Gov. Juan N. Babauta said he welcomes the holding of a primary within the local Republican Party.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever the party decides, I\u2019ll respect it. I\u2019ve never been against having a primary,\u201d Babauta told reporters yesterday.<\/p>\n
The local GOP, chaired by Public Works Secretary John Reyes, earlier formed a panel to assess the credentials of its two gubernatorial candidates: Babauta and congressman Heinz S. Hofschneider amid calls for a party primary.<\/p>\n
The committee, headed by congressman William \u201cLee\u201d Torres, was given two weeks to come up with a recommendation, which may include a position as to whether the party needs to hold a primary or not.<\/p>\n
The committee shall submit the report to the central committee, which is expected to meet tonight.<\/p>\n
Babauta said yesterday that he trusts the party officials and would respect their decision on the matter.<\/p>\n
Babauta and Lt. Gov. Diego T. Benavente had made public their re-election bid during the governor\u2019s birthday party last September.<\/p>\n
A few weeks later, partymate Hofschneider announced that he would also seek the highest elective post with independent congressman David Apatang as his running mate.<\/p>\n
Party by-laws reportedly dictate that a primary must be held when there is more than one candidate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Juan N. Babauta said he welcomes the holding of a primary within the local Republican Party.<\/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-87476","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\/87476","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=87476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}