M-Viv eyes a future role as island leader
SAN JUAN — New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito has long been coy about what she will do after her term ends in December.
But following Hurricane Maria, one thing is clear: Whatever comes next, it will involve Puerto Rico.
“Without a doubt,” Mark-Viverito told the Daily News in an interview in the hardhit neighborhood of Las Mareas. “Without a doubt, because this is for the long term.”
Mark-Viverito was on the ground in Puerto Rico with a group of City Council members — several of whom are vying to take her job come January — to help out with relief work and deliver supplies.
She bunked in the Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan with that city’s mayor, Carmen Yulin Cruz, with whom she is close and who, like Mark-Viverito, has been deeply critical of the response from Gov. Ricardo Rossello.
The trip to the island, her third since the storm, is sure to renew talks that she might return to Puerto Rico to run for governor.
The 48-year-old speaker, who is originally from Bayamon, outside capital city San Juan, bristled at the idea her recent trips could be seen as political — but didn’t rule out anything for her future.
“I guess people don’t understand how, you know, I’m born and raised here, so how am I not going to love and care and be passionate and be outspoken about the things that matter?” Mark-Viverito, who must leave the Council because of term limits, said. “There shouldn’t be the automatic assumption that because I’m an elected official now, that somehow I’m trying to use it as a platform for something else.
“I’m speaking out because my people deserve better. We deserve respect and we deserve equal treatment and I’m going to use my voice to raise that, so there shouldn’t just be an assumption that I’m running for office.”
Still, she said she does think Puerto Rico needs a different governor. “I believe we do need better leadership than we have now. And I’m just committed to do what needs to happen,” she said. “So I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Her inclination, she said, is to work on Puerto Rico’s behalf on the mainland, to encourage communities there to get mobilized and be involved in the crises on the island. “I could help here, I am sure, but I think that because the response has been so inadequate on the federal side, that that’s where I need to put my energies,” she said.
“So we’ll see, but I’m trying to weigh that as I spend more time here, as I do more work there,” she continued. “I’m just figuring out what the best path for me is. So I’m not sure yet what that is.”
Mark-Viverito — whose mother, Elizabeth, remains without water in her home in Puerto Rico — said the trips to the island have been “emotionally taxing.”
If Mark-Viverito were to run for governor, she’d face plenty of obstacles — including that she hasn’t lived full time on the island in years.
And she might wind up facing her friend: Cruz, who has become a familiar face on cable news following the storm, is rumored to be eyeing the post herself in 2020.