The NMI Republican Party central committee is poised to announce the party\u2019s official gubernatorial tandem Monday, based on a report submitted by a special panel.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got the report but we have yet to discuss the result as a group on Monday,\u201d said party chair John S. Reyes yesterday.<\/p>\n
He said the report includes a recommendation as to whether the party needs to hold a primary or not for this year\u2019s gubernatorial race.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey touched on that issue but I\u2019ll let the central committee tackle that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Reyes said, though, that the special panel\u2019s report \u201calready made a recommendation on the candidate.\u201d<\/p>\n
The central committee earlier formed a committee, headed by former congressman William S. Torres, to assess the credentials of the party\u2019s gubernatorial candidates: incumbent governor Juan N. Babauta and congressman Heinz S. Hofschneider.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you see the by-laws, it says that candidates will be chosen based on their credentials. It\u2019s the chief consideration,\u201d said GOP executive director Felipe Atalig in an interview Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Babauta said last week that he would welcome the holding of a primary if the central committee so decides.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll respect the party\u2019s decision,\u201d he said, noting that he has never been against the holding of primaries per se.<\/p>\n
Babauta and Lt. Gov. Diego T. Benavente announced their re-election bid last September. Later, partymate congressman Hofschneider said he would also seek the highest elective post with independent congressman David Apatang as his running mate.<\/p>\n
Monday\u2019s meeting on Monday will be held at the GOP headquarters on Middle Road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The NMI Republican Party central committee is poised to announce the party\u2019s official gubernatorial tandem Monday, based on a report submitted by a special panel.<\/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-87614","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\/87614","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=87614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}