I WAS no longer covering Capital (not Capitol) Hill when a group of four senators “took over” the Senate leadership in 2003. This was during the 13th Legislature. The Senate majority had three members left after two of their colleagues (one Democrat and one former Democrat turned Republican) were charged in a wire fraud case and sentenced to federal prison. The case involved “no-show” government jobs provided by the defendants to their relatives.
That political soap opera included a Republican governor caught in the middle of a very public spat between two Republican senators who were also his allies. Apparently, the sheer drama of it all so traumatized the senators that in the 14th Legislature they agreed to “rotate” the Senate presidency among the three senatorial districts (Saipan, Tinian and Rota).
Since then, there have been no Senate coups or, as far as I know, shouting matches in the Senate chamber — until last Monday’s outburst involving two of the CNMI’s longest serving elected officials who have been political rivals since the 1980s.
The first CNMI Legislature I covered was the Ninth which took office in 1994, and, for me, the highlight of the Senate sessions for the first five months of the year was to hear a Democrat senator, who was in the minority with two Republicans, raise his voice or scream, now and then, at his colleagues in the majority which included two Democrats allied with four Republicans.
In May 1994, with the blessing (or “encouragement”) of the new governor, who was a Democrat, the three Democratic senators formed a new leadership with two Republicans. They staged a Senate coup just less than two years after the ouster of the Senate president in a session held in the office of one of the mutinous senators. (The office was next to the restroom. Good times.)
In 1994 the deed was done in the Senate chamber because the ousted leadership boycotted the session.
You gotta love the speeches of the new majority:
“Today I join the move to provide better government for our people and a better place for us to create a future we all would like to see.”
“I was elected not to sit and provide rhetoric but to move an agenda for [my senatorial district] and for the entire Commonwealth…. We are not here to inflate our egos nor to pursue our own personal agenda. We are here to deliver the services we promised…in November and this can’t be done without a harmonious relationship amongst ourselves.”
“This new leadership will work more and talk less.”
But that wasn’t the end of it.
There were certain measures that had to be passed by more than five votes in the nine-seat Senate. The four members of the new minority bloc, however, continued to boycott Senate sessions.
When the new leadership learned that the minority members were on Tinian, a Senate session was scheduled right away on the island, and the Senate sergeant-at-arms was ordered to compel the attendance of the runaway senators. Two were “corralled,” and the “urgently needed” measures were passed.
The ousted Senate leadership took the “usurpers” to court, but the judge said “it was not proper for the court to intervene in the affairs of the Legislature,” a separate and co-equal branch of government. The complaint, however, also asked the court to declare the composition of the Senate “unconstitutional.” This was a direct challenge to one of the key provisions of the Covenant which provided for equal representation for each of the three main islands in one of the houses of the bicameral legislature. (Based on the one-person-one-vote principle, the U.S. Supreme Court had “invalidated the apportionment of state legislative bodies on factors other than population.” See “An Honorable Accord” by Howard P. Willens and Deanne C. Siemer.)
I covered the Superior Court session that heard the lucid arguments of attorney Ted Mitchell, representing the ousted Senate leadership, and attorney Mike Dotts who appeared for the new Senate leadership.
Mitchell spoke first. I found myself repeatedly nodding my head while taking down notes. He’s right! I thought. Then it was Dotts’ turn. My God, I thought, still nodding my head while taking down notes; he’s also right! What the what man? I whispered to the more senior reporter beside me. (That’s the G-rated version of what I actually said.)
So how did that litigation end?
From “An Honorable Accord”:
“The apportionment of the Commonwealth Senate, which allocated three seats each to Saipan, Rota and Tinian notwithstanding their disparate populations, was upheld by commonwealth courts and later by a specially constituted US District Court in 1999, whose decision was summarily affirmed by the US Supreme Court in January 2000.”
As for the ousted Senate president, he assumed the top Senate post following the 1995 elections. His leadership team included those who staged a coup against him in 1994.
In politics, as they say, there are no permanent enemies, and no permanent friends; only permanent interests.
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