1874 election, Nāwahī became a member of the Queen Emma Party and joined with Representative George Washington Pilipō of North Kona in forming the native opposition against Kalākaua. He was re-elected to every meeting of the biannual legislature during this period as the representative from Puna and later Hilo, starting from 1878. Over the next decade, Nāwahī characterized himself as a leader of the Independent (Kuokoa) faction against the government-backed National Party. He opposed the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875, introduced and personally negotiated by the king, fearing the negative consequences of aligning Hawaii too closely to the United States. Nāwahī blasted the treaty as "he ku ʻikahi kaʻili aupuni" ("a nation-snatching treaty") and prophesied that it "will be the first step of annexation". He was also vehemently against the proposed cession of Pearl Harbor to the United States. Nāwahī and Pilipō were given the epithet of "Nā Pū Kuni Ahi o ka ʻAhaʻōlelo" (the Cannons of the Legislature) for their steadfast defense of Hawaiian sovereignty. In the election of 1886, Kalākaua personally journeyed to the districts of Pilipō and Nāwahī, on Hawaii, and John William Kalua, on Maui, to sway the vote against these three politicians. This resulted in Nāwahī's first electoral defeat in his home district of Hilo. On June 30, 1887, King Kalākaua was forced to sign the Bayonet Constitution under duress by the Hawaiian League, a group of foreign businessman and Hawaiian subjects of American missionary descent including Lorrin A. Thurston. This constitution limited the absolute power of the monarch and strengthened the power of the executive cabinet. It also raised property requirements for suffrage, disenfranchised many poor Native Hawaiians and naturalized Asian citizens, and gave the vote to unnaturalized foreign residents of European or American descent. Instigators of this coup d'état formed the Reform Party, drawing its membership from Hawaiian conservatives and citizens of foreign descent. The new constitution also called for an election to be held ninety days after its enactment on September 12, 1887. Nāwahī remained an independent against the newly empowered Reform Party even though many of its members were his former allies against the National Party in years before. In the special election of 1887, he and George Charles Moʻoheau Beckley ran under the opposition ticket against Reform Party members Henry Deacon and D. Kamai but lost due to the disenfranchisement of much of the native constituencies. Deacon and Kamai would represent