The governor of Puerto Rico kicked off an initiative Tuesday in Orlando to mobilize millions of Puerto Ricans on the mainland to become politically active.
Mirroring his January announcement in Kissimmee, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló vowed that the organization, Poder Puerto Rico, would focus on motivating and registering Puerto Rican voters on the mainland.
“We started doing some groundwork, and many of them didn’t feel that what they could do independently would have a significant change in outcome,” Rosselló said at the Ana G. Méndez University System campus in Orlando.
Though he said the effort is nonpartisan and he would not be closely involved with the inner workings of the organization, Rosselló said part of the mission is to offer “recommendations” of U.S. candidates as “friends of Puerto Rico,” based on their platforms on Puerto Rico issues.
“Will we campaign? I will, as a politician, I will do my campaigning, but the organization should educate, should just establish what are the critical policy objectives for the people of Puerto Rico,” the governor said.
He declined to mention specific candidates he considers to be friends or foes of the island, but he said there would be a process to identify them in the future.
Compared with his January speech, Rosselló on Tuesday mostly steered clear of the topic of statehood for Puerto Rico. The island’s status is a divisive issue, and some experts predicted Rosselló‘s role as leader of the pro-statehood party could derail his Poder efforts.
Earlier this month, Jimmy Torres Vélez, coordinator of Boricua Vota, called the governor’s proposal “an attempt to meddle.” But on Tuesday, he said he is willing to work with the newly organized group.
“I think we have to welcome them to work with us, as long as they’re not mixing this with the partisan politics of Puerto Rico and the question of status,” Torres Vélez said. “In our organization, we’re going to be very vigilant.”
At the helm of Poder‘s Florida chapter is Luis Figueroa, former director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration regional office in Orlando. The government also announced a Texas chapter for the organization, which will be led by Erinaldy Agosto.
“We’re working with other leaders across different states and to make sure we register the largest number of Puerto Ricans, moving forward,” Rosselló added. “It’s not that they’ve historically had an apathy towards the process, it’s that when they moved over here, it became so.”
Rosselló said Poder will be financed by independent donors — funds that they’ve already begun to raise and use on the initiative’s basic structure.
Tens of thousands have relocated to Central Florida since Hurricane Maria ravaged the island and exacerbated the effects of an already crippled economy. And because of a lack of affordable housing in the state, evacuees in the Orlando area have struggled to find housing as temporary aid programs, like the federally sponsored Transitional Sheltering Assistance, begin to run out for about 600 families.
“We very much want to activate all of those programs and to make sure that all of those citizens that are in the TSA program or that have hardships over here, they can access those programs,” Rosselló said.
“It’s not something we can control,” he added, but said his administration was still waiting for a response from FEMA on their request to extend the housing-aid program to June 30, to avoid disrupting the school year for Puerto Rican children who have relocated.
Last week, FEMA spared hundreds of families from being kicked out of their hotels as funding was about to expire, extending to program’s deadline until May 14.
Puerto Ricans in the U.S. are “5.6 million-strong at least. We expect that number to grow, and that can be very influential,” he said. “We have not been organized in one strong front ever before, and we have not done the vote in a structured fashion as we are proposing it.”
bpadro@orlandosentinel.com or 407-232-0202. Follow me on Twitter @BiancaJoanie
