The incumbent team of Lou Leon Guerrero and Josh Tenorio captured 54% of the total votes cast for both Democratic and Republican candidates in Saturday’s gubernatorial primary election in Guam.
Voter turnout was a modest 40%, which occurred due to several factors including the switch to motor voter registration, uncontested races for governor and delegate on the Republican ballot and a historical trend of lower turnout in years when incumbent chief executives are on the ballot.
In the Democratic race, the Leon Guerrero-Tenorio team won a resounding 62.3% of the vote, while Congressman Michael San Nicolas and running mate Sabrina Salas Matanane garnered 37.6%, largely mirroring forecasts of various preelection polls that had the sitting governor ahead 2:1.
Meanwhile, the uncontested race on the Republican side of the ballot saw 2,963 votes for former Governor Felix Camacho and Senator Tony Ada, which was 12.7% of the total votes cast and within 195 votes of the last Republican showing in an uncontested Republican primary in 2018.
Governor Leon Guerrero said she and Lt Governor Tenorio were humbled by their victory and acknowledged “Josh and I would like everyone to know that there is a place for you in our campaign. Every single voter who cast a ballot in this election, regardless of who they voted for, and whatever their reasons for their choices, we know you will be looking for a new home in the general election. We believe we can work together to find common ground by putting Guam first in all that we do.”
She added, “We are bound together by a faith more powerful than any discord or division — our love of family, our belief in progress, and our relentless hope that the lives of our children and grandchildren will be better than our own.”
Tenorio said these “values represent who we are. They are the values of people tested by hardship and tempered by grace, a people who know, so long as we do it together, that anything wrong with Guam can be fixed by all that is right with Guam.”
“We have a strong slate of 15 Democratic senatorial candidates with very diversified backgrounds, and as Gov. Lou and I have been saying, our next Congressional delegate will be a woman, who also represents wisdom and experience, and who we need to count on to help the governor and I move our island forward,” added Tenorio.
“As we head into the general election in November, we need all our people to unify and come together to heal the brokenness of our island. It is time to rise. It is time to dig our heels in and press on for the great things that are in store for our island,” Camacho said.
When asked what the Lou and Josh campaign is doing immediately after the primary election victory, Leon Guerrero said “Josh and I are grateful to our campaign organization for providing a structure and to our village organisation for executing a solid ground game, and we all realize that our work is far from over. In the next few weeks and months we will be working hard to show those who did not vote for us that they can depend upon us to move the island forward and not leave anyone behind.”
With the release of the unofficial results, the general election season is now underway with early voting set to commence October 10.