“I grew up with the Aloha Spirit,” says Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. “We try to treat everyone with respect. Like family.”

We’re heading toward Honolulu’s Keehi Lagoon Park, where the first-term U.S. representative, dressed in a scarlet blouse and black trousers, will be putting in an appearance at the Hawaii Ports Maritime Council’s Ohana BBQ. “If you’ve never been to a Hawaiian barbecue,” she says, grinning, “let me tell you: There will be a lot of food.”

She’s not kidding. As Gabbard is greeted with the traditional leis (you wind up wearing a lot of flowers in her line of work), burly longshoremen step from the serving line with heaping plates of chicken, sticky-sweet desserts, and devoutly un-Bloombergian plastic cups of soda and beer. It’s proof positive of the local saying: In Hawaii, you don’t eat until you’re full, you eat until you’re tired.

Area politicians are here to express their solidarity with the local maritime unions. There’s the newly appointed U.S. senator, Brian Schatz, a bit too eager to please in his blinding yellow-and-green shirt, and boyish city councilman Stanley Chang, who fairly squeaks with ambition. And then you have Gabbard, a tanned 32-year-old with mahogany-brown hair that falls just past her shoulders, a fit surfer’s physique, and a smile so warm that it’s no surprise Web sites have offered polls rating her “hotness.”

Yet this is no Democratic Sarah Palin—all barracuda populism and you-betcha sass. She takes the stage and calmly expresses her support for the shipping policies that matter so much to her audience, making no attempt to rev up the crowd—this is a barbecue, after all, not a campaign rally. Still, when she finishes, the listeners explode into applause. Gabbard steps from the dais, and audience members rush to hug her and urge her to run for governor or senator.

“She’s our rock star,” says a man in an expensive suit, who hastily adds, “Don’t quote me.” He hands me his card and I understand why: He works for a rival Democratic politician.

When Gabbard came from seemingly nowhere last year to become the U.S. representative for Hawaii’s Second District, she was more than just one example of what was proudly being called the Year of the Woman (meaning that female participation in Congress had finally reached, ahem, 18.3 percent). Along with fiery Iraq War veteran Representative Tammy Duckworth, New York’s Representative Grace Meng, and Wisconsin’s openly gay Senator Tammy Baldwin—not to mention Chelsea Clinton waiting somewhere in the wings—she’s in a vanguard of women leaders positioning themselves to succeed such long-running institutions as Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Dianne Feinstein.