Who is the most corrupt governor in Guam history?

A close friend Sunday asked me, “Who is the most corrupt governor we’ve ever had?”

I had to think about it. We chatted about it while taking a lazy walk through Tumon. My first confession is that I’m too young to have any working knowledge of the administrations of Carlos Camacho, Ricardo Bordallo, Paul Calvo, Joseph Ada, or Carl Gutierrez.

I know Mr. Bordallo was convicted on a federal corruption charge involving a pay-for-play contracting scheme. I remember the news stories surrounding the indictments of Mr. Gutierrez in local court, all of which either were dropped, dismissed, or juries found him not guilty of any crimes.

Corruption comes in all forms. We would be naive to think that any gubernatorial administration was free of cronyism and political patronage, backroom deals, lies to the public, campaign donor tit-for-tats, vote buying, and corporate welfare that benefited family interest. Sadly, I think most of the public expects this as the norm.

But, who went beyond all that? Which administration abused its power in such a way that the public interest was harmed totally and aggressively?

Did we have a Ralph Torres, who fleeced our territory? Or a Huey Long, who robbed free citizens of their freedom through fear?

The conversation with my friend of course started with Eddie Calvo, our previous governor. Mr. Calvo was a good man and a strong leader and manager. I personally know this. I worked for him.

That man did not run for public office with the intention of making a quick buck for himself. And for most of his tenure as the governor, his decisions were based purely on what he believed to be right and just, especially when controversy erupted.

The problem, I told my friend (and I have many times espoused here on Kandit), is that the government he ran also had a multimillion dollar contract with a company his family owns. And while it is arguably true there is no better health insurance plan on this island than what that company offers, I personally know every effort was made to protect that contract as Calvo’s detractors were hell bent on sending the contract to another company. Some of those detractors, by the way, had their own corrupt interests at play.

And then there were the sharks in his family, who wanted to swallow up every lucrative government contract they could. Oh, the books that could be written about the shenanigans that went down as the Federal Bureau of Investigation swarmed the Calvo administration for evidence. What was interesting is that Mr. Calvo had a political pitbull whose duty it was to keep certain members of the Calvo family away from the governor in order to prevent corruption. There were times that pitbull couldn’t be around to protect the boss.

After a full discourse about Mr. Calvo, we turned our talk to Lou Leon Guerrero. Cronyism in the Leon Guerrero administration seems to be far more rampant than it was in the Calvo administration. The difference is sort of like two thieves: one who lives a high society life and steals from no one, except for a bank heist; and the other who goes around every week stealing $300 from cash registers.

The federal funds from the pandemic clearly were a source of contract cronyism for those who were “In.” And the hiring of political supporters, oh my goodness. The governor’s record on this puts Calvo to shame. 

While no charges have ever been filed, there is something rotten about that scandal involving the governor’s son in law and a pandemic-era contract with a hotel that had a note with the bank the governor’s family owns. There is the suspicion of what financial interest the governor might have concerning the back road to Andersen, where she insists on building a new medical complex.

My friend asked me if perhaps all that is, is the governor not wanting the hospital to be built near her house, the same way she vehemently fought the construction of a foster home along the road where she lives in Tamuning. Could be. She should probably just say that so that all the usual suspects can stop with the conspiracy theories that, granted, have turned up no evidence whatsoever of corruption in her preferred site location.

And then of course there’s all that pandemic money sitting in an account in the bank her family owns. Kandit researched that issue at length. The only connection to corruption is not a connection at all, but a leap in logic, when you consider that during the same period of the funds deposit, that bank’s assets grew by $1 billion. Is something there? It’s all conjecture, unless of course the FBI and the U.S. Attorney pursue the matter.

As we weighed the two governors (we agreed we couldn’t remember any big corruption scandals during the Felix Camacho administration), I remembered something and I was surprised I didn’t think about it first.

It was during the Calvo administration that police corruption flourished. Both the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in federal court filings in two different drug cases insinuated the involvement in police corruption of Mr. Calvo’s lieutenant governor, Ray Tenorio, whom Mr. Calvo appointed to oversee the Guam Police Department.

Evidence presented in several federal drug cases and trials showed high level involvement in the use and weaponization of the police force against one set of drug traffickers in favor of traffickers who were politically connected and paying off officials. According to the FBI and the U.S. Attorney, calls were made to use the now defunct Mandana Drug Task Force to raid homes of drug dealers in order to take out the competition for other drug dealers.

In all these years since Kandit started on the premise of a fight against police corruption, I have had the pleasure of reconnecting with many of my co-workers from the Calvo administration. One common theme in our reconciliation is that Eddie Calvo did not know about the shenanigans Ray Tenorio pulled with GPD. He was completely unaware of the level of police corruption, and would have stopped it if he knew.

The federal court documents Kandit wrote about and presented were eye opening to people in the Calvo administration, and to the former governor himself, I’m told.

I believe that. I believe in my heart of hearts that Eddie Calvo would not have stood for police corruption. The thing is, even though he didn’t know about it, it still happened in the administration named after him.

Police corruption is the absolute worst type of corruption. Lou Leon Guerrero could steal $500 million from taxpayers and pocket it, and I would still believe that the weaponization of the police to rob people of their freedom unjustly is worlds more corrupt.

And let’s not forget how the Calvo administration abused its power in order to get rid of two political enemies at the seaport and five of their companions. The political massacre of the Port 7 was, through and through, a high level attempt to use the power of the government to destroy its political enemies.

Maybe the question is wrong. Maybe it shouldn’t be, “Who is the most corrupt governor of Guam,” but “Who is the most corrupt elected leader we ever had?”

The answer is obvious.

And then of course there’s Ralph Torres. Holy cow, CNMI. What a story of corruption that continues to be.