Shawn Raymundo

sraymundo@guampdn.com

Billionaire Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee for president, has secured the nine GOP delegates from Guam.

Juan Carlos Benitez, executive director to the local Republican Party, said on Wednesday that Trump is the best chance at beating Hillary Clinton in the General Election in November.

“He was also the candidate with the strongest position in supporting the territory of Guam,” Benitez said.

The real estate mogul has been the presumptive nominee since remaining GOP presidential candidates Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich withdrew from the race following the Indiana primary earlier this month.

Guam’s Republican Party held its caucus and territory convention in mid-March when local party members selected the delegates to represent the island at the Republican National Convention in July.

Typically, delegates announce who they’re pledging their votes to based on the results of a caucus or primary. However, the Republican Party of Guam didn’t conduct a poll for the presidential nominees, as only delegates were elected.

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The nine delegates, which included Benitez, Gov. Eddie Calvo and Sens. Tony Ada and Frank Blas Jr., decided to remain uncommitted to any of the Republican candidates until they met with each individual campaign and could come to a unanimous agreement, Benitez said.

The decision to back Trump had nothing to do with him being the only candidate left, Benitez said. The reason a decision was made so late in primary season was in part because it took a while for the three candidate camps to meet with Guam’s delegation.

Benitez said it was important to not just vote based on individual preferences, but rather unanimously support the candidate who had the best ideas and plans to assist Guam. Discussing Guam’s issues with each of the campaigns would also benefit the island in the future, he added.

“I personally spent over an hour with each of the three campaigns,” Benitez said. “You would be shocked at the different number of issues that they were completely unaware of … we would have lost all of that if we had just backed a candidate before all of that.”

Trump plans to appoint a special assistant who would report to him on territorial affairs as well as “perform holistic review of all federal regulations affecting the territories,” according to the GOP’s press release announcing the delegation’s support for Trump.

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Gov. Calvo had announced his support for Sen. Ted Cruz prior to the Guam GOP March 12 caucus.

With Cruz no longer in the race, Calvo, the delegation’s chairman, is now throwing his support to Trump.

“I myself came from the private sector, before becoming senator and then governor,” Calvo said in the release. “Guam’s economy is doing remarkably well, and a lot of that is because we have fiscal conservancy that is pro-growth, pro-business, pro-military and respects the dignity of individual citizens.”

In the release, Guam GOP Chairman Victor Cruz said “Guam and the other U.S. Territories place the utmost importance on the primary because it is the only time that U.S. Citizens residing here can participate in the election.”

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When asked if that were really the case considering local Republicans only elected delegates during the caucus and no straw poll was taken to measure the voters’ preference for president, Benitez said that’s part of the electoral process among Guam’s GOP.

“I think what we all supported was Guam and to back the candidate that we felt was the strongest position on Guam,” Benitez said of the party. “The candidates, let’s listen to them directly and who comes up with strongest position on Guam.”

Benitez added that when the Republican Party of Guam meets to establish its rules for the presidential caucus no one has suggested doing a straw poll.

Based on comparisons between the candidates’ donations and contributions, island Republicans gave the most amount of money to Sen. Cruz and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, according to the Federal Election Commission. Trump and Kasich didn’t receive any contributions as of last month.