11/06/00 4:00 p.m.
Puerto Rico Governor’s Race Entertaining
But it has serious implications for the mainland.

By Jim Boulet Jr., executive director English First

hile Puerto Rico's pro-statehood, lame-duck governor, Pedro Rossello, is stumping for Al Gore in New Mexico, Florida, and Tennessee, his designated successor, Carlos Pesquera, faces a close race. A third-party candidate, Ruben Berrios of the Puerto Rico Independence Party, is likely to swing the election to the Statehood Party's Pesquera, rather than to the challenger, Sila Calderon of the Popular Democratic Party.

The Puerto Rico campaign has been much more entertaining than the U.S. presidential race — so much so that on the island it is now known as the "soap opera" — but the two races are much more entwined than you might imagine. In an earlier article here ("Puerto Rico and U.S. Elections"), I discussed legal efforts to allow Puerto Rico to cast eight electoral votes in the neck-and-neck race between George Bush and Al Gore on the mainland.

The good news is that Puerto Rico will not be voting in the U.S. presidential election after all. Despite a personal appeal from Governor Rossello to President Clinton, the Justice Department appealed a district court judge's ruling that residents of Puerto Rico had a right to vote in the presidential election. The First Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the decision on October 13. The court ruled that the island either must become a state or the Constitution must be amended (as was done for Washington, D.C.) in order for island residents to cast a valid presidential vote.

The Statehooders pressed forward with a presidential vote anyway and spent $1 million on preparations, including printing ballots with pictures of Gore and Bush on them. Since both the island's Commonwealth Party and Independence Party opposed the ballot, there were some suspicions as to what the now non-binding ballot was intended to accomplish. One suspicion was that the Statehooders wanted to run up a big win for Bush in an effort to show a Republican Congress that a state of Puerto Rico would not hurt their majorities.

Keep in mind that a state of Puerto Rico would quality for two Senators and seven or eight congressmen--more than most states. Since two-thirds of the island's residents receive money from the U.S. Treasury, many congressional Republicans rightfully suspect that a 51st state of Puerto Rico would be D.C. statehood times seven. (A 51st state of Washington, D.C., would also receive two senators but only one representative in the U.S. House.)

Whatever the presidential vote was expected to accomplish, it is now dead. Puerto Rico's Independence Party won its lawsuit against the presidential vote. Puerto Rico's Supreme Court ruled on November 2 by a vote of 5-2 that the presidential vote was unconstitutional because it would spend public funds on something that had "no legitimate public purpose."

Puerto Rico's Statehood Party and its electoral standard-bearer also continue to face trouble on the government-corruption issue. Now a U.S. congressman, Bud Shuster (R-Pa.), and Statehood Party gubernatorial candidate Pesquera have been linked to a scandal. The island's largest newspaper, El Nuevo Dia, reported in October that Pesquera had testified anonymously to the U.S. House Ethics Committee about Congressman Shuster's trips to Puerto Rico. Rep. Shuster is head of the House Transportation Committee and thus a man well worth getting to know. In 1995, Shuster enjoyed an all-expenses-paid trip to the Hotel Conquistador and Country Club of Fajardo; he also met with Gov. Rossello. The governor later told the press that Puerto Rico's $1.7 billion urban train project (YOUR by its Spanish acronym) would have no problems in Washington. Shuster enjoyed a second trip over the 1995 Christmas holidays "accepting directly or indirectly payments of $4,353," according to published reports.

When this scandal broke on the island, Rossello insisted that not a cent of public funds was spent directly or indirectly on Shuster's visits. He claimed the money came from corporations. (He chose not to mention that close to half of all companies in Puerto Rico depend on contracts from Puerto Rico's government.)

The Statehood Party's nonvoting delegate to Congress, Carlos Romero-Barcelo (who is involved in a close election for his own office), saw no problem at all. Romero-Barcelo argued that the use of public funds to pay for trips was necessary to obtain "the millions of dollars" in aid from the U.S. government and that it was necessary "to treat" the congressmen well: "No, we are not going to put them in the cheapest hotel and let them eat hamburger." He added "to treat a person well who is going to help us obtain [the money]" cannot be considered "exorbitant" expenses.

On the morning of the October 19 debate, the newspaper El Vocero ran a story claiming that the Commonwealth Party candidate, Sila Calderon, had employed an underage and now-pregnant illegal alien from the Dominican Republic as her maid. The article claimed that Calderon treated her like a "slave" and cursed and swore at her. That evening, the El Vocero representative on the debate panel raised the question again.

One day after the debate, the people of Puerto Rico learned that the maid in question had never worked for Calderon, but did once work for the family of House vice president and Statehood party member Edwin Mundo. (Calderon has since filed a $2 million libel suit against El Vocero.)

One would think that a bombshell of this sort would have made Statehooder Pesquera an easy victor over Commonwealther Calderon in that evening's debate. One would be wrong. Calderon was reported as calm and relaxed; Pesquera spoke so rapidly that his points were mangled, as in, "in four years, our party has done a lot to improve on corruption" (which certainly could be interpreted as a Freudian slip).

Analysts declared Calderon the debate's victor, which greatly displeased Pesquera. He complained to El Nuevo Dia that "they always say the candidate of [Statehood Party] always attacks, but they treat the arguments of the adversaries as non-attacks."

The second and last gubernatorial candidates' debate took place on November 1. This time, there were fewer personal attacks. Neither Calderon nor Pesquera was declared the winner. Many post-debate analysts agreed that Oxford-educated Ruben Berrios, the longtime leader of Puerto Rico's Independence Party, won the second debate. He looked much more energetic than he did during the first debate and he was more aggressive.

Berrios criticized the other two candidates for supporting bilingual schools. (Note: A bilingual school in Puerto Rico teaches English to Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican children. On the U.S. mainland, a bilingual school teaches Spanish to Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican children.) Berrios stood strong for Puerto Rico's Spanish language, and opposed the Navy's continued training on Vieques. Both of these positions have strong island-wide appeal.

The interesting paradox of Berrios's candidacy is that the better his party does at the polls, the more likely it is that he will achieve precisely the exact opposite of his stated goals.

As of October 20, El Nuevo Dia found that Pesquera had 43% of the vote, Calderon 39%, and Berrios 8% (10% were either undecided or did not answer). With a margin of error of plus or minus three percent, the race is too close to call. In Puerto Rico, they refer to melones ("watermelons") who talk Independence (the party's official flag is green) while usually voting for Commonwealth (whose official party emblem is red).

Berrios could easily sway enough "watermelon" votes to hand the election to the Statehood Party. This may explain why Commonwealth candidate Calderon suggested during the second debate that this would not be the first time that Berrios would aid the statehood cause. She claimed that the Independence Party joined with the Statehooders to try to get the U.S. Congress to pass the Puerto Rico Statehood bill in 1997-98.

Berrios admitted his group supported a resolution of Puerto Rico's status, but that did not make them equal to the Statehooders: "Lizards and electricians both climb electrical poles, but they are not the same."

Unfortunately for his line of argument, if Puerto Rico were allowed to choose only between statehood and independence, statehood would win handily, since independence averages just 4% support. And statehood is permanent--just ask South Carolina.

The other curious thing about Berrios's potential impact on the election is that he would effectively reward Rossello's change of mind on the issue of U.S. Navy training on the island of Vieques. Berrios spent over a year living on Vieques in an attempt to block further training there. But Rossello allowed the Navy to return shortly after telling the Senate Armed Service Committee that he would allow "not one more bomb" to fall on Vieques. Perhaps the governor and his advisors figured out that "Yankee go home" was a poor slogan for a potential 51st state.

Thus, just as the Ross Perot voters concerned about federal deficits elected big-spending Bill Clinton in 1992, those Puerto Ricans who vote for Berrios's nationalist, anti-English, anti-U.S. Navy stance may well give the Statehood Party another four years in power.

Given that Gov. George W. Bush told the Washington Times, "I'm a statehood person," while Vice President Gore has strong personal ties with the Statehood Party, a new pro-statehood administration in San Juan will be pushing on an open door in Washington. And should the Democrats win control of Congress, they will certainly be aware that a 51st state of Puerto Rico would help pad their margins in both the House and Senate.

The Statehooders will readily claim to be willing to adopt English as the language of a 51st state of Puerto Rico. (They have been making that same claim in the halls of Congress for at least four years.) Of course, there is no way either Congress or Puerto Rico can be certain this promise would be kept once permanent U.S. statehood is achieved.

If a 51st state of Puerto Rico remains Spanish-only, America would have its own Quebec. If a state of Puerto Rico follows the precedent established by all other prospective states and becomes English-only, Puerto Rico nationalists (like the ones pardoned by Hillary's husband) will ensure America has its own Northern Ireland. Neither situation would ultimately benefit Puerto Rico or the United States.