FOUR years ago, two candidates told Variety that the 2018 election was “the most challenging” and the “nastiest so far” because of the “false accusations” and “misinformation” that also targeted one of the candidates’ family members.
This reminded me of another previous gubernatorial election in which one of the leading candidates was branded as certifiably insane. At pocket meetings all over the island, one of his opponents’ attack dogs would claim that the candidate once wore a doctor’s white coat with matching stethoscope and pretended to be a doctor at CHC. Someone came up with a crude drawing depicting this “crazy” scene, and displayed it at one of the island’s main thoroughfares. The candidate lost.
In another previous election, the full-page attack ads included cartoons of a gubernatorial team who were depicted as cartoon villains a la Dick Dastardly. They were also accused, among other things, of planning to shut down public schools in the villages in order to lease the vacated public lands to foreign (that is, Japanese) investors. (One of MV’s banner headlines at the time read, “Yakuza Problem Needs Attention Now.” According to another headline from that era, “NMC Vocational Education Program a Success,” but that’s for a future Variations.)
Long story short, the Dick Dastardly tandem lost.
In another past election, the incumbent was accused of “playing games with federal programs for political benefit.” His opponent also alleged that the incumbent had a bank account in California in which monthly deposits were supposedly made by a government contractor. The incumbent filed a $1 million libel suit against his opponent who then filed a counter-suit for $10 million over the incumbent’s allegation that his opponent caused the collapse of a local bank, and took pigs from the agriculture department and raised them for his piggery business.
The incumbent won.
oOo
Prior to this year’s runoff, there had been four CNMI governors who failed to get re-elected: Dr. Carlos Camacho, who finished second in a three-way race in 1981, Larry Guerrero in 1993, Lang Tenorio, who finished second in a three-way race in 1997, and John Babauta who finished third in a four-way race in 2005.
In this year’s runoff, Palacios-Apatang garnered 54% of the total votes cast which is about 1.6% less than the votes received by the winning Lang-Jesse ticket in 1993.
In 2014, Inos-Torres obtained over 57% of the total votes cast to set a new CNMI gubernatorial election record. Four years later, Torres-Palacios broke that record by winning over 62% of the total votes cast.
The 1977 gubernatorial election was the closest in CNMI history — until 2005. In 1977, Carlos Camacho edged Jose “Joeten” Tenorio by 122 votes only. Dr. Camacho and running mate Francisco C. Ada received 2,986 votes (51% of the total cast) while Joeten and running mate Olympio T. Borja garnered 2,864 votes (49%). According to historian Don Farrell, voter turnout was 97%!
“That first election,” Farrell wrote in 1991, “was in some ways different from and in some ways similar to elections today. There wasn’t much money in the Marianas at that time. The raffle was the basic fund-raising technique. Large quantities of food and drinks were as popular as ever on the campaign trail, known for this reason as the ‘red-rice circuit.’ Distributing photocopies of rumor sheets was a very popular campaign tactic as was verbal rumor-spreading. The game plan of both camps was to keep the faithful and try to get a few new votes.”
In 2005, the Republican governor faced three opponents, two of them former Republicans and one Democrat, who finished fourth and last.
Then-Speaker Benigno R. Fitial, who finished a distant second in the 2001 election, topped the 2005 race by winning 27.9% of the total votes cast. A mere 84 votes behind was Independent Heinz S. Hofschneider whose running mate was David M. Apatang. (Uncle Ben’s running mate was Timothy P. Villagomez.)
Four years later, with the runoff provision in effect, Governor Fitial came in second on Election Day. In a four-way race, Hofschneider and his new running mate, Arnold I. Palacios, finished ahead of Governor Fitial and running mate Eloy S. Inos by eight votes only. But in the runoff, Ben & Eloy (“Let it BE”) secured 51.4% of the votes cast to clinch victory. Their winning margin? 370 votes.
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Dick Dastardly
