Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello is pictured. | Getty

Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello arrives at the National Press Club on Thursday for a news conference about the June 11 vote in favor of U.S. statehood. | Getty

Puerto Rico governor pushes statehood after boycott-plagued vote

Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló on Thursday demanded that the U.S. government recognize his commonwealth as the 51st state, citing the island’s overwhelming vote for statehood four days ago. He faces long odds.

“The U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico have taken a stand and have pleaded a choice,” said Rossello, speaking in a small, half-empty room occupied by reporters and his own staff at the National Press Club in Washington.

Yet while 97 percent of those who participated backed statehood in the June 11 vote, the nonbinding referendum was boycotted by opposition parties, who either support the current commonwealth status or independence. As a result, less than a quarter of eligible voters cast ballots.

Héctor Ferrer, the head of the opposition Popular Democratic Party, called the referendum “a rigged process,” in an interview with POLITICO this month.

There is almost no chance Congress will approve legislation providing statehood for the commonwealth, which last month filed for what amounts to the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history and is in the middle of a crippling, decade-long recession.

“Political theater,” Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.), who is originally from Puerto Rico, said of the referendum. “It’s going nowhere. 23 percent of those eligible to vote cast their vote, there was a boycott … what it tells you is it was a flawed process, it was undemocratic, and so I didn’t support it.”

What is more, the U.S. Justice Department said last month it had not approved the ballot language.

The referendum’s title, translated from Spanish, was, “A plebiscite for the immediate decolonization of Puerto Rico.” The law passed by the commonwealth to hold the vote also referred to its current territorial status as "colonial," a loaded term on an island whose population often feels forgotten by the federal government.

In a Spanish-language tweet posted on Sunday, the day of the vote, the Roman Catholic archbishop of San Juan, Roberto González Nieves, said there were more people in church that day than in the voting booths.

To help make his case, Rosselló brought federal legislators on both sides of the aisle to today’s event to strengthen his case.

“It is time that we stop colonizing Puerto Rico,” said Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska). “We here are the only ones who have the constitutional authority to do that, the Congress.”

Rosselló pushed back on the notion that the vote was illegitimate. “It was a fair process, it had all of the alternatives, and when it’s not done in the electoral cycle there is a reduced participation rate,” the governor said when asked about the low turnout.

The push for statehood is sharply dividing Puerto Rico.

Though it would mean increased access to federal health care funds and low-income tax credits, Puerto Ricans would also have to pay federal income tax on top of relatively high taxes to the local government. That could worsen the economic outlook for the island, which has more than $70 billion in debt.

Rosselló has shifted his stance on the debt since his gubernatorial campaign when he echoed some of the island’s hedge fund creditors in arguing that it was fully payable. That was despite a rare bipartisan agreement between Republicans in Congress and the Obama administration that the debt couldn’t be paid.

The governor’s request last month for permission to restructure the island’s debt contradicts his campaign’s stance and potentially the statehood push. If Puerto Rico were to become a state it would likely invalidate the law, called PROMESA, passed by Congress last year to address the island’s crisis.

That law allowed Puerto Rico to enter a bankruptcy-like process to shave billions off its debt, But Congress only had the legal ability to do so because of the broad authority that it holds over territories.

States cannot declare bankruptcy, so statehood for Puerto Rico would put the island back to square one with bondholders over the money it owes. Changes to the island’s political status now would mean more leverage for creditors, including those who say they are owed money before the island’s government even pays for essential services like police and fire departments.

Rep. Darren Michael Soto (D-Fla.) said he was unconcerned about the effect statehood could have on the debt.

“If Puerto Rico is admitted as a state they would have sovereign immunity like any other state, which means they have every right to either accept all debts, deny all debts, or negotiate them,” Soto argued during the press conference. “They would be a sovereign with full rights regardless of past laws like PROMESA.”

“It would have a profound effect on the negotiation of the debt.”

Rosselló says the debt is tangential to the push for statehood and that statehood will aid the island’s economy.

“What he’s saying in Puerto Rico is that the only way we can get out of the economic crisis is statehood,” Ferrer said.

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