Romney Sweeps Northern Mariana Islands 9 Delegates

FHQ will not belabor the point here. After all, the story is much the same as the one out of Guam in the early hours of Saturday morning. But Mitt Romney won the caucuses/convention in the Northern Mariana Islands today and with it the nine delegates apportioned it by the Republican National Committee.

One thing that should be noted in all of this -- before the inevitable uproar over why these places have delegates -- is that neither Guam nor the Northern Mariana Islands are winner-take-all contests. It just looks that way now that Romney has claimed the entire 18 delegate cache from both. No, as FHQ mention earlier in the Guam post, the RNC considers these unbound delegates and will likely continue to do so in its delegate count. However, in both cases the newly chosen delegations have opted to endorse the former Massachusetts governor.

I know, I know. But Romney won all of the delegates; that's winner-take-all. He did and it is, but according to the rules these contests (and the caucuses in the Virgin Islands later today and in American Samoa on Tuesday) are producing unbound delegates. From the perspective of the rules, then, these contests are not winner-take-all, but procedurally they have been.

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The delegation in the Northern Marianas breaks down in a similar fashion to Guam. There are three automatic delegates (party chair, national committeeman and national committeewoman) and six additional delegates. The automatic delegates were already in place, but the the caucuses in Saipan on Saturday selected the remaining six delegates in the delegation from a pool of 16 candidates.


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