SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Hispanic voters will play a key
role in determining if President Obama wins reelection. In 2008, he
was able to take the Democratic share of the Hispanic vote to 67
percent, up ten points from what John Kerry got against George W.
Bush four years earlier. In the next election, Hispanics are likely
to make up nearly 9 percent of the total vote, and in key states
such as Florida they represent one-seventh of all eligible
voters.
Such numbers have led many to suggest that the Republican
Party’s next nominee should select an Hispanic running mate.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio tops everyone’s list, but he has said
he “absolutely” doesn’t want the job — and he might just really
mean it. New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez, a former prosecutor,
is sometimes mentioned. But she remains untested on the national
stage and when the GOP convention rolls around she’ll have only
been in office as a governor the same number of days as Sarah Palin
was in 2008 when named to the ticket.
But there is another intriguing possibility. Luis Fortuño is the
51-year-old governor of Puerto Rico, whose four million people have
all been U.S. citizens since 1952, making their governor eligible
to become vice president. Mr. Fortuño made history in 2004 by being
elected the island’s lone delegate to the U.S. House as a
conservative and followed up that feat in 2008 by being elected
governor with the largest margin of any predecessor since the
1960s. His party not only won control of the legislature by
historic margins but also won the power to name three supreme court
judges, giving that body its first conservative majority in
history.
But the reasons for his sweep were sobering. The economy was in
meltdown, suffering from a recession that began in 2006, predating
the one on the U.S. mainland by two years. “I inherited a deficit
that was proportionately speaking the largest in the country,
representing 44 percent of revenues,” Fortuño told me recently in
an interview at La Fortaleza, the 500-year-old medieval castle that
serves as the island’s seat of executive power. “We had to take a
loan to get enough money to meet our first payroll.” The state had
had negative economic growth throughout the previous decade.
Fortuño recalls, “My wife asked me if we could seek a recount.”
The previous government’s answer had been to spend money and
raise taxes. When Fortuño took office, a staggering one out of
three Puerto Ricans worked for the state and a new sales tax of 7
percent had been imposed.
Fortuño shifted everything into reverse. “The people expected
leadership,” he told me. “I went on TV to tell the public exactly
what we faced and what we needed to do. People will respect you if
they see you are doing what you see is right and what you promised
to do.”
So he immediately cut spending by 20 percent and laid off 17,000
state workers, enduring weeks of protests. He reduced the top
corporate tax rate from 41 percent to 30 percent, with a further
reduction scheduled down to 25 percent. Individual income tax rates
were cut by a quarter in 2010 and entire government agencies
privatized. (“They will do a better job. They will do it
cheaper.”)
He also attacked red tape. A small army of 250 police were in
charge of approving liquor licenses. Fortuño reassigned almost all
of them to other tasks. Whereas it had once taken 28 different
regulations and permits to open a small business, Fortuño reduced
that to one simple procedure that can be done online.
Fortuño says his political philosophy is rooted in his
admiration of Ronald Reagan’s conservative principles. “I was a
student at Georgetown in D.C. as Carter was failing as president
and being replaced by Reagan,” he recalls. “I was so inspired by
Reagan I licked envelopes for him. I saw how he revitalized an
economy and country by freeing the American people to be free and
industrious.”
Today, Puerto Rico has stabilized and is in the recovery room.
Unemployment is still high at 15.7 percent, but that’s down from
more than 17 percent at the height of the crisis. The island has
the highest bond rating in 35 years. Standard & Poor’s has
given Puerto Rico its first positive economic review since 1983.
Companies ranging from Coca-Cola to Merck and Walmart are expanding
operations.
There are sticking points. The number of murders hit a record in
2011, fueled by the transfer of much of the drugs and weapons trade
from the more closely watched U.S.-Mexican border to the Caribbean.
Governor Fortuño has pledged to spend $52 million more next year on
enhanced police training and higher salaries. Polls show the
governor trailing his most likely opponent when he runs for
reelection in 2012, but he is confident the improving economy will
prompt voters to reward him with a second term.
BUT WHAT IF HE GETS a call asking him to join the GOP
presidential ticket? Fortuño isn’t eager for that conversation,
saying “that isn’t going to happen” but avoiding a definitive
statement that he wouldn’t take the job.
He says Republicans must do a better job reaching out to
Hispanics in America, noting that they believe in many core
conservative principles such as hard work, family values, and
entrepreneurship. “Whether I was campaigning for [now Senator] Pat
Toomey in Pennsylvania or Marco Rubio in Florida, I could feel a
willingness to give Republicans a second chance if we have the
right message,” he told me.
Luis Fortuño would certainly be an out-of-the-box pick for vice
president but it would likely represent shrewd politics. Florida
alone has 800,000 Puerto Ricans living within its borders, and
every one of the adults in that group is eligible to vote. Puerto
Ricans also make up enough of the voting population in Pennsylvania
and New Jersey to put those states potentially in play for the
GOP.
But whatever his future holds, Governor Fortuño has already
earned a profile in courage award for showing that even the most
dismal economies can respond to doses of the right fiscal
medicine.
