In case you missed it, Michigan Republican political
strategist and commentator Dennis Lennox has landed a job in Guam working for
the Ted Cruz campaign after he outlined in a newspaper column the importance of
Guam and other U.S. territories in the upcoming GOP primaries.
With a field of 17
candidates dividing the presidential vote, Lennox realized that an obscure GOP
rule says the contenders must win at least eight states to have their name placed
in nomination at the 2016 convention — and the territories, such as Puerto Rico, Guam and American
Samoa, are equal to the states.
where he is laying the groundwork for an organized effort for the Texas senator
to win the island’s nine GOP delegates while other candidates are trying to
play catch up. Beyond the column written last month by Lennox, it should be
noted that he is a close political ally of Saul Anuzis, the Michigan campaign chairman
for Cruz.
Several media outlets have taken notice of the Cruz
campaign’s unusual tactic.
“David Sablan, a Republican National Committee member
from Guam, said last week that Cruz had dispatched an operative to the island
and said his was one of only three presidential campaigns that had reached out
to Guam Republicans.
The other two campaigns were those of former Florida governor Jeb Bush and
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
“Sablan said that he had met personally with Bush, talked
with him about the campaign and continued to stay ‘in touch with people’. In
addition, he mentioned that the Walker campaign was ‘making some overtures’ and
doing outreach to get a sense of the island territory’s delegate selection
plan. However, the Cruz campaign, which did not respond to a request for
comment, was the only one to actually have a presence on the ground in Guam.
campaigning. ‘Guam is maybe a third the size of Rhode Island,’ he said. ‘It is
very easy to get around and talk to a few people.’ Sablan noted that it was
very probable that, at the convention, (Guam delegates will) ‘go to one
candidate’ right away and lock up one of the eight ‘states’ needed at the RNC.”
month, Lennox laid out his scenario. A different candidate wins (with
less than a majority of the vote) each of the early-state contests in Iowa, New
Hampshire and South Carolina. As the campaign trail leads to other states, no
candidate can manage a majority in the field of 17, let alone a strong
plurality, with only a few exceptions.
At that point, the Republican National Committee’s Rule
No. 40 looms large:
“This creates a situation where the U.S. territories of
American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the Virgin
Islands — and not Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — decide who becomes
the Republican presidential nominee. Territories and states carry equal weight.
table in the territories and pull out three (state) victories elsewhere to take
the campaign all the way to the convention.
“The rewards of taking to the hustings and rubber-chicken
circuit across the territories could outweigh the hassles, especially for a
long-shot candidate without the financial means and deep organizational
strength to get ahead of the herd on the mainland.”
