Once again, the people of Puerto Rico have voted in favor of becoming the nation’s 51st state. Last week’s vote was the fourth time in the past 12 years that the island’s voters have endorsed statehood, and the victory margin was a clear and convincing 56%.
On the same ballot, Puerto Ricans elected a new governor, Jenniffer González-Colón, who is a pro-statehood leader — and a Republican, too.
Support for statehood on the island has grown over the years, but that’s not the only reason to end Puerto Rico’s second-class status as a U.S. territory (the United States acquired Puerto Rico when the Spanish-American War ended in 1898).
Puerto Rico’s fate remains in the hands of Congress, which has dithered over the question of statehood for far too long.
A political paradox
The Council on Foreign Relations website has called Puerto Rico “a U.S. territory in crisis,” and said, “Puerto Rico is a political paradox: part of the United States but distinct from it, enjoying citizenship but lacking full political representation.”
The residents of Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens, but they cannot vote in U.S. presidential elections. It’s time for that paradox to end.
The sweeping re-election of Donald Trump last week should give renewed momentum to the cause of statehood, and it would be a wise political move for Republicans.
Support from Latino voters in critical battleground states, particularly Pennsylvania, helps explain Trump’s victory.
Trump and Latinos
Democrats who assumed Puerto Ricans would abandon Trump in droves because a pro-Trump comic callously called the nation “a floating island of garbage” were badly mistaken.
Trump also performed well with Latinos here in Florida, as shown by his success in Miami-Dade and Osceola, the Florida county with the largest Puerto Rican population.
Osceola, the home of Disney World and in the geographic shadow of Orlando, had not voted Republican in a presidential election for the past 20 years — until last week.
Conventional political wisdom has long held that making Puerto Rico the 51st state would favor Democrats, but what happened last week puts that premise in serious doubt. Nationally, a majority of Hispanic men voted for Trump for the first time, according to CNN’s exit polling.
Puerto Rico also had their elections yesterday. Not only did the Pro-Statehood candidate, a Republican, win the Governor seat, voters chose Statehood in the plebiscite.
Republicans, immediately: no state for you (Kamala won straw poll in PR)
— Héctor (@hectorramos) November 6, 2024
But with Republicans clinching control of the U.S. Senate, the outgoing GOP leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., essentially declared the statehood effort as dead on arrival once again.
“There won’t be any new states admitted that give a partisan advantage to the other side,” McConnell said in an apparent reference to statehood proposals for Puerto Rico and heavily Democratic Washington, D.C.
Statehood for Puerto Rico would entitle the island to two United States senators, which could shift the partisan balance of the Senate. That and economic anxiety over providing much-needed aid for the struggling island are at the root of this chronic inaction in Congress.
Stalwarts of statehood
Democrats have consistently been the strongest supporters of Puerto Rican statehood in Congress. The latest versions of the bill (S.3231 and H.R. 2757) have languished for nearly two years.
The sponsors are Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, and numerous Florida members of Congress in both parties are co-sponsors.
They include Republicans Maria Elvira Salazar of Miami and Bill Posey of Rockledge, and Democrats Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston, Frederica Wilson of Miami, Darren Soto and Matthew Frost of Orlando and Kathy Castor of Tampa.
It is morally wrong that the people of Puerto Rico are denied a voice in electing the president of the United States, as well as other rights and privileges that are available to other U.S. citizens. Such territorial colonialism is unbecoming a nation whose founding is rooted in anti-colonial revolution.
The scheme may work for extremely small territories with low populations, such as American holdings in the Pacific, but it’s no way to govern an island that is home to more than three million people.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Contact us by email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.