Profile: Del. Luis Fortuno, R-Puerto Rico

UPI ^ | 3/14/05 | Lindsey Kerr

[cll]

WASHINGTON, March 12 : Del.Luis Fortuno, R-Puerto Rico, recently visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center and met with wounded Puerto Rican soldiers. Soldiers who, while courageous enough to die for their country, Fortuno said, could not vote for president.

"It was difficult for me to look them in the eye," he said."This is morally wrong in the 21st century."

Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, meaning its citizens pay no federal income tax, cannot vote for president, but can serve in the military. And while Fortuno, 45, does represent Puerto Rico in Congress, he is only able to vote in a committee and not on actual House legislation.

Despite his non-voting status, the Republican Party pushed hard for Fortuno's election. The GOP picked Fortuno to speak at the Republican National Convention, assuming he could inspire the morally conservative Latino base to go to the polls.

The conservatives turned out in Puerto Rico for the 2004 elections as well. Fortuno is the second Republican to hold the Puerto Rican seat in Congress since its creation. The first was Federico Degetau, who was elected in 1901.

"The electors in Puerto Rico are now a lot more conservative than most people think," said Fortuno."I focused on lower taxes and pro-family policies. (Those) were the winners."

Even if that's the case, his policies won by a smaller margin than he would have liked. Fortuno election was determined by less than one-half of a percent of the vote.

Despite a split in the Puerto Rico's ideology, Fortuno is hopeful for unity.

"I have to show that indeed there is more that unites us than divides us," Fortuno said. "We can focus on our differences at times, but at the end of the day we're all Americans."

Fortuno also has his eye on other political issues, namely Social Security. Puerto Ricans are full participants in the United States Social Security program and Fortuno plans to stay fully briefed on the reform process.

"Sticking your head in the sand won't solve anything," Fortuno said. "I don't want to wait around 13 years for a major problem to hit."

Ensuring the future of Social Security is not just a political issue for Fortuno, but a moral one as well.

"You have to take care of those who came before you," he said. "There is a lot to be learned from them."

Fortuno applies this value to his family life, often taking his three children to visit their extended family and grandparents on the weekends. Fortuno and his wife Luce have triplets.

"Now that I travel (from Washington to Puerto Rico), it's difficult, but we make the time when we can," Fortuno said.

According to Fortuno, taking the effort to spend time with his children is the most important thing he can do as a father. When he was living in Puerto Rico, he drove his children to school every morning, his wife picked them up after school, and they all ate dinner together. He plans on resuming this tradition when his family moves to Washington at the end of the school year.

"Even though our children are now 13, we still put them to bed and pray with them," Fortuno said. "It gives them a frame of reference."

[cll]

Up-and-coming Republican

[Do not dub me shapka broham]

Puerto Rican politician ping.

[Guillermo]

Puerto Ricans have chosen their lot, over and over again.

They have rejectd Statehood and Independence, while choosing to remain as they are.

They can't have their cake and eat it too.

BTW, the new Governor of PR is bvery anti-Bush, whining about the Iraq war, etc.

[minus_273]

if i recall correctly, they have rejected statehood twice

[B.O. Plenty]

I think people from any country can serve in out military. I even think that if you are not a citizen, you get citizenship if you serve honorably. If I am wrong, I know there will be people here that will straighten me out.

At any rate, my take on Puerto Rico is that they have all the advantages of American Citizens, without the obligations, like PAYING INCOME TAXES!. Sounds like a good deal to me.

What Rep Fortuno should do is to agitate for Puerto Rico to become the 51st state, get all the Puerto Ricans into the "system"...then he won't have to be ashamed to look the brave Pureto Rican soldiers "in the eye".

[cll]

We have not rejected anything. Puerto Rico falls under the territorial clause of the Constitution. That means that any status change has to be moved forward and approved by Congress, who has absolute control of the territory (property) of the United States. The referenda held over the years have been all locally produced and mean nothing. They mean nothing because the alternatives have always been watered down by the very powerful lobby that profits the most from the current colonial condition. Watered down with implausible and unconstitutional alternatives. Witness the "free beer and barbeque" option of 1993 and the "none of the above" option of 1998.

This is about nothing less than a continuance of segregation under disguise. Four million American citizens are being governed without their consent. Our great nation came to being precisely because of the same condition. We are denying American citizens their full rights simply because of their place of residence. Before that was because of skin color. And before that was because of gender. And before that because of property ownership.

The fact remains that Congress governs the territories without their consent. And it is a shame that the self appointed guardians of democracy promote its growth around the world but does not practice it fully here at home.

[AuH2ORepublican]

"The conservatives turned out in Puerto Rico for the 2004 elections as well. Fortuno is the second Republican to hold the Puerto Rican seat in Congress since its creation. The first was Federico Degetau, who was elected in 1901."

---

Puerto Rico had last elected a Republican as Resident Commissioner in 1968; his name was Jorge Luis Córdova Díaz. And from 1901-1944 a lot of the Resident Commissioners from Puerto Rico were Republicans (not just Federico Degetau), since all statehooders were Republican and the pro-statehood party (which had several names through the years, but was known as the Statehood Republican Party for several decades) won on numerous occasions.

The Resident Commissioner elected in 1976 and 1980, Baltasar Corrada del Río, declared himself a Democrat when he got to Congress (probably because the House had a huge Democrat majority back then, and since the then-Governor of Puerto Rico, future Resident Commisioner Carlos Romero-Barceló, was a Democrat), but after Corrada del Río was elected Mayor of San Juan in 1984 he became a Republican and went on to preside over Puerto Rico's delegation at the 1988 Republican National Convention. Corrada del Río is now a Supreme Court Justice in Puerto Rico.

[Mrs. Shawnlaw]

We were in SanJuan on our honeymoon-the place stinks to high heaven, the people are lazy, they brag about the money the USA sends them, they take no responsibility for their actions.
Our tour bus struck a stop sign and sideswiped a parked car trying to turn a corner. NEVER stopped. Puerto Ricans historically have always handed themselves over to whoever would pay the most for the resulting tourist trade.
Its the perfect example of a welfare state and they like it that way. Sell them to Cuba and pay off the nat'l debt.

[Guillermo]

Congress approved a referendum held in PR, and the PR's CHOSE to remain a territory.

There have been several votes, and PR's have never chosen Independence or Statehood.

If you're for Independence, you're in a tiny minority, and if you're for Statehood, you're still in the minority.

[cll]

Please cite me the act of Congress that approved such referendum. I am CERTAIN, you will not find one.

[cll]

As in anything, your perspective has to be framed by a period of history. A specific timeline. So if I said that I visited New York City in 1899, I could say the same thing your saying about New Yorkers.

Your perspective is miopic, ill-intended and does not reflect well on your character.

At any rate, I refuse to comment further on your prejudiced opinion, Misis.

[Guillermo]

Heck, I remember watching the vote on CSPAN and it passed by one. The gallery exploded in applause, and the chair had to spend several minutes calming them down.

Point is, the PR's have had a chance to officially express their wishes on their future, and they ALWAYS choose the status quo.

[cll]

You're talking about Don Young's (R-Alaska) Puerto Rico Self Determination Act. The same bill did not pass in the Senate, therefore was never signed into law so nothing happened.

As to choosing the status quo in local referenda, it received less than 1% in the 1998 plesbicite because the commonwealth/territory "supporters" watered the vote down with and campaigned for the "none of the above" option. In 1993 the "status quo" people put forward the unconstitutional "free beer and barbeque" option, again to water down the process.

So I ask that you return your focus to my government without the consent of the governed argument. The local referenda have been mere straw polls and mean nothing.

[Guillermo]

3, 4 votes in the 1990's, and status quo won each time.

If the 3, 4% of pro Independence Puerto Ricans think they can throw out the US and our money via arms, let them try.

Personally, I could not care less.

[cll]

"Personally, I could not care less"

Then why do you bother with this thread, Guillo?

[Guillermo]

"I could not care less" what the PR's choose as their status.

[AuH2ORepublican]

"They have rejectd Statehood and Independence, while choosing to remain as they are."

---

I assume you refer to the locally sponsored status plebiscites held in 1993 and 1998. I think you would benefit from an explanation of how those two plebiscites came about and what the voting revealed.

In 1993, the pro-statehood Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Rosselló and the Island's legislature (more than 2/3 of which was composed of members of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, which had won in a landslide in the 1992 elections), convened a political status plebiscite. The three items on the ballot were statehood, independence and "commonwealth," with the three local political parties that each espouse a political status writing the definition for their preferred status. The definitions of statehood and independence were rather uncontroversial, but the pro-commonwealth Popular Democratic Party defined the current commonwealth status as being a fantastic, mythical status that could not be revoked by Congress without Puerto Rico''s consent, and that *guaranteed* (i) permanent union with the U.S., (ii) irrevocable U.S. citizenship, (iii) "fical autonomy" (which the "Populares" explained meant that Congress was not allowed to levy federal taxes on Puerto Rico or its residents, and (iv) membership in the International Olympic Committee and participation in international sports competitions. Now, anyone that knows anything about the U.S. Constitution knows that all of those things were bald-faced lies, but they are the types of lies that the Populares have been feeding to the Puerto Rican people for decades, and with the Populares hitting the tax issue hard down the stretch, commonwealth beat out statehood by 48.6% to 46.3% in relatively low turnout by Puerto Rico standards (73.5% of registered voters went to the polls; in the general election held the prior year, 85.5% of registered voters turned out).

Obviously, the problem was that Puerto Rico voters were not presented with the truth about their current political status, so in the mid-1990s the New Progressive Party sought a congressionally approved mechanism to solve the status problem. The original bill sponsored by Congressman Don Young (R-AK) would have called for a federally sponsored referendum in which the options were sovereignty and statehood, and in the (almost certain) case that statehood won, would mandate Congress to approve an "enabling act" (the law that sets the rules for entry of a new state) that would then need to be approved by Puerto Rico voters in a second referendum. The Young Bill (as it was called) was strongly opposed by the Populares in Puerto Rico because they claimed that it was "biased in favor of statehood" (which was belied by the fact that the Puerto Rico Independence Party endorsed the Young Bill), and anti-Puerto-Rico-statehood groups in the U.S. mainland opposed it as well. The Populares insisted that the bill allow "commonwealth" to be included as an option, and Congressman Young and the other Republicans in the Resources Committee agreed, thus changing it from a bill to decolonize Puerto Rico to one that included a colonial formula among the options. The four options would thus be statehood, "commonwealth" (correctly defined as a territory subject to the plenary powers of Congress), "free association" (which is an independent republic that has entered into a treaty with the U.S. regarding defense and some other issues; the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Palau and the Republic of the Marshall Islands have all entered into covenants of free association with the U.S.) and independence. However, the Populares still lobbied to defeat the bill, and so did companies that benefited from the federal tax exemption afforded by commonwealth status. As the vote neared reports started coming out about how Puerto Rico would have 6 Representatives if it became a state (which is true) and that it would thus decrease the number of representatives from other states (which is false, since current federal law would increase the number of Reps from 435 to 441 until the next Census, and Congress could vote to keep the number at 441 even after the next Census); this led to Congressmen from states that were slated to lose a Representative after the 2000 Census to vote against the Young Bill even though their loss of a House seat had nothing to do with Puerto Rico, as was proven when they lost House seats in 2000 while Puerto Rico was still a territory. So the vote ended up being closer than people originally thought, and the Young Bill was approved by the House by just a single vote. Senator Frank Murkowski (R-AK) had introduced similar legislation in the Senate (Alaska Republicans still remember when Alaskans could not vote for President or members of Congress), but it soon became apparent that it would not be approved by the Senate.

So Governor Rosselló (who had been reelected in 1996 by the largest margin of any Puerto Rico Governor since 1964) pushed through the state legislature a status plebiscite that included the definitions of the four options that had been provided in the Young Bill. The Populares again cried foul, since they didn't like the realistic definition of "commonwealth" that had been approved by the U.S. House of Representatives (and, more importantly, had been based on U.S. Supreme Court rulings). However, in order to avoid having the plebiscite struck down by the Popular-controlled Supreme Court of Puerto Rico, the legislature had included a fifth column entitled "None of the Above" so that nobody could claim that their preferred status option had not been included (in 1993, a former Popular governor claimed that his preferred option was free association, and that his rights were being infringed because it wasn't on the ballot; the PR Supreme Court absurdly agreed, ruling that he could leave the ballot blank to show his displeasure with the 3 options given, but warned the legislature to include a better mecahnism to show displeasure in the future). So the Populares announced that they would ask their members to vote under the Fifth Column (whose name proved to be prescient). Now, in October, Hurricane Georges went striaght through the middle of Puerto Rico, doing more damage than any hurricane since at least 1956, and many voters (including many statehooders) called on the plebiscite to be postponed so that the government focused on the clean-up and rebuilding and not on a political campaign. Others objected to the December date for the plebiscite, since they didn't want politics to get in the way of the traditional month-long Christmas celebrations on the Island. And some statehooders were upset with Governor Rosselló because of the things that inevitably crop up when a governor has been in power for 6 years, and decided to "punish" him at the polls. Thus, the Fifth Column went from a curious technicality to an agglomeration of anyone and everyone with a bone to pick with Governor Rosselló, including all Populares and many statehooders and "independentistas." The coup de grace for the Populares was when former three-term Governor Rafael Hernández-Colón gave a televised message in which he warned that Congress was not bound to grant statehood should the voters choose it and that a vote for statehood was instead a vote for becoming an "incorporated territory" in which federal taxes would be imposed but in which Puerto Rico still would not have voting representation in Congress; nobody likes paying more taxes, especially if they do not believe it is a respnsibility that will yield benefits as well. The momentum turned against statehood just a few days before the plebiscite (polls had shown statehood ahead until the day before the vote), and the Fifth Column ("None of the Above" ended up with 50.3% to 46.5% for statehood. Turnout was just 71.3%, even lower than in the 1993 plebiscite, and it was clear that many statehooders stayed home or voted for the Fifth Column.

So that's the unvarnished truth of the 1993 and 1998 status plebiscites in Puerto Rico. You can believe if you wish that Puerto Ricans "rejected" statehood, but I think it's apparent that the truth is more complicated than that.

[cll]

Amen!

[Mrs. Shawnlaw]

My character, tho not flawless, is absolutely fine, I am not ill, and do not suffer from Miopia. I still put rum in Coke (cola) and I would love for the general PR population to prove me wrong. You, however, are the one who is prejudice for calling me prejudice. You must be a Skerry voter.

[minus_273]

to serve in the US military, you have to have at least a green card.