Puerto Rican voters rise as key bloc in 2024

Puerto Rican voters have shot to center stage in national elections, marking a major shift for an electorate that was largely overlooked for a century.

The voting bloc is at the center of national attention following a series of crude jokes told by Tony Hinchcliffe on Sunday at former President Trump's Madison Square Garden (MSG) rally, in which the comedian equated Puerto Rico to oceanic garbage patches.

Though the Trump campaign and many individual Republicans have disavowed Hinchcliffe’s set, the fracas opened a window for Vice President Harris to make a last-minute pitch to low-propensity voters who could help decide the election.

“I think there is a significant number of people who will not be turned off and will make excuses for Trump,” said Federico de Jesús, a Washington-based consultant and former deputy director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration.

“But I think that this can and could make a big difference with Puerto Ricans who were already anti-Trump but were not sold yet or were soft on Kamala. They might be voting for her, but they weren't enthusiastic. I think that this will create rage, anger and motivate people to go out and maybe volunteer. Maybe take their relatives to vote. Maybe take a second look at Kamala if they were undecided, and really shore that vote up.”

Hinchcliffe’s garbage joke struck at the most sensitive of soft spots for Puerto Ricans across the political spectrum: their homeland.

“The young and the old, their heart is in Puerto Rico, even the ones who were born here in Pennsylvania, in New York, in Nevada, in Georgia, where you have a Puerto Rican population who can decide an election,” said Javier Llano, a D.C.-based Puerto Rican political consultant.

Hinchcliffe's segment also included a crass line about Hispanic reproductive habits, as well as anti-Black and antisemitic punchlines that drew a mixed reception from the audience.

Republicans including Sen. Rick Scott (Fla.), Reps. María Elvira Salazar (Fla.) and Anthony d’Esposito (N.Y.) and Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González-Colón, who is running for governor, all disavowed the comedy set, which Hinchcliffe defended on Monday, saying it was taken out of context, and he “made fun of everyone.”

“This is also, I think, an opportunity for every single American to pay real close attention to what was said at that rally, because no group went unscathed. He talked about Latinos, he talked about Puerto Ricans, he talked about African Americans, he talked about women. The only group that was safe was literally white men, cis white males, to be very specific,” said María Teresa Kumar, president of Voto Latino.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez said in a statement, “this joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”

Yet the timing of the MSG rally played in favor of Harris, who on the same day released a set of policy proposals for the U.S. territory.

“I will create a new Puerto Rico opportunity economy task force, where the federal government will work with the private sector, with nonprofits and community leaders to foster economic growth and create thousands of new, good paying jobs in Puerto Rico, including for our young people. And I know that Puerto Rico's economic future depends on urgently rebuilding and modernizing the island's energy grid,” Harris said in a video posted on social media on Sunday.

That contrast also drew support from top Puerto Rican celebrities, including Ricky Martin, Jennifer López and Bad Bunny.

Bad Bunny re-posted Harris’s economic pledge to his Instagram account, which is followed by 45.6 million people, highlighting her line, “I will never forget what Donald Trump did when Puerto Rico needed a caring and competent leader.”

Bad Bunny’s jump into national politics is especially significant not only for his worldwide fame, but because he has historically focused his attention on internal Puerto Rican issues, rather than national ones.

“The reason that getting a Bad Bunny — the reason that getting a Ricky Martin and getting a Jennifer Lopez to endorse, is that it allows them to use their information on their feeds to talk to low-propensity information voters,” said Kumar.

The Harris campaign quickly cut an ad with footage of the "garbage" joke, including Trump's unorthodox pronunciation of the island's name in 2017 and Harris's economic pitch.

Still, Trump has pulled in his own Puerto Rican celebrity support, most notably from reggaeton stars Anuel AA and Nicky Jam, a sign that both campaigns understand the outsize role Puerto Rican voters could play in this election.

“The fact that both of them and Trump referred to Puerto Rico as a country, which for some Democrats might be a surprise, but to anybody who's spoken to Puerto Ricans in Spanish knows that's how we refer to the island. It resonated with some people, right? And again, he doesn't need to win the majority of Puerto Ricans, but there's a swath of Puerto Rican men with which that resonated,” said de Jesús.

“And Kamala Harris was yesterday in Pennsylvania rolling out a plan on Puerto Rico. So Puerto Ricans on the island may not vote for president, but Puerto Ricans in the states obviously do, and there's a large number of us that have the island in our hearts when we go out to vote.”

Puerto Ricans are at the center of the fight for Pennsylvania — the essential swing state — and Florida, a once-swing state with a potentially competitive Senate race.

Puerto Rican voters are also expected to play a key role in Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina.

That's a far cry from the group's historical clout in safe blue strongholds like New York and Illinois, and from the electoral marginalization of Puerto Rico's territorial status.

Puerto Ricans on the island have been statutory U.S. citizens since 1917, but only Puerto Ricans with residence in the District of Columbia or one of the 50 states can vote in federal elections.

Though the Jones Act, the law that conferred citizenship in 1917, spurred migration to the mainland, most Puerto Ricans originally settled in non-battleground liberal states.

For the next century, the Puerto Rican vote was crucial in some local elections but never at the presidential level.

“This time, we could be the decisive vote. In 2020 we were one of several groups, but this time around we could be the decisive swing vote,” said de Jesús.

“We didn't really matter per se in the presidential races until Florida became such a heavy state with more than 1 million Puerto Ricans. And you know what's happened since, obviously, for local races, statewide races in New York and in Pennsylvania and other states, Puerto Ricans have mattered. But the fact that there's so many Puerto Ricans, more than 100,000 in Georgia, for example, more than that in North Carolina and obviously in Pennsylvania and in Wisconsin, that changes things.”