An organization made up of mostly Filipino-Americans in the Commonwealth yesterday announced its endorsement of Gregorio \u201cKilili\u201d Sablan for congressional delegate.<\/p>\n
The Coalition for Recognition, Equality and Advancement of American Ethnic Minorities, or CREAM, says the group is impressed with Sablan\u2019s sincere stance and his focus on the economy.<\/p>\n
CREAM claims to have 1,200 members who are registered to vote on Nov. 4, when the CNMI will elect its first-ever delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives. CREAM\u2019s membership represents about 10 percent of the voters that will decide the historic election.<\/p>\n
Sablan in an interview said he is \u201cvery happy\u201d to gain CREAM\u2019s support. \u201cI recognize them for taking an active part in this year\u2019s election and for their many contributions to our islands. I\u2019m very pleased with their decision and I welcome their endorsement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Before making the endorsement, CREAM held a mock election within the group and invited to four top vote getters to a question-and-answer session. The candidates invited were John Oliver Gonzales, Pete A. Tenorio, Juan T. Lizama, and Sablan. Of the four, only Sablan showed up.<\/p>\n
CREAM president Gus Loste said Sablan offered satisfactory responses to the questions asked him during the forum. \u201cHe didn\u2019t make any inflated promises. His answers were realistic, and not intended just to make people feel better,\u201d Loste said.<\/p>\n
But while CREAM values Sablan\u2019s attendance, it is not the sole basis for the group\u2019s decision to endorse the candidate, Loste maintained. He said the group took another vote, and an overwhelming majority supported Sablan.<\/p>\n
Most of the members of the coalition are Filipino-Americans and registered voters in the Northern Marianas. The group also includes people of other nationalities who have U.S. citizen children that are registered voters in the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n
Loste said the group believes that the non-indigenous electors, if organized, can make a difference in future CNMI elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An organization made up of mostly Filipino-Americans in the Commonwealth yesterday announced its endorsement of Gregorio \u201cKilili\u201d Sablan for congressional delegate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}