By all modern political standards that hold candidates virtually captive to big money interests, Harry Kim should not be what he is: the two-term mayor of the Big Island of Hawaii.

Yet, he handily won two elections in Hawaii County, defying the traditional American way of getting elected. In each “campaign,” he had no formal campaign organization and refused to accept more than $10 from a person or group.

In the first try, he ran as a nominal Republican in the Democratic stronghold, where few voters of Korean descent live. In the second, he ran as a non-partisan, capturing more than half of the vote his rivals got in the primary election, which allowed him to win outright. His low-profile campaign strategy propelled the county’s former 20-year civil defense administrator to an overwhelming victory, getting more votes than his top two rivals combined, despite being heftily outspent.

Thus he ended “ethnic politics” in multiethnic Hawaii where East meets West as equals. A shining gift from the Korean diaspora to the New World, Kim may signal a harbinger of future politics in the continental United States.

The son of early contract laborers, Kim spent his childhood in wretched poverty. His parents spoke little English. He lived with seven siblings in a one-bedroom house on a tiny farm in the rain forest.

In the ninth grade, his school placed him in the D class — “D for dummies.” He told a local reporter, “No matter what I did, I couldn’t get higher than a ‘D’ in English.”

A frustrated teacher one day struck the 14-year-old boy in the face. The boy stood up and pushed her back. He was removed on the spot. After his parents’ pleas, he got placed at Hilo Union School, where he was put in the D class.

“That was the most beneficial thing that happened to me,” he would recall. “It just makes you realize the wrong we do to people. From that day on, there was a drive to be a teacher.”

At age 15, his father died, and he and his siblings all pitched in to help their mother, Ya Mul Kim, support the family. On school days, from 3 to 9 p.m. and all day on weekends, the children wove mats and other lauhala items.

Thirteen years later, Kim got his master’s degree in economics from Southern Oregon University and later returned to the same school in Hilo to teach. A month into the new school year, he walked out after he was told by a school principal to teach a class in a manner that he felt left the children too much free time.

Ya Mul Kim with all her children (five daughters and three sons) in July 1982. Harry is in the back row on the right.

Then in 1971 he got a job with the federal law enforcement assistance program where he worked himself up to become the county’s civil defense director, a post he held until he retired in 2000.

It was the series of Kilauea volcano eruptions, starting in 1983, and Kim’s steady-handed and pro-active responses to them that have made him a hugely popular figure.