7 GOP Candidates for Governor?

Republicans are hungry for Adelup. With two confirmed candidates for governor and five rumored to be exploring their chances, seven Republican men are out in the community asking voters either to support them, or how they feel about a possible run in 2026 to replace Governor Lou Leon Guerrero.

Businessman and Marine combat veteran Charlie Hermosa was the first to announce his bid, stepping into the limelight in 2023. This past week former senator Marcel Camacho threw his hat in the ring. Former Lieutenant Governor Kaleo Moylan released a seconds-long video that seemed to tease his return to politics in 2026. Rumors have abounded for at least two years that the Adjutant General, former Lieutenant Governor Mike Cruz, a surgeon, has his eyes on Adelup again. Attorney General Douglas Moylan for the past three months has been making the news, engaging in issues generally thought to be far outside the range of his agency and looking increasingly like a bid for governor. And the legislature’s most powerful officers, Speaker Frank Blas, Jr. and Vice Speaker Tony Ada both are believed to be mounting separate gubernatorial campaigns.

While Ms. Leon Guerrero has her critics amassed over the two consecutive terms she has governed – including a first term consumed by a once-in-a-century pandemic – it isn’t her legacy that has given these men the confidence to run for the seat she is term limited from seeking in 2026.

On paper, the governor’s accomplishments are impressive despite the island’s growing poverty and the anecdotally increasing gap between the haves and the have nots. She has presided over five straight years of surplus budgets and the elimination of the deficit. The unemployment rate is lower than it has been since the boom years of the 1980s during the Ada administration. She steered the island through the pandemic, her policies arguably saving hundreds, if not thousands of lives. Massive amounts of federal inflows have paid for road construction and other infrastructure development during her tenure. She cut taxes for the majority of small businesses to an historic low. And she is on the precipice of doing what her last few predecessors couldn’t: building a hospital.

But, alas, as with every giant’s fall, avarice and hubris will overshadow her legacy and ruin how voters perceive her administration. Not because of anything she did or didn’t do, but because of the federal corruption investigation involving her lieutenant governor.

The Republicans are waiting for the ball to drop, and like sharks in the water, they are circling the scent of blood.

How Serious Are These Contenders?

Running for governor is a programmatic undertaking. It doesn’t really matter how popular you are if you don’t have money and smart people to back you. And it doesn’t matter how much money you have if you’re not popular and you don’t have smart people with you. And if all you have is smart people by your side, well… what a waste of smart people.

Popularity

In one sense, being a top-vote-getting senator is one measure of popularity, but that metric can be deceiving. In 2009, then-Senator Eddie Calvo was an extremely popular public official, except for one problem: people didn’t really know much about him. They knew he was a Calvo and that he’s a smart man. Perhaps they knew he was God fearing. Some might have even known he had a lot of kids. But the average voter couldn’t tell you a single thing he had done as a senator despite his rather long record of achievements.

Among the biggest challenges of the 2010 gubernatorial campaign was reintroducing Eddie Calvo to the public and letting voters know who he was and what he did for them. Running for governor is a whole different ball game from a senatorial election. In the senatorial elections of 1992, Doris Flores Brooks again topped the legislative races with Tommy Tanaka coming in the top five. Carl Gutierrez didn’t even make the top 10. But in 1994, Mr. Gutierrez was elected governor.

Which bring me to my next point about popularity. A candidate can become popular based on a message. Look at Donald Trump. The Republican establishment in 2016 wrote him off faster than a prostitute runs when flashing blue lights approach the alley. But Mr. Trump had a message and a vision that resonated with so many Americans, making him the most popular Republican by the time the primaries were half way through, and winning him just enough popularity in just the right places to secure his electoral victory for the Presidency.

With seven men potentially running in such a crowded field for the Republican nomination for governor, each candidate’s message and how charismatic each of them are at delivering that message will be pivotal in determining which can win the greatest numbers of hearts and minds WHO WILL ACTUALLY GO TO VOTE IN A PRIMARY ELECTION.

Smart People & Money

If there’s anything the 2022 elections showed us, it is that you cannot win a governor’s race on social media, even in this new decade. You need social media, yes. But you also need a great ground game: a coordinator who is able to secure votes for your candidate, organize the pocket meetings, target constituencies, gather people’s phone numbers, email addresses, and social media accounts and turn all that data into a massive phone bank and get out the vote effort on Election Day.

You need a smart and driven person for that.

Then you’ll need another smart and driven person – together with a synergetic team – to direct the campaign’s messaging and coordinate all marketing.

Those two managers – your ground game coordinator and your air game coordinator – often will butt heads, so you need an effective campaign manager; someone who is firm but has mastered the art of being able to drop the hammer and at the same time make volunteers feel good about being involved.

In order for any of those operations to materialize, you’ll need money, and money doesn’t come out of nowhere. Someone has to raise those funds. People and businesses don’t just give their money away to anyone. They want to trust whoever is asking for that money.

So on top of having a fundraising committee and coordinator, you need a campaign chairman who is nice, connected, and able to work on the ground floor with that fundraising committee. And in order for that campaign chairman to have the influence needed to get the big donors to trust your candidate, you need what is often referred to as a kitchen cabinet.

The Kitchen Cabinet (or, the High Table)

Let’s call the colloquial kitchen cabinet the high table instead. It’s 2025. We’re much further away from George Washington’s kitchen cabinet and much closer to John Wick’s High Table, so the more recent metaphor is better.

Any serious gubernatorial candidate needs a quiet, behind the scenes small group of powerful and influential advisors who can move people and other resources, and who can provide assurances to donors that the campaign is serious and winnable.

You need Republicans like David Lujan, the three former governors (Joe Ada, Felix Camacho, and Eddie Calvo), or non-party affiliated influencers like Tony Sgro or Ho Sun on your high table. The problem with having seven gubernatorial candidates – or heck, even more than two gubernatorial candidates – is that there just aren’t enough powerful and influential Guamanians willing to back a Republican candidate to go around.

The Republicans can pull this off, but the more candidates there are running for governor, the greater the opportunity they blow their chance to replace the Democrat in Adelup with a Republican.

The next two years are going to be so fun to watch. I hope all seven of them run. Kandit will bank so much money from their advertisements as well as those from the Democrats. Their race is heating up just as much.

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