Puerto Rico Might Elect Its First Pro-Independence Governor

VEGA BAJA, Puerto Rico — Eliezer Concepción worked for years at his roadside mechanic shop to save enough money to buy a piece of his hometown before it was too late.

In 2020, he finally purchased a dilapidated house in this beachside enclave roughly 45 minutes west of the sprawling capital of San Juan. It took him two years to renovate a dwelling destroyed in 2017’s Hurricane María into a functioning Airbnb. But he saw it as a way to earn extra money by tapping into the Caribbean island’s $10 billion tourism industry — and to keep the cash circulating locally.

For years, Puerto Rico’s controversial tax haven laws have drawn wealthy Americans looking to avoid income taxes and sparked a property gold rush that pits lower-paid, Spanish-speaking natives against cash-rich Anglophone newcomers. But Concepción, 43, was determined to keep at least his piece of the town in the hands of a real Vegabajeño.

“My neighbors are all selling,” Concepción, 43, said on a July afternoon, leaning back in the leather chair of the tiny office of his auto body shop. “But I wanted a good chance for someone from here to buy and rebuild.”

It’s getting harder to reject the routine cash offers from real estate speculators. Since the privately held LUMA Energy took over operations of Puerto Rico’s electrical grid from the bankrupt state-owned utility PREPA in 2021, the power goes out weekly, if not daily, and bills keep going up. A lack of consistent air conditioning or refrigeration deters guests, leaving Concepción’s vacation rental business struggling. He wonders how long he can hold out — and how Puerto Rico’s historic election next week could forever change the dynamics in what is considered the world’s oldest colony.

While they are full U.S. citizens, Puerto Ricans living on the island can’t vote for the president, and the lone delegate they send to Congress has no real legislative powers. That makes the gubernatorial race the territory’s most important election — and this year’s is unlike any other in the 76 years since the U.S. began allowing Puerto Ricans to vote for their own governor.

That’s because, when Concepción goes to the polls next week, he’ll be among the first American citizens since the Civil War with a real shot at electing a governor campaigning to declare independence from the United States.

Juan Dalmau, the gubernatorial nominee from the once-marginalized Puerto Rican Independence Party, is now in second place, and polls show the race tightening amid the island’s fury over remarks a speaker made last Sunday at former President Donald Trump’s rally in Manhattan calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”

The front-runner, Jenniffer González-Colón, is a Republican and Trump ally representing the New Progressive Party, the pro-statehood party that has ruled Puerto Rico continuously since 2016.

Jesús Manuel Ortiz González, the nominee from the traditional opposition Popular Democratic Party, which advocates retaining Puerto Rico’s territorial status, struggled to break through but is now competing with Dalmau for second place in the most recent poll.

The central faultline in Puerto Rican politics has long been the territory’s relationship with the mainland U.S. After seizing the island as a colony in the spoils of Washington’s victory in the Spanish-American War of 1898, the U.S. violently suppressed Puerto Rico’s independence movement for decades.

As Europe began dismantling its empires after World War II, the U.S. granted the Philippines its independence but cut a separate deal with Puerto Rico, giving the island limited autonomy as a “commonwealth” and U.S. territory.

Puerto Rican rebels, under the command of the Harvard-trained lawyer and independence leader Pedro Albizu Campos, attempted an armed uprising in 1950. But the U.S. military, in a singular act of deploying the Air Force against its own citizens, bombed a rebel stronghold in the mountains, leveling almost the entire town. Even waving a pro-independence flag became an offense punished with years of jail time.

From that point on, local control of Puerto Rico passed between the two main political parties duking it out each election cycle. On one side was the Popular Democratic Party, known by its Spanish acronym PPD, which supported the commonwealth status quo. On the other was the New Progressive Party, or PNP, which called for U.S. statehood. The pro-independence PIP remained a minor third party akin to the Green Party, earning at most a tiny single-digit percentage of the vote each election.

That arrangement worked for much of the rest of the 20th century, when federal support helped industrialize Puerto Rico and raise living standards. In 1996, however, Clinton-era reforms saw the federal government phase out the tax credit that had drawn manufacturers to the island. As factories closed, Puerto Rico’s government tried to make up for the jobs by hiring more teachers and police officers. But as the industrial tax base evaporated, Puerto Rico borrowed more and more money by issuing bonds that Wall Street expected would be backed up by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Treasury.

By 2016, Puerto Rico’s debt and unfunded pension obligations reached a combined $126 billion. The island went bankrupt.

Not an independent country, Puerto Rico could not get help refinancing from international lenders. Not a fully incorporated part of the U.S., either, the territory could not access the bankruptcy protections from which states and municipalities like Detroit benefit.

Instead, Congress — which legally considers Puerto Rico and the four other permanently populated U.S. territories “possessions” — passed a law called the PROMESA Act, after the Spanish word for “promise,” which gave a White House-appointed board of financial overseers veto power over all the spending of the island’s elected government.

The fiscal control board — known pejoratively among locals as “la junta,” the term for a ruling council in military dictatorships — instituted harsh austerity measures, closing hundreds of schools and slashing pensions in a place with worse poverty than the poorest U.S. state.

Then came Hurricane María, a catastrophe from which Puerto Rico’s infrastructure has yet to recover. While the precise death toll is debated, most scholars agree the aftermath of the storm killed thousands who might have otherwise survived if they had had access to refrigerated medicine or clean water after the blackout disabled groundwater pumps.

In the summer of 2019, text messages between then-Gov. Ricardo Rosselló and his inner circle showed the pro-statehood leader making jokes about the bloated bodies of Puerto Ricans killed during the storm two years earlier. As many as 1 million Puerto Ricans flooded the streets in protest, demanding his resignation.

The chaos didn’t stop when Rosselló stepped down in disgrace. He tried appointing Pedro Pierluisi, a former coal lobbyist, as governor. But state courts intervened and instead selected Wanda Vázquez Garced to lead the island from 2019 to 2021 (Pierluisi then won the 2020 election to succeed her, and is the island’s current governor). In 2022, just as protests over the LUMA contract were growing, federal authorities arrested Vázquez in a corruption scandal.

To Dalmau, the events showed Puerto Rico was primed for radical change. Sure enough, when he ran for governor in 2020, he won 14% of the vote — seven times the largest share of ballots the Independence Party had ever won and the first time it had earned a double-digit share of the vote.

Like Albizu Campos, Juan Manuel Dalmau Ramírez is a Harvard-trained lawyer. Dalmau, 51, served in Puerto Rico’s Senate before becoming the standard-bearer for the Puerto Rican Independence Party, or PIP, in the 2020 election.

His surprisingly strong performance wasn’t the only sign the two-party duopoly on Puerto Rico’s politics was crumbling. That same year saw upstart parties that eschewed the status question field competitive nominees.

On the right, the Christian-democratic Dignity Project party sought to unite the largely Catholic island around conservative social reforms, like tighter abortion restrictions and a ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors. On the left, the Citizens Victory Movement endorsed more liberal social policies but advocated primarily for ending Puerto Rico’s colonial arrangement with the U.S. In a bid to cleave voters from both traditional parties, neither new party openly backed statehood or independence.

In 2020, the Citizens Victory Movement came close to winning the race for San Juan mayor, arguably the island’s second-most influential position after governor. This year, the Independence Party and the Citizens Victory Movement formed a coalition called Alianza, or “Alliance.”

The Citizens Victory Movement’s energetic organizing, combined with the Independence Party’s experience running in elections for decades, has launched Dalmau into second place in recent polls.

Dalmau’s pitch for breaking off from the U.S. is really something closer to a conscious uncoupling. He envisions weaning Puerto Rico off federal funding over a 25-year period and striking a deal to give members of the Puerto Rican diaspora — twice as many Puerto Ricans live in states like New York and Florida as on the island — the option for dual passports.

The recently privatized power grid will need to come back under government management, but Dalmau wants to attract big companies with tax breaks like the ones the U.S. government once used to develop a manufacturing industry in Puerto Rico.

“Our platform is going to support a democratic decolonization process,” Dalmau told HuffPost in July after a press conference at a landmark building in the upscale San Juan neighborhood of Miramar. “Puerto Ricans are a nation.”

During the world wars, the U.S. military’s outposts in Puerto Rico helped Washington maintain control over the Caribbean and routes to the Panama Canal. During the Cold War, Puerto Rico served as a vital defense hub and a model for the benefits of American capitalism over communism once Fidel Castro took power in neighboring Cuba.

But now, Dalmau said, Puerto Rico no longer hosts major military operations, and its debt crisis is an ongoing embarrassment to the U.S.

“Puerto Rico has become a burden,” he said.

Puerto Ricans are split over the island’s future relationship with the U.S. A survey released last month by El Nuevo Día, the territory’s newspaper of record, showed 44% of voters back statehood and a combined 44% favor sovereignty. Of the latter set, 25% support a compact of free association with the U.S. — a deal akin to what Palau and Micronesia have, allowing the former U.S. Pacific territories to represent themselves at the United Nations but still benefit from federal funding — and 19% back independence.

Either way, Dalmau has sought to play down the independence issue, particularly as voters prepare to cast ballots simultaneously in a nonbinding referendum over whether Puerto Rico should become a state, independent or something else. For the first time in the long history of failed plebiscites over Puerto Rico’s status, where one side or the other often boycotted the vote to make the results meaningless, this referendum does not include the option for the status quo.

Rather than peg his candidacy to independence, Dalmau has pitched himself as a crusader against what he called the “two-headed monster” of the traditional two parties.

“People lost their fear that you can vote for an independentista, and the next day Puerto Rico will become independent,” Dalmau said. “People tell me, ‘I was PNP, I was PPD, we have to get these people out of office.’”

Jenniffer González-Colón, who leads the gubernatorial race, has sought to revive old fears of independence by linking Dalmau to socialist authoritarians in Latin America. Ads running on TV show him alongside Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro, Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel and Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega.

Ironically, it’s her party, the pro-statehood PNP, that has the closest connections to Venezuela’s embattled regime.

As part of a massive corruption investigation, federal authorities arrested the former PNP governor, Vázquez, in 2022 on bribery charges. Among those charged with her was Julio Martin Herrera Velutini, a banker who financed her failed election campaign in 2020. The Department of Justice accused Herrera Velutini of bribing Vázquez as part of a deal to take control of Puerto Rico’s financial regulator to hide a multimillion-dollar portfolio of dirty money linked to the Venezuelan regime.

Like Dalmau, González-Colón — who currently serves as Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner, a nonvoting delegate to the U.S. Congress — ran on changing the contract between the island and LUMA Energy after it took over the territory’s electrical grid three years ago under a privatization effort the fiscal control board promoted.

Her tough-talking ads on radio and television helped her defeat incumbent governor Pierluisi in the PNP’s primary earlier this year.

A spokesperson for González-Colón declined HuffPost’s request to meet in Puerto Rico over the summer and initially offered to set up an interview remotely a week later. But multiple subsequent emails and phone calls went unanswered.

On the campaign trail, González-Colón has claimed credit for the increase in federal funding the Biden administration has provided to Puerto Rico, and promised to hold LUMA accountable for ongoing blackouts. But González-Colón, a Republican in her stateside politics and a close ally of former President Donald Trump, was among the strongest supporters of privatizing Puerto Rico’s electrical system. While the Biden administration has promoted solar energy, González-Colón joined her fellow Republicans in advocating for Puerto Rico’s controversial natural gas buildout.

“I see her as arrogant. She talks tough,” said José Rosario Borres, 53, a retired school janitor from the southern coastal town of Santa Isabel. “She kept lying and lying. It’s written in black and white history. When you lie to Puerto Ricans, you disrespect us and underestimate our intelligence.”

Rosario Borres, who depends on an electric wheelchair due to Guillain-Barré syndrome, said he needed cheaper, more reliable power. On a July afternoon, he came to an evangelical church in Santa Isabel to see U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm unveil a new program to provide solar panels to low-income households.

He said he voted for Pierluisi in the primary. Now, he said, he may not vote at all. If he does, he said, his vote may go to Dalmau.

“I’d rather vote for Juan than the PPD,” he said, referring to the status-quo commonwealth party that served as the statehood party’s traditional opposition.

In Cataño, a densely populated city neighborhood across the bay from scenic Old San Juan, Lissette Avilés Ríos, a nun and environmentalist, criticized González-Colón’s support for fossil fuel projects, including a controversial natural gas import terminal operating with federal permits.

“She’s was pushing for more natural gas as the resident commissioner all while she was planning a run for governor,” Avilés Ríos said.

Back in Vega Baja, Angel Manuel Ciordia, 75, said he would vote for González-Colón because he believes statehood is the best path forward for Puerto Rico. But he said it’s unlikely to make any difference if Trump wins back the White House.

“It all depends on who the president is,” said Ciordia, a retired radio executive, during an interview outside his home. “Trump doesn’t want us.”

Historically, Republicans championed statehood for Puerto Rico. In recent years, however, liberals have seized on the issue, conflating the movement with the push to admit the District of Columbia as its own state. The GOP has dismissed the effort as a bid to inflate Democratic power in the Senate, since D.C. is a liberal stronghold, though there’s little evidence to suggest that socially conservative Puerto Rico would yield similar partisan outcomes.

Recent GOP rhetoric suggesting Puerto Rican statehood would yield two liberal senators appears to have taken hold among voters. A YouGov poll released Thursday showed 79% of Democrats and just 41% of Republicans supporting statehood. Asked whether they would back Puerto Rico’s independence, Democratic support plunged to 56%, while Republican backing rose slightly to 46%.

Overall, however, 59% of Americans said they would support admitting Puerto Rico as a state if that’s what voters on the island wanted. Just 16% opposed statehood, and 25% said they did not know enough to answer.

Some voters themselves seemed to shrug off the sovereignty stakes of the election.

“I just want the government to help fishermen,” Miguel Santiago said outside a bar on Vega Baja’s main beach.

He didn’t have strong opinions about either top gubernatorial candidate but said the effects of climate change are shrinking the fish populations, and those whose livelihoods depend on large catches need the government to provide more subsidies and curbs on imported seafood.

William Gibson, 60, a retired teacher sunbathing on the beach, said he had decamped permanently for Colombia. But he rolled his eyes when asked about González-Colón and said he would not cast a ballot for her.

In July, Concepción worried that Dalmau could not possibly compete with the well-funded campaigns from the traditional two parties.

“Dalmau has a good message, but that isn’t what people see,” he said at the time. “They hear radio ads. They see TV ads. They get what the people with money to pay for them want us to see. And that’s not the Independence Party.”

He hadn’t yet decided how he would vote. But he said González-Colón was “smart and more in touch with the people” than the incumbent from her party, Pierluisi, and he was leaning toward voting for her.

“Look, I’ve seen her with friends of mine, regular people,” he said. He grew quiet for a moment, then exhaled. “She at least looks like someone who can listen to people.”

Since then, however, Dalmau has racked up endorsements from some of Puerto Rico’s biggest celebrities, including the music superstars Bad Bunny and Residente, and scored major interviews with influential local reporters.

Meanwhile, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s “garbage” remark at Trump’s rally went viral, stirring voters’ resentments of Trump for his mishandling of the 2017 hurricane and redrawing the connection between González-Colón and the presidential candidate she supports. At the high school that one of Concepción’s four children attends, Dalmau won students’ mock election.

Reached again on Friday afternoon, Concepción said he had changed his mind. It was time to try something different. He said he planned to vote for Dalmau and other candidates running under his Alianza banner.

“This can be historic,” he said.

Hermes Ayala Guzmán contributed reporting.