‘Heinz and Ray team is running authentic grassroots campaign’

“As the incumbents are running an aggressive, moneyed campaign, voters need to know that the Heinz and Ray ticket is running a true grassroots campaign that reflects the concerns the issues of interest to them and the people, not special interests,” said John P. Del Rosario, the spokesman for the Hofschneider-Yumul campaign.

“I want to stress to the voting public that absolutely no one from our truly independent, grassroots political campaign is either a hired gun or an expensive, special political operative from the mainland and funded by the generous campaign contributions of a few local and foreign corporate interests,” said Del Rosario. “Everyone working on our campaign is a local resident, a voter, or an unpaid campaign volunteer working for the long-term interest of our islands against the corrupting influence of powerful, entrenched interest groups and big business or casino interests that control our government.”

“People will argue,” Del Rosario explained, “the IT team has more bumper stickers, bigger campaign signs and more exposure. It’s important to note that a lot of people are afraid to identify themselves as HY supporters for fear of job loss. They just cannot display stickers or even something as simple as posting support on social media. Our support is strong but silent and they will vote for HY in the runoff.”

Del Rosario said that when voters read or listen to the well-scripted public relations propaganda from the Inos-Torres campaign, they need to understand one thing: that, more likely than not, the message they are consuming comes from a paid political consultant from the States who was specially hired to assess the voters and manipulate them to engineer an Inos-Torres victory. Without the aid of a paid professional consultant, Del Rosario said, the Inos-Torres campaign would essentially be intellectually bankrupt as far as political campaigns go. Even their own campaign slogan, “Solutions-Driven Leadership,” which Del Rosario points out, eerily sounds too much like the last successful gubernatorial campaign slogan of “Proven Leadership.”

“We know how that went,” said Del Rosario.

He said that when voters go into the privacy of the voting booths, they should ask themselves whether they will allow themselves to be influenced, if not bamboozled, by all of the heavy political advertising dollars, election year distributions, and the carefully crafted, professional messages from Inos-Torres’ mainland political consultant who will leave the CNMI as soon as the campaign is over, “leaving us to live with the mess.”

“Voters should be able to see through all of the election season political tricks and paid political consultant propaganda, and vote for the authentic, grassroots-oriented, truly independent team of Heinz and Ray to represent the best long-term interests of our people going forward,” said Del Rosario. “This runoff is a real test of whether people power will ultimately prevail over big, special, and personal interests and corporate greed.”

“I believe in the power of the people to affect real change,” said Del Rosario.