A Futile Task.”

That was the year Gabbard decided to make a run for president as a Democratic candidate and Fawcett tried to chronicle her political transformation.

“For as long as I have known Tulsi Gabbard, I now understand I have never known her and probably never will,” Fawcett’s column begins. “So much of what she does seems to make sense only to her.”

It’s a good piece on Gabbard’s early political and military careers, written by someone who had many interviews and conversations with her over the years. And, as we’ve come to learn in recent years, the premise still holds true: Gabbard is a hard one to figure out, especially as she has eschewed the local press for the spotlight of the national media since her failed run for president four years ago.

Here’s a look back at highlights of Gabbard’s uniquely intriguing path from local politician to national household name, as chronicled by Civil Beat reporters and columnists.

2012: Political Upset

In a story that has seen a lot of traffic over the years depending on what Gabbard is up to, reporter Adrienne LaFrance explored “Tulsi Gabbard’s Leftward Journey,” tracing her shifting social and political beliefs from a staunch conservative strongly opposed to same-sex unions and abortion to a pro-choice Democrat with a solid rating from progressive groups.

That August, at 31, Gabbard crushed well-known former Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann in the Democratic primary for Hawaii’s Second Congressional District, 54% to 34%. It was one of the state’s most surprising political upsets, fueled by her strong financial support from veterans groups.

By then she’d been a member of the Hawaii National Guard for nearly a decade with deployments to Baghdad and Kuwait. Her campaign focused on gay rights, ending the war in Afghanistan and tightening regulations on Wall Street banks.

2014: International Yoga Day?

Over the next two years, Gabbard became a rising star in the Democratic Party. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi welcomed her to Washington, D.C., singling her out for special attention. Gabbard’s own interests began drifting to the national scene even then.

She essentially had a free ride to reelection that year, drawing no primary opponent. A Civil Beat poll showed her with a 60% favorability rating among voters. 

As would become typical in later years, she declined interviews with Civil Beat and other local reporters before the election but explained her interest in veterans issues and the Middle East conflicts in written responses to questions.

That was the year she first met India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, promising him she’d push for an International Yoga Day. She’s since become one of his strongest allies, a relationship that has drawn her much criticism.

Her national celebrity status skyrocketing, Gabbard faced some bad press here at home later that year when she ditched out on a Senate field hearing being held in Honolulu that focused on the difficulties veterans were facing in getting health care, among other things. Instead of attending the hearing, which was chaired by Sen. Mazie Hirono, Gabbard went surfing with a videographer from Yahoo News who was filming her for a story.

2015: Science Of Identity Foundation

By her second term in Congress, Gabbard was more and more finding herself crosswise with the Democratic establishment in Washington, D.C. She famously challenged President Barack Obama for his unwillingness to use the term “Islamic extremists.”

In Hawaii, her past was coming back to haunt her. Longtime political activists here were raising alarms about her connections to the Science of Identity Foundation, an offshoot of the Hare Krishna movement launched in the 1970s by a Kailua surfer, Chris Butler. Gabbard’s family, including her father, Sen. Mike Gabbard, were adherents of Butler’s and Tulsi Gabbard grew up going to schools run by the group.

Over the years, Gabbard has stopped short of denying her membership in the foundation, which many consider a cult. She married a man whose family also was part of the organization. Questions were raised when she hired friends she’d grown up with in the organization to help advise her on policy and run her congressional office. Later, she paid others affiliated with the Science of Identity Foundation to work on her campaign.

By the end of 2015, Gabbard was turning more and more of her attention to conflicts in the Middle East. In November that year she introduced a bill that called for an end to U.S. efforts to oust Syrian government leader Bashar al-Assad.

Two years later, Gabbard would be very much in the spotlight for taking a secret trip to Syria to meet with Assad and for defending him against claims he was a bloodthirsty dictator who committed mass atrocities and war crimes on his own citizens.

2017: A Meeting With Assad

In January 2017, as politicians were returning to Washington after a holiday break, Gabbard quietly traveled to Syria and Lebanon on what she would call a fact-finding mission. A Civil Beat reporter and photographer who had dropped by her congressional office to interview her about the start of the session discovered her absence and got staff to reveal where she’d gone. The staff then sent out a press release.

Returning a week later, Gabbard acknowledged meeting with Assad and was immediately pummeled by critics, including Civil Beat editorial writers, for a reckless and dangerous trip that did nothing to help the crisis in Syria.

Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin noted at the time, “Principled opposition to U.S. intervention in Syria is one thing. and influence campaign is another.”

Gabbard ultimately agreed to repay the federal treasury more than $9,000 for the trip.

But she continued to voice strong support for Assad, even expressing skepticism that a chemical attack that spring was carried out by Assad against his own people. Humanitarian organizations were outraged.

Undaunted, Gabbard continued to buck the political tide building against her. In September, she traveled with a handful of other congressional representatives to Armenia on another fact-finding mission. Her strong views siding with Armenia over conflicts with Azerbaijan would get her banned from that country.

2018: Reelection Landslide

Her political stands on Assad and other Middle East conflicts cost her the support of one of Hawaii’s most politically influential unions, the Hawaii State Teachers Association, in her bid for reelection in 2018. The union worked against her that year.

But, as The Civil Beat Poll showed, Gabbard continued to be Hawaii’s most popular politician. She received a 61% approval rating that year and won her Democratic primary race by a landslide. Only President Barack Obama was more popular with Hawaii voters in 2018.

Her Civil Beat Candidate Q&A that year attempted to explain her positions. “The people of Hawaii have directly felt the cost of U.S. interventionist wars — costs borne by our nation’s sons and daughters who have served, the threat of nuclear attack from North Korea, and because we have spent over $8 trillion on interventionist wars since 9/11 instead of using those limited resources on investing in our people and rebuilding our communities right here at home,” she wrote. “Every dollar spent on interventionist regime-change wars is a dollar not spent on education, health care, infrastructure, and a myriad of other needs so desperately needed right here at home.”

2019: Campaign For U.S. President

In February 2019, Gabbard formally launched her bid to become president of the United States. She did it standing on the lawn of a Waikiki hotel, surrounded by her parents and hundreds of supporters wearing blue and white T-shirts. She was 37 years old.

She soon went on the attack against fellow Democrats, including political rival Kamala Harris. She sued Google for $50 million for interfering with her campaign. Later, she also sued Hillary Clinton for $50 million for calling her “a Russian asset.”

As the year came to a close, Gabbard distanced herself even further from fellow Democrats. When House Democrats voted largely along party lines to impeach President Donald Trump, Gabbard was the only Democrat to vote “present” — basically abstaining from the vote.

2020: ‘That Cheapens Our Politics’

In the final months leading up to the presidential vote, Gabbard spent much of her time on the road campaigning. Civil Beat sent reporter Nick Grube along for some of it, sticking with her despite poor showings in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and other early primary states.

Civil Beat columnist Neal Milner shrugged off Gabbard’s presidential campaign. “Tulsi Gabbard Has Become Irrelevant To Hawaii,” he argued in the spring of 2020.

“Who cares why Tulsi Gabbard is still running for president?,” Milner asked readers. ” I know I don’t. And neither should you.”

“Time to quit wondering, complaining, or caring about Gabbard. It’s time to see her as the isolate and as the irrelevant, minor political figure she has become. We need to quit wasting time trying to figure her out. That cheapens our politics by making her a celebrity.”

With voters nationally shrugging her off as well, Gabbard gave up the presidential bid. In October, she announced she was going to concentrate on her military career — in California. And she endorsed Joe Biden.

In a final act before leaving Congress, Gabbard introduced a bill that would have banned trans women and girls from participating in female sports. Her drift back to the conservative side of the political spectrum in full swing.

“Tulsi Gabbard Reveals She’s Been Tulsi Gabbard The Whole Time,” read the headline to a piece by Civil Beat columnist Lee Cataluna in December 2020.

“But really, this is classic Gabbard,” Cataluna wrote. “She’s leaving Congress, dropping all pretenses, and leaning hard into the headline-grabbing crackpottery that has been her stock in trade all along.”

2021-Present: Party Switch

As Gabbard faded from day-to-day political life in Hawaii, reporters kept an eye on her emergence as a national political pundit, notably her work for Fox News as a commentator.

“Is Tulsi Gabbard Still A Democrat?” Civil Beat politics editor Chad Blair pondered in one column.

By 2022, Gabbard announced she was leaving the Democratic Party but didn’t say whether she would formally sign on with the Republicans or what. Her new book explains more but stopped short of embracing a party switch.

Earlier this year, she laid that question to rest. She joined the Republican Party in late October, just days before Trump won the election.