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Senate vacancy declared
The Senate declared a vacancy on Friday afternoon following the resignation of Ray N. Yumul, now a certified independent candidate for lieutenant governor in the Nov. 4 general elections.
Senate President Ralph Torres (R-Saipan) wrote Gov. Eloy S. Inos a letter late Friday afternoon, a day after a Senate session wherein they formally accepted Yumul’s resignation letter. Torres’ office received the resignation letter on Wednesday morning.
Yumul was Senate floor leader from January 2013 to August 2014.
“Accordingly, the Senate declares that a vacancy exists at the Senate and respectfully requests your office to call for a special election to fill the vacancy in the Senate pursuant to Article II Section 9 of the Northern Mariana Islands Constitution and 1 CMC 6502. Your immediate attention to this matter is greatly appreciated,” Torres wrote the governor.
Acting press secretary Ivan Blanco told Saipan Tribune yesterday that a note was prepared Friday to declare a special election but there was no word whether Inos signed it before the governor left for Oregon yesterday.
The governor is expected to return in time for this Sunday’s Labor Day festivities on Saipan, Blanco said.
Torres’ letter also was sent a day after the Senate passed on first and final reading a bill that once signed into law would prohibit the seven candidates that were already certified to run for two Senate seats in the Nov. 4 general elections to also run for a special election to fill the third Saipan senatorial seat that Yumul vacated.
Saipan senatorial candidate Stephen Woodruff, along with some of the candidates, also said if the governor waits just two weeks until Sept. 5 to issue the call for a special election, “the special election can be held concurrently with the general election as I propose, and no legislative action is required.”
Holding the two separate elections in one day will save the government $70,000 to $80,000.
A former Senate legal counsel, Woodruff also suggests that when the governor calls for a special election, he should also proclaim that the currently certified candidates for the general election shall also be deemed candidates in the special election, among other things.
