Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon
Rep. Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon has been elected as the new Governor of Puerto Rico, replacing Governor Pedro Pierluisi. Both a re members of the statehood party, and both have served as the Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico. Born in San Juan, Gonzalez-Colon was the the youngest person ever elected to the Puerto Rico House of Representatives. She served as Speaker of the House and then as Minority Leader. In 2016 and again in 2020, she was elected as resident commissioner. In both cases, she received the largest number of votes among all the candidates in those elections.
Gonzalez-Colon has served on a number of committees in the House of Representatives, including Natural Resources, Veterans’ Affairs, Small Business, Transportation, and Science, Space, and Technology. As resident commissioner, she has been tireless in her support of Puerto Rico and her fight for statehood. She has also held leadership positions in the national Republican Party and has received numerous awards for her public service.
Pablo José Hernández Rivera
Pablo José Hernández Rivera has been elected as Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico. Hernández Rivera is a Democrat and a member of the “commonwealth” party. He is an attorney, as is Gonzalez-Colon, and has served as a district court clerk. He is the grandson of former Governor of Puerto Rico Rafael Hernandez Colon, whose book, Hacia la meta final: El Nuevo Pacto and Estado Libre Asociado: Naturaleza y Desarrollo (Toward the Final Goal: The New Pact and Commonwealth Status: Nature and Development), he edited.
Hernández Rivera continues to support the idea of “enhanced commonwealth,” having just recently announced, “I do not recognize the validity of that plebiscite because it is not binding and because it did not include the option of maintaining and improving the Free Associated State.” By “Free Associated State” he here means ELA, the official name of Puerto Rico in Spanish. Puerto Rico is not a free associated state, but rather is an unincorporated territory of the United States. The plebiscite he mentions was held on November 5, 2024, and resulted in the fourth straight victory for statehood.
The idea of “maintaining and improving” the “commonwealth” has been a dream of “commonwealth” leaders since the 1950s. The dream is for Puerto Rico to have U.S. citizenship, U.S. financial support, freedom to pick and choose among federal laws, the ability to make treaties with other nations, and a variety of other special privileges which cannot be changed by Congress without mutual agreement. The federal government has consistently rejected the idea for the simple reason that it is not possible under the U.S. Constitution.
Special math
Hernández Rivera also denies the results of the status vote on the familiar grounds of shaky math. “When you add the votes for independence, the Free Association and the blank and void votes, which were the votes that the PDP asked for,” he said, “statehood drops from the 52% it obtained in 2020 to 47 or 48%, meaning that it no longer has a majority.”
It is unfortunate that the PDP encouraged its supporters to throw away their votes by turning in blank ballots, but blank ballots are not votes. Statehood received 57% of the votes in the status referendum, a clear majority.
It is also clear that statehood will not receive support from the new resident commissioner. However, he will not be able to vote on the Puerto Rico Status Act in Congress, or on any admission bill that may arise during his tenure — because Puerto Rico is not a state. Congress can take action to admit Puerto Rico based on the democratically expressed will of the people. If you live in a state, encourage your representatives to take action to admit Puerto Rico as the 51st state of the Union.
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