13,000km from Washington, Guam is on Republican contender Ted Cruz’s radar

It’s not unusual for presidential campaigns to deploy staffers across the country in the year before voting begins. But Republican candidate Ted Cruz has gone one step further and sent an operative across the Pacific Ocean.

The Cruz campaign has dispatched political consultant Dennis Lennox to Guam to organise in advance of that island’s GOP caucuses. The decision to send Lennox, a former county drain commissioner in his native Michigan, to Guam represents the most zealous outreach of any presidential campaign to the US island territory located nearly 13,000km from Washington DC.

David Sablan, a Republican National Committee member from Guam, said last week that Cruz had dispatched an operative to the island and said his was one of only three presidential campaigns that had reached out to Guam Republicans.

The other two campaigns were those of former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. Sablan said that he had met personally with Bush, talked with him about the campaign and continued to stay “in touch with people”.

In addition, he mentioned that the Walker campaign was “making some overtures” and doing outreach to get a sense of the island territory’s delegate selection plan. However, the Cruz campaign, which did not respond to a request for comment, was the only one to actually have a presence on the ground in Guam.

While Guam only has nine delegates out of the total of 2,470 who will attend the Republican convention in Cleveland in July 2016, it is far more significant than its size would indicate under RNC rules. Under rules passed in 2012, any Republican candidate needs the support of a majority of delegates from eight states to have his name placed into nomination. Under RNC rules, a territory is considered a state and winning Guam makes it that much easier for a candidate to tally the eight states necessary if there ends up being a floor fight in Cleveland next year.