Despite her thumping reelection majority and her continuing, excellent ties with the Obama Administration, Delegate to Congress Donna M. Christensen (D V.I.) will face a more difficult environment in the House of Representatives come January.
These are the two crucial facts of life: 1) she will no longer be a member of the ruling majority, and 2) she (like the other island delegates) continues not to have a vote on the Floor of the House.
But she is a well-liked member of the body and can be expected to continue to be an advocate for the islands. She will presumably continue to be a full, voting member of the Natural Resources (and territories) Committee, and of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Similarly, she and the other island delegates, have a full vote in party caucuses.
She has also moved up in the leadership ladder at the Congressional Black Caucus, now being the first vice chair; presumably, all else being equal, she will move into the chair of CBC the next time around.
Further, it is helpful to the Delegate that the leader of the Democrats in the House continues to be Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who will give up the Speakership when the new Congress organizes next month. The two are allies, as Congresswoman Christensen was a key player in an internal caucus controversy several years ago when Pelosi defeated Steny Hoyer (D-MD) for Democratic whip.
There are five nonvoting island representatives in the House; all of them, including Christensen, will be returning.
Three of them, all junior to the V.I. delegate in terms of years of service, are Madeleine Bordallo of Guam, who had no opponent in the election; Pedro R. Pierluisi of Puerto Rico, whose title is Resident Commissioner, and who was elected in 2008 for a four-year term; and Kilili Sablan, who won a second two-year term as the representative of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), (in the North Pacific) and who, though an Independent, sat with the Democrats last year. (Bordallo and Pierluisi are Democrats, too.)
Christensen and Sablan share an interesting distinction. In this year of sweeping Republican victories each of them won an election in which the Republican candidate came in third.
In the U.S. Virgin Islands, the second-place candidate was Jeffrey Moorhead, a lawyer and an independent, who did not do much visible campaigning. In third place in the V.I. was the Republican, Vincent Danet, who did campaign.
The CNMI, the newest of the U.S. territories, has the most tentative of relationships with Mainland institutions, including the two political parties. Coming in a distant second to Sablan was a candidate of the local Commonwealth Party which is dominated by the CNMI Governor, Benigno Fitial, a one-time ally of the disgraced and once-jailed lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. Running third was the Republican, former Gov. Juan Babauta, and fourth was the Democrat, Jesse Borja, a former Lt. Governor.
The fifth island delegate, and the only one with more years of service in the House than Christensen, is Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, who represents American Samoa. Another Democrat, he won his 11th term in Congress. Since Samoa is just east of the International Date Line, the polls close there later than anywhere else under the U.S. flag; in contrast, Guam and CNMI, on the other side of the Line, are the first places to vote; the results of their elections were known on the afternoon of the Mainland election day.
David North, a resident of Arlington, Va., and formerly with the U.S. Interior’s Office of Insular Affairs, occasionally writes for the Source on national politics and governmental finance.