Sen. Rick Scott believes Puerto Rico will achieve statehood — and the Florida Republican rejects arguments by some in his party that the Caribbean island territory would elect Democrats to Congress in perpetuity.
“I believe Puerto Rico eventually will be a state,” Scott told reporters Thursday morning during a joint interview with fellow Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. Scott, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, travels to Puerto Rico often and assiduously courted island transplants in Florida in his three statewide campaigns, for governor in 2010 and 2014 and the Senate in 2018. Democrats in Congress are pushing for statehood, and most Republicans are opposed.
“They’ve got a lot of problems to fix first,” Scott said, telegraphing his threshold for supporting statehood for Puerto Rico. “They’ve got significant financial problems they’ve got to get fixed, so I don’t think it’s going to happen overnight. But I think someday it’s going to happen.”
Rubio added that assumptions that the Democratic Party would benefit from Puerto Rico becoming a state are flat-out wrong.
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“It betrays a fundamental lack of understanding about politics inside of Puerto Rico on the island and those who come to the mainland,” said Florida’s senior senator, who is up for reelection in 2022. “A lot of how people vote in the future depends on what you stand for and do in the future.”
Puerto Rico has been a territory of the United States since 1917, and residents are American citizens. The island regularly elects politicians who affiliate with the Republican Party to statewide office. Resident Commissioner Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, Puerto Rico’s nonvoting representative in Congress, aligns with the GOP. From 2009 to 2013, Republican Luis Fortuno served one term as governor, although his elected successors have all been Democrats.
Maybe because of that, or because Democrats still win close to 70% of the Hispanic vote national on average, many Republican politicians and voters are convinced that statehood for Puerto Rico would guarantee the Democratic Party indefinite control of the territory’s two Senate seats. Scott and Rubio disagree with the prevailing GOP view.
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Indeed, Scott said that it is very possible that Puerto Rico might elect two Republican senators.
“It depends who runs. They could. Jenniffer [Gonzalez-Colon] is very popular. If she ran for the Senate, I think Jenniffer would win,” Scott said. “There’s no reason” Republicans cannot win there.
Disclosure: The wife of the author works as an adviser to Rick Scott.
