{"id":219391,"date":"2016-01-26T06:00:01","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T20:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=219391"},"modified":"2016-01-26T06:00:01","modified_gmt":"2016-01-25T20:00:01","slug":"consultant-says-bush-not-out-of-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/consultant-says-bush-not-out-of-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Consultant says Bush not out of race"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Saipan<\/a>
Saipan Tribune reporter Dennis B. Chan conducts an ambush interview of presidential candidate Jeb Bush representative Alan Philp at the Governor’s Office last week. (Contributed Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nA representative for presidential candidate Jeb Bush was on island last week in hopes of getting local GOP support ahead of delegate votes at the Republican National Convention at Cleveland, Ohio this July.<\/p>\n

Each of the five territories has a block of delegates that they send to the national convention. The local GOP is planning to send nine delegates from the CNMI.<\/p>\n

\u201cIncreasingly it may look like we will get to a convention in July in Cleveland, Ohio, in which there is no apparent candidate who has a majority of the delegates,\u201d Alan Philp, a former policy director to then Florida governor Jeb Bush, told Saipan Tribune in an interview last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery delegate counts,\u201d he added. \u201cThe territories play a major role in that process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Philp said he was on island \u201cto listen,\u201d and report back to candidate Bush. \u201cThe type of person he is\u2014he really cares about every citizen, whether they have a lot of political influence or not.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you think about what Washington, D.C. has become, they care about the people who have money or votes, and the territories don\u2019t really have a lot of either,\u201d Philp said. \u201cBut Jeb is the type of person who really cares. I want to make sure he understands the issues\u201d that the CNMI has with immigration, labor force shortage, and the Department of Defense.<\/p>\n

Philp said that Bush is welcome to bringing in high-skilled workforce through the H-1 visa in the 50 states and that \u201cwould apply in the territories.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said as they \u201ctry to create a strong jobs environment here\u201d amid a growing economy that we have the workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the Republican Party looks to caucuses in Iowa on Feb. 1, New Hampshire n Feb. 8 and then Nevada and South Carolina, followed by the CNMI and the other territories in March, Philp said they are entering the \u201creal campaign season now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe NMI is very important to this process and we urge all Republicans to go the convention,\u201d he said. \u201cWe ask for their vote for Jeb Bush because hopefully he\u2019s the best candidate.<\/p>\n

Even as national media has narrowed their focus on the top two candidates leading the polls\u2014Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz\u2014Philp cautioned that it would be \u201cvery premature to narrow it down\u201d and to \u201ckeep an eye out\u201d for a rising Bush.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s going to happen here is, when you do polls right now, the Republicans say yeah, I think I\u2019m with Trump, or I think I\u2019m with Cruz or Bush, but they all say they may change their mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is an incredible amount of fluidity in the vote right now so things are going to change pretty rapidly in the next five weeks, \u201che said. \u201cI think Jeb is very well positioned in organization and message. I think he will be gaining momentum in the next few weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A representative for presidential candidate Jeb Bush was on island last week in hopes of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":219400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[9331,26,141,9332],"class_list":["post-219391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-alan-philp","tag-cnmi","tag-gop","tag-jeb-bush"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219391","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\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}