Palau

Although Guam came through 1998-99 without a punishing typhoon, President Clinton hit Guam like a storm, as did the November general elections, Chinese illegal entrants, and the effort to restructure Guam's school system. However, Guam's economy remained in the doldrums.

The September 1998 primary election saw the incumbent team of Governor Carl Gutierrez and Lieutenant Governor Madeleine Bordallo handily defeat the competing teams (Tom Ada and Lou Leon Guerrero, and Angel Santos and Jose Terlaje) by taking 51 percent (16,636 votes) of the primary votes on the Democratic party side. The Ada-Guerrero ticket garnered 28 percent (9,296 votes) and, surprisingly, the Santos-Terlaje team attracted nearly 21 percent (6,745 votes) of the electorate. One long-time observer had predicted that this team would likely not receive more than 10 percent of the vote. In November's general election, Gutierrez-Bordallo defeated the Republican party team of former two-time governor Joseph Ada and Senator Felix Camacho. The incumbents garnered 24,250 votes to 21,200 for the Republican ticket. However, of the 48,666 votes cast, 1,294 were for write-in candidates, 609 went to both gubernatorial teams, and 1,313 were left blank.

Despite claims that Gutierrez-Bordallo had not been elected in accord with the Organic Act, the Guam Election Commission concluded that blank ballots and double ballots (ballot on which an individual casts votes for both gubernatorial teams) should not be counted and certified the Democratic team winners of the November election. Lawyers for the Ada-Camacho team asserted that the final results must include all ballots cast, and that Gutierrez-Bordallo had not received a majority as required by the Organic Act of Guam, requiring a runoff election. After the commission's declaration, Ada-Camacho filed two suits, one with the Superior Court of Guam and a second with the US District Court. The case filed in the Superior Court alleged a long list of irregularities and wrongdoing, for which Judge Manibusan could find little evidence, and he ruled in favor of Gutierrez-Bordallo. However, the District Court case centered on the narrow issue of "the majority of votes cast in any election" specified in section 1422 of the 1950 Organic Act of Guam. Ada-Camacho claimed that their opponents had not received a majority vote, thus mandating a runoff election. On this issue, Judge John Unpingco ruled in favor of Ada-Camacho and called for a runoff election on 19 December.

In response, Gutierrez-Bordallo filed an appeal with the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals, which in April 1999 upheld the Unpingco decision. The Circuit Court interpreted "a majority of the votes cast in any election" to mean that a gubernatorial slate is required to garner a majority of votes cast in the general election, rather than in the gubernatorial race only. Gutierrez-Bordallo requested that the court reconsider the case, but it declined. Then Gutierrez-Bordallo requested that the court delay the runoff election so that an appeal could be made to the US Supreme Court. The court agreed, and that appeal was filed on 1 July 1999.

Immediately after the controversial November election and before the Ada-Camacho suits were filed, there was considerable confusion and tension in Guam. This delayed President Clinton's visit to Guam by a few weeks. Clinton had visited Japan and South Korea and scheduled a stop on Guam for 23 November during his return trip to Washington, dc. He was greeted with great warmth and enthusiasm--no impeachment talk on Guam! The president responded in kind by delivering some commitments and moving twice through the amazingly friendly crowd of twenty-five thousand that came to hear his speech at Adelup, some two miles north of the 1944 invasion beaches. Both Governor Gutierrez and Congressman Robert Underwood had been working for years to get the president to Guam, and those efforts finally paid off.

In his...