Hannemann has served as a special assistant in Washington, D.C., with the Department of the Interior, where he was selected for a White House fellowship in the Reagan administration under Vice President George H. W. Bush.

He is the first person of Samoan descent and the second member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to serve as Mayor of Honolulu (Neal Blaisdell was the first).

Muliufi Francis Hannemann was raised in the Honolulu community of Kalihi by his German-Samoan father, Gustav Arthur Tafu Tupulo Hannemann III, and Samoan mother, Faiaso Soli'ai, whose grandfather High Chief Muliufi Soliai was one of the original signatories to the deed of cession that transformed Eastern Samoa and the Manua Islands into the US Territory of American Samoa.

In the fall of 1972, Hannemann left the Hawaiian Islands to attend Harvard College where he was elected freshman class president and was varsity basketball letterman.

Upon graduation from Harvard in 1976, Hannemann continued his studies as a Fulbright Scholar at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.

He is also the Principal and Founder of MFH Enterprises, a professional consulting firm that does business in Hawaii, the mainland US and the Pacific Rim.

After his teaching career, Hannemann entered government service as a special assistant to President Jimmy Carter, working with the United States Department of the Interior.

In 1990, he ran for Congress again, this time for the Second District seat vacated by Daniel Akaka, who was eventually elected to the U.S. Senate.

The race was considered one of the fiercest and most expensive in the city's history, with both candidates sharply criticizing the other's stands and character.

The project eventually became a major issue when Hannemann came up for reelection in 2008, with his odds of success tied to public perception of it.

City Managing Director Kirk Caldwell assumed the position of interim mayor until a special election was held to determine a permanent replacement.

[8][9] On September 18, 2010, Hannemann lost the Democratic primary to Neil Abercrombie by approximately twenty-one percentage points.