SAN JUAN, P.R. — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, running for the White House in 2020, sought to boost her standing with a major bloc of Hispanic voters in a trip to Puerto Rico. But she left some of them disappointed by avoiding taking a stance on the issue of statehood.
The Massachusetts Democrat embraced pro-statehood rhetoric Tuesday, calling the current territorial status of Puerto Rico “colonialism.”
“For years too many leaders have imposed too many decisions on you against your will. Respect for Puerto Rico means you have the right to determine your association with the United States, period,” Warren said in her prepared speech at her town hall in Old San Juan. “Puerto Rico deserves self-determination, and on this question I will support the decision of the people of Puerto Rico.”
Both in her remarks and in response to a question posed to her by a former governor in attendance, she did not endorse either statehood or independence, which is favored by a smaller number of Puerto Ricans.
“Sen. Warren I think missed a big opportunity to address that issue,” said Charlie Rodriguez, the chairman of Puerto Rico’s Democratic Party and a statehood supporter. “All politics is local. For us in Puerto Rico, it’s very important to deal with the status issue. And [to] just come here and say that you’re for self-determination, it’s just not going to play.”
Puerto Rico’s residents are U.S. citizens but can only vote in presidential primaries.
Rodriguez, who said he does not yet favor a particular candidate but praised former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke and former Vice President Joe Biden for past endorsements of statehood, said that none of the pro-statehood officials of the local Democratic Party were invited to Tuesday’s event. “There was no reach out,” he added, “No one really told us anything about it, I found out about it through the papers.”
Enivette Ramos, a delegate for Bernie Sanders in 2016, said she was also disappointed with Warren’s handling of the question. “We know about Elizabeth Warren. We know about her work, we know that she has done a great job,” Ramos said immediately following the town hall. “But we were concerned that she didn’t respond exactly to certain questions, like what to do about Puerto Rico statehood or Puerto Rico status, and also she was not specific about Medicare for all.”
Ramos and her friend Maureen, who also attended and declined to give her last name, said they like Warren overall but would support Sanders if he ran in the 2020 primary. The two favor independence for Puerto Rico. While disappointed in Warren’s answer, they understood why she might avoid coming down strongly one way or the other.
“She dodged that question basically because that question, it is related to voters, and if she makes a distinction, she will lose votes,” said Ramos.
Marcos Vilar, executive director of Alianza for Progress, a group focused on mobilizing the Hispanic vote for liberal candidates in Florida, downplayed the significance of status when compared to more tangible issues like healthcare and education for the sizable Puerto Rican diaspora on the mainland.
“It’s an important question to all Puerto Ricans, but I wouldn’t argue that it’s the number-one issue,” Vilar said.
Despite qualms about her evading the political status question during her remarks at a town hall in the historic Teatro Tapia theater in Old San Juan , Warren earned applause for her criticism of President Trump, business, and the 2016 law that created a fiscal oversight board to manage Puerto Rico’s debt crisis.
The law, a rare bipartisan compromise between House Republicans and the Obama administration, allowed for a process similar to bankruptcy for Puerto Rico to address its $70 billion in debt, but in exchange set up the board, which has final say over spending and tax decisions until Puerto Rico’s finances stabilize.
“I’m not here to talk about what happened to the economy of Puerto Rico, what happened to the children of Puerto Rico, because it poll tests well,” Warren told the crowd. “This is my life’s work.”
Warren, who first rose to prominence as a bankruptcy law professor, voted against the legislation, which Obama personally lobbied congressional Democrats to pass. Obama and his Treasury Department argued that it was the only way to stave off aggressive hedge fund creditors who wanted a prolonged, costly lawsuit with the U.S. territory, while Warren has criticized the law as “austerity.”
“I am fiercely opposed to the economics of austerity that take away from the people in order to pay off debts to speculators,” she said Tuesday night.
One Democratic activist with ties to the territory, who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak candidly this early in the primary campaign, described Warren’s defiance of the Obama White House on the issue of Puerto Rico’s debt as a strength.
“Warren entered the arena of Puerto Rican politics around the time of the debt crisis,” he said. “What better political leader for the moment that Puerto Rico is in?”
More generally, Democratic political activists and insiders with connections to Puerto Rican politics believe that Warren’s progressive positions on healthcare, education, unions, and Wall Street will help win over not just Puerto Ricans on the island, but also the already large and growing Puerto Rican diaspora in the mainland U.S., as well as the broader Latino community.
“There are unique things that people need to think about when they’re vying for Latino voters as a bloc,” said Marcos Vilar, a Florida-based political consultant and executive director of Alianza for Progress, a group focused on mobilizing the Hispanic vote for liberal candidates in Florida.
A 2014 Pew poll found that healthcare, education, and jobs all were higher priority issues for Hispanic voters than immigration. And a 2018 poll also conducted by the nonprofit found that the share of Latinos who saw life in the U.S. as worse for their ethnic group more than doubled, to 47 percent, from 2014 to 2018. Hispanic immigrants and recent immigrants were more likely to see Trump’s policies as harmful. Pew also found that 69 percent of Latino voters supported a Democratic candidate in congressional midterm elections.
Immigration, of course, is less of a priority for Puerto Ricans, who are already U.S. citizens and can vote in federal elections if they move to states. But Trump’s handling of Hurricane Maria, which killed an estimated 2,975 people in the territory, and overall treatment of the island have also angered many there and on the mainland. They could be motivated voters in major swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania in 2020.
“We come from different countries, we have different origins,” said Vilar. “Dealing and understanding with those nuances is going to be essential for Democrats or Republicans to win space within our community and engage with us and get us to come out and vote.”
