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Haga clic aquí para ver esta página en español. PUERTO RICO HERALDRomancing The Puerto Rican VoteBY Gene Roman
December 13, 2001 In the weeks prior to election day, I knew that Mark Green was in trouble when I saw Democrats for Bloomberg signs plastered throughout the Bronx. He found out the hard way that it is impossible to win an election city wide without significant Black and Hispanic support. Both Governor Pataki’s trip to Puerto Rico this past summer and Mike Bloomberg’s visit with Puerto Rican Governor, Sila Calderon, last week was an acknowledgement of that political reality. Since Puerto Rico’s 3.8 million residents are U.S. citizens, migration between the Island and New York is frequent. A photo opportunity with the Governor of Puerto Rico or a group of Vieques activists is a guarantee of extensive media exposure via one of the city’s Spanish or English media outlets. This coverage will get the attention of a large portion of New York’s 800,000 Puerto Ricans, and hopefully their votes. Former President Clinton’s popularity in the Jewish and Irish American communities was due in large part to his advocacy for the peace process in Northern Ireland and Israel. Political candidates in New York know that there are political points to be scored by being attentive to a community’s deep attachment to it’s cultural and religious roots. In the case of New York’s 800,000 Puerto Ricans, this political attentiveness usually takes the form of a nice, safe, sentimental appeal to our sense of cultural pride. That is what was driving all the attention being given to the bombing controversy on the Island of Vieques since last summer. The goal is to engender in us a feeling that a candidate really cares about the issues that impact our ancestral homeland, and thereby build alliances with Puerto Rican leaders who can help get out the vote on election day. These solicitations only work if they result in positive press and avoid controversy. In the Puerto Rican community, that means staying away from the one issue that stirs up the most trouble for political candidates–Puerto Rico’s unresolved political status. Here in the Empire State, the interests of the state’s 800,000 Puerto Ricans are represented by a voting delegation of two U.S. Senators and twenty-nine members of Congress. In New York, the armed forces are accountable to these representatives. Since Puerto Rico has no voting delegation in Congress, our military there is accountable to no one! Vieques will continue to be a problem until this representative disparity is resolved. But of course, you heard nothing from Pataki or Bloomberg on this injustice during their Puerto Rican trips. The risk of alienating voters back home was too high. We know from experience that politicians from both parties and self-appointed leaders like Al Sharpton would rather toy with our emotions than deal honestly with the issues. Fernando Ferrer’s whining about racial provocation after his loss in the primary was another self-serving attempt at political manipulation to gain sympathy and block a Democratic victory in the mayoral election. Mr. Ferrer’s childish behavior after his loss also reinforced my long held belief that he lacked the political maturity and vision the city so desparetely needs right now He and Bronx Democratic Chairman, Roberto Ramirez, sought to make it a crime to fairly criticize a Black or Hispanic candidate on their record. They shamelessly abandoned the Democratic ticket because of perceived acts of racial provocation. When did it become a sin to criticize Ferrer or any other public candidate for using tactics that they themselves have used over the years? What is racist about criticizing leaders who have a history of lying and racial provocation of their own to advance their agenda? One of the major reasons I did not support Mr. Ferrer was his enthusiastic courting of the Al Sharpton. The Green campaign was right to question the political judgement of a candidate endorsed by Sharpton. Sharpton’s rigid left-wing orthodoxy and demagoguery deserves to be marginalized. The Puerto Rican community needs to demand more than the occasional stroking of its cultural heritage from its leaders and political candidates. Otherwise, our clout as one of the city’s strongest political voting blocs will be squandered. Gene Roman is the former Massachusetts Regional Director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration and a member of the Democratic Leadership Council. He can be contacted at generoman@hotmail.com.
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