Powerless in Washington, seeking to lead Puerto Rico
González-Colón represents island in Congress as ‘commissioner’ with little authority; now she wants to replace disgraced governor
WWASHINGTON ith the resignation of Gov. Ricardo Rosselló of Puerto Rico, the mantle of political seniority on the island could rest on a woman who has many obligations and virtually no power to fulfill them beyond her ability to harangue others into helping her.
Jenniffer González-Colón is Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress, and something of a metaphor for Puerto Rico itself, a territory with 3.2 million residents caught in a perpetual state of purgatory. They are U.S. citizens in name, but lack many of the benefits of citizenship, including full representation on Capitol Hill.
González-Colón’s news releases refer to her as “congresswoman,” but her official title is resident commissioner, which means she has far less power than others in the House of Representatives. She can propose legislation and vote on bills in committees and on the House floor, but with a telling asterisk: Should her ballot be the deciding one, the House votes again — this time without her participation.
“If it counts, it doesn’t count,” Luis Bacó, González-Colón’s former chief of staff and a top aide to two previous commissioners, said in an interview. “Honestly, it’s more of a pain in the neck than anything else.”
A similar situation exists for the District of Columbia and other territories such as Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Those in the territories also do not have the ability to vote in presidential elections.
Still, Rosselló’s departure and the resignation this week of his acting representative in Washington leaves González-Colón as the only link between its residents and the Capitol. It also opens an opportunity to replace him as governor, an ambition she is widely believed to harbor.
González-Colón and Rosselló are members of the same Puerto Rican political party and even ran on the same 2016 ticket, but the relationship has not always been amicable. Her ties to the governor’s Washington representatives were strained, and when Rosselló tumbled into scandal this month with the publication of vulgar messages between him and his staff, she called the messages shameful and urged him to drop any plans for reelection.
She said this week that no one had consulted her about her replacing Rosselló, a possibility should she be appointed to the
now-vacant post of secretary of state, first in the line of succession. (Wanda Vázquez, the secretary of justice, is now first in line to replace Rosselló, but faces opposition.) And González-Colón refused to talk about running for the office in 2020, saying, “I don’t think public officials should be wondering or speculating about what can happen, or about their political ambitions” during the crisis.
But in the same breath, she noted that her campaign to become resident commissioner garnered more votes in 2016 than any other candidate for office in the territory.
Were Puerto Rico a state, it would have two senators and four seats in the House. González-Colón is in fact a passionate advocate of statehood, and the American flag outside her House office sports 51 stars.
Until that happens, her real job is more akin to a foreign ambassador than a member of Congress, said former Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, a Chicago Democrat who moved to Puerto Rico after his retirement last year.
“It sounds a little strange,” he said, “but they’re a kind of lobbyist-in-chief/ambassador for the people of Puerto Rico. To the extent they do that well, there can be some relative success in the job.”
The island, however, is in need of much more than relative success in Congress. Just since González-Colón took office in 2017 for a four-year term, Puerto Rico has been stricken with a fiscal crisis that led Congress to place its budget under federal oversight, two major hurricanes that wrecked its already crumbling infrastructure, and corruption and political scandals that led this week to Rosselló’s resignation.
González-Colón has organized a stream of visits by congressional delegations from both parties — including 15 Democrats led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — to view the island’s hurricane damage, a strategy she called her most effective tool for winning new backers. She won an exemption to add a third congressional committee to her assigned duties, giving her some clout in the only venue where her vote actually counts.
A vice president of the island’s Republican Party, González-Colón runs a leadership political action committee that doled out money to 14 Republican members of the House in the last election cycle. And she campaigned last year for Republican candidates in six states, from Florida to Nebraska, who had supported efforts to help the island.
“That’s the way you show them that you care, the same way they did for me,” she said.