‘Let’s just wait for absentee ballots’

By JOHN RAVELO, MARCONI CALINDAS, and LIBERTY DONES
REPORTERS

None of the four candidates vying for the gubernatorial seat claimed victory in the Nov. 5 polls, with partial results of the election showing no comfortable lead among the four and with 1,526 absentee ballots still to be counted.

The camp of House Speaker Benigno Fitial and Vice Speaker Timothy Villagomez is taking a modest position despite its lead in the Commonwealth’s gubernatorial polls, while the three other camps issued variations on the statement that the election is not over yet until the last ballot is counted.

Fitial said his camp would just wait for Nov. 19, when the absentee ballots are counted by the Commonwealth Elections Commission.

Fitial and Villagomez are leading the gubernatorial race with a slight margin over the tandems of Heinz Hofschneider and David Apatang, and incumbent Gov. Juan N. Babauta and Lt. Gov. Diego Benavente.

Charles Reyes, advertising committee chairman of Fitial’s Covenant Party, recognized the favorable election turnout but also noted the uncertainty of the final results once some 1,526 absentee ballots are counted.

“The results are good, very good, very positive, but it’s not definitive. The absentee ballots may change [the turnout], but at this point all the votes have been made already and it’s out of our control,” Reyes said.

Absentee votes include those of students of voting age and the CNMI population in other states such as Oregon, Hawaii, Washington, Las Vegas (Nevada), and California.

While he expressed optimism that Fitial’s lead would continue if all absentee votes are split among all gubernatorial candidates, he refused to speculate, saying that the votes have been cast and what remains to be seen is how the voters decided.

Reyes expressed concern over the Covenant Party’s lack of funds to campaign in other states, except on Guam. He said only Babauta’s Republican Party managed to campaign among CNMI voters in other states such as Hawaii and Oregon “because of his enormous financial resources at his disposal.”

“He [Babauta] has government funds, he has advanced logistics being an incumbent and he has a lot of donations…contributed in one way or the other, he’s got a lot of money behind him, he advertised the most,” Reyes said.

The Fitial-Villagomez had tailed behind Hofschneider-Apatang and Babauta-Benavente throughout the counting of votes at the Multi-Purpose Center early yesterday morning until the commission tallied the votes for Precinct 3, a Covenant Party bailiwick. Fitial’s wide edge against his counterparts in that precinct changed the preliminary poll outcome, with the Covenant Party candidate snatching the lead from Hofschneider and Babauta.

Reyes said the Covenant Party was quite disappointed with the election turnout on Rota, which it expected to give Fitial and Villagomez a comfortable lead against their opponents by at least 300 votes. Backed by incumbent Mayor Benjamin Manglona, Fitial topped the Rota polls where he earned 429 votes, but Babauta followed closely with 371 votes; Hofschneider got 272 votes.

“We expected to get a greater lead [on] Rota. Although we’re ahead, we’re not ahead by a comfortable margin. We’re looking to be ahead about 300 or more in Rota, but I don’t think the numbers matched that expectation,” Reyes said.

“It would appear that this would be a race between Heinz and Fitial, and Heinz did surprisingly well considering the fact that he did not have a full slate of candidates as a foundation for his candidacy because he did not have a political party,” he added.

Hofschneider keeps hopes up

Hofschneider said he and his supporters are still optimistic about the outcome of the elections.

Hofschneider, who topped the University of Guam exit poll last Saturday, garnered 3,371 votes—only 126 votes shy of Fitial’s.

He said his supporters tuned to local cable TV KMCV and monitored updates on the Saipan Tribune website yesterday morning.

“I’m very optimistic,” said Hofschneider, adding that the election is not over yet. He said he was surprised to find that the race would be so tight.

Hofschneider, who was with supporters at their political headquarters in As Lito, immediately spoke to them after the last votes were tallied for Precinct 3, urging them to remain positive about the results and reminding them that the absentee votes still need to be counted. There are 1,526 absentee votes.

“Nobody can tell the outcome of the absentee votes,” he said.

Based on the tally, Hofschneider said his team led in the small precincts and that’s why they should not give up. “I feel that the absentee votes will go for us,” he added.

Hofschneider said waiting for the absentee votes to come for another two weeks would be grueling, adding that no one in his camp would sleep well while waiting for the final results. He said he always knew right from the start that his top contender would be the House Speaker.

GOP, Dems: election not over yet

Although not entirely sure of the outcome of the absentee ballot, both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party showed no signs yesterday of conceding to the top two leading gubernatorial candidates.

“The election is not over yet,” said Republican Party chair John S. Reyes.

GOP standard-bearer Gov. Juan N. Babauta and Lt. Gov. Diego T. Benavente only placed third with 3,228 votes without the absentee votes.

Fitial has 3,497 or 269 votes ahead of the tandem while Hofschneider has 3,371 votes or 143 lead votes from the BB ticket.

Democratic Party’s Froilan C. Tenorio has received 2,256 votes, a far margin of 1,241 votes from the top.

Tenorio and his running mate, Antonio Santos, were both not available for interview yesterday.

When reached earlier, though, on the result of the exit poll conducted by a group of students from the University of Guam, which ranked him last, Tenorio said he would wait for the overall counting result from the Election Commission.

“I’ll wait until all the votes are counted,” he said.

The commission will tabulate the absentee ballots on Nov. 19.

Tenorio was optimistic Saturday that he would win because he is running against three Republican candidates.

Fitial used to chair the Republican Party while Hofschneider broke away from the GOP earlier this year when it endorsed Babauta without holding a party primary.

Tenorio had also thought that his closest rival for the top post would be the incumbent governor.

In an interview Saturday, Tenorio said that he would monitor the counting from his home.

“I don’t really go out. I stay at home and wait for the result,” he said.

Meantime, Reyes said that GOP would respect the people’s decision in this year’s election.

“If we are convinced that the votes are ahead of us, we’d respect it. I respect the people’s mandate but as of now, the election is not over yet. We have 1,500 votes that have not been counted,” he said.

Reyes said the party hopes to get a good number of votes from the overseas voters, citing that the governor took time to meet with the CNMI residents in Hawaii and Benavente had traveled to the West Coast to meet with the local communities in Idaho, Washington, and California.

“I think we did pretty good,” he said.

Reyes said Babauta “is doing okay.”

“The guy is okay. The governor will accept the decision of the people,” he said.

A day before the election, Babauta said that he has “always trusted the decision and the judgment of the people.”

Reyes said Babauta and Benavente and GOP supporters monitored the election results from their headquarters in Gualo Rai.

“If you look at it, there’s very small margin. There’s over 200 difference. Anything could happen,” said Reyes.

Very close fight

Current affairs and history instructor Sam McPhetres of the Northern Marianas College said “nobody can really tell” right now who will emerge as winner in the election.

“It’s still up for grabs,” he said.

But he cautioned that the absentee votes may just follow the same trend.

“I have a feeling that it will follow the same trend,” he said.

Newspaper columnist Jaime Vergara, likewise, said “it’s likely” that the trend would remain.

Meantime, McPhetres said that, as he has predicted, this year’s election was going to be a close fight among the candidates.

“As I’ve said, it’s going to be a close race. It’s because you have four candidates dividing up the votes. The result is plurality rather than majority. Nobody got 50 percent [plus 1],” he said.