In the CNMI, politics is personal

Live From Saipan By Zaldy Dandan

 Saipan — A candidate for the local House of Representatives, with refreshing candor, told reporters that she was seeking office because she wasn’t sure she could keep her current government job when a new administration comes in.

But as it is an election year, we will again hear mostly election-year bromides uttered with conviction, as if no one else had ever said them before.

Vote your conscience. Vote for the common good. Vote for the most qualified. Vote for our children and their children.

But how do actual voters vote?

We should take note of the nature of elections here in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

As of June, based on Commonwealth Election Commission data, there were only 17,630 registered voters.

In the 2022 gubernatorial election, 14,750 voters cast their ballots, for a 76.52 percent turnout. In the runoff, that number dropped to 13,094 voters, or a 67.93 percent turnout.

House races are typically tight contests. Precinct I, with six seats, for example, had only 4,843 voters as of June Precinct II, with two seats, had 1,436 voters; Precinct III, with six seats, had 3,827; Precinct IV, with two seats, had 1,739; Precinct V, with two seats, had 2,726; Precinct VI, Tinian, with one seat, had 1,456; and Precinct VII, Rota, with one seat, had 1,605.

It is not uncommon for winners and losers to be separated by only a few votes, or even a single ballot.

Hence, in the CNMI, ensuring that one’s supporters actually cast their ballots is a major task for candidates. But what else is key to electoral victory in this small body politic? Simple: assembling the largest possible coalition of voters, anchored by families.

Take note that I said “simple,” not “easy.”

And who are the voters?

The main voting bloc comprises CNMI government employees, government retirees and their families. The government is the islands’ single largest employer of local residents.

Like you and me, they are unlikely to vote for their own unemployment or for a

reduction in their pensions.

There are, to be sure, voters who will cast their ballots on the basis of what they believe is “good for the CNMI.”

Different people, however, hold different views on what is “good for the CNMI.”

Then there are those who believe—and for some, it is almost a religious belief—that if we would only vote for the right candidates, who, once elected, would do the right thing, then, to borrow Bob Marley’s phrase, every little thing gonna be all right.

But again, different people have different ideas of what the right thing is and how to do it.

Hence, for me, the most sensible are the realistic voters--those who know exactly what they are doing when they cast their ballots in November: protecting or ensuring their livelihoods.

No, it’s not cultural.

In one of their presidential debates in 2012, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were asked point-blank, on national television, by a college student: “What can you say to reassure me, but more importantly my parents, that I will be able to sufficiently support myself after I graduate?”

Political scientist Harold Lasswell famously defined politics as “who gets what, when, and how.”

Many of us, however, find this formulation scandalously cynical. Why? Mainly because we fear it is true.

And if it is, then there goes our cherished faith in democracy, in elections, in “voting wisely.”

There is, however, no need to tell voters whose jobs or contracts are at stake to go out and vote or to vote wisely. They have a dog in the fight.

But if you don’t have a dog in the fight, or are quite sure that your life will go on whatever the outcome in November, then why vote?

In the United States, turnout in state and local elections is often much lower, sometimes 20 percent to 35 percent or even below 20 percent, depending on the election and whether it coincides with a presidential election.

And we’re talking about one of the world’s oldest continuously functioning constitutional democracies. It is also a country with the world’s largest and most dynamic economy, and, happily, the CNMI is part of it.

And perhaps that is the lesson we should keep in mind as another election approaches.

We can urge voters to vote their conscience, to vote for the common good, to vote for the future. There is nothing wrong with any of that. But we should also recognize that voters are human beings with mortgages to pay, children to raise, jobs to protect and families to support.

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The candidate who admitted that she is running because she is uncertain about her government job may have said aloud what many candidates and voters would rather leave unsaid.

That does not necessarily make her cynical. It makes her honest.

In a place as small as the CNMI, where a handful of votes can determine who gets to make the laws, politics is inevitably personal. Families matter. Jobs matter. Pensions matter. Relationships matter. And, yes, self-interest matters.

So when we tell people to “vote wisely” this November, perhaps we should first be honest about what voting actually means.

People vote for what they believe will protect their families, their livelihoods and their future.

And there is nothing particularly scandalous about that.

That, in fact, is politics.

Zaldy Dandan is the editor of the CNMI’s oldest—and only remaining—newspaper, Marianas Variety. His fourth book, “If He Isn’t Insane Then He Should Be: Stories & Poems from Saipan,” is available on amazon.com/.

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