Puerto Rico’s governor wants statehood. He thinks Florida’s the key to getting it.

Before Hurricane Maria struck the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico with devastating consequences, eight out of 10 Americans had no clue island residents were their fellow citizens. Now, thanks to Maria, more than 90 percent know it, Puerto Rico’s governor says surveys show.

That sharp upgrade in Americans’ knowledge about the island marks a potentially consequential turning point in its relationship with the 50 states, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said Friday in Miami — a tie that he says is marked by unequal rights for residents of the territory in spite of their U.S. citizenship.

That dynamic change, Rosselló contends, may provide the impetus for wiping out what he called that “second-class citizenship” for 3.3 million Puerto Rican residents by making the island the nation’s 51st state. Island residents can’t vote in U.S. presidential elections and have no voting representative in Congress unless they move to the mainland.

The resulting lack of political clout means the island receives a smaller relative share of federal funding for healthcare, infrastructure and other services than states do, hurting its residents’ well-being and their economic prospects, and it was most dramatically in evidence in the federal government’s agonizingly slow response to Hurricane Maria, Rosselló said.

“I think this is the moment in time where it clicked that Puerto Rico is part of the United States,” Rosselló told Puerto Rican business and civic leaders gathered for a town hall meeting at the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. “Now we need results. We need execution.”

Rosselló was in Florida with members of this Puerto Rico Statehood Commission, which he created to advance the question, to make an unusual pitch to the state’s Puerto Rican voters.

He is asking them to vote in the Nov. 6 midterm elections for candidates who support Puerto Rico statehood. He has also been putting candidates on the spot, in forays not just to Florida but also to California, Massachusetts and Colorado, by asking them to publicly back statehood for the island if they want support from Puerto Rican voters in those states.

Support from a Puerto Rican voting bloc could mean the difference in tight races, particularly in Florida, where polls have some candidates within a few percentage points of each other, including the contest for governor and U.S. Senate, Rosselló said. A recent survey showed that 80 percent of the state’s Puerto Rican residents support statehood for the island, he added.

And an influx of Puerto Ricans from the island to Florida has meant some 77,000 new voter registrations in the state, enough to swing some critical elections, he said.

If his gambit works, Rosselló said, it could set the stage for pressing Congress to take up the question of Puerto Rico statehood.

“This go-around, we can showcase our power,” he said. “We must demonstrate that the Puerto Rican vote can change elections.”

Rosselló has endorsed two Democrats, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum in the governor’s race against former Congressman Ron DeSantis. and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson against GOP challenger Rick Scott, the state’s outgoing governor. Next week, Rosselló said, he will release a list of further endorsements.

Rosselló, a Democrat, leads the pro-statehood New Progressive Party on the island, where politics don’t neatly split between Democrats and Republicans but instead revolve around the question of the island’s political status and relationship with the United States. The NPP’s main opposition, the Popular Democratic Party, supports the continuation of the island’s current status as a U.S. commonwealth, though with some enhanced powers. Supporters of independence are a small minority.

Rosselló said he would endorse a Republican candidate who supports Puerto Rico statehood over a Democrat who doesn’t.

“It’s time to put up or shut up,” he told reporters after the town hall. “It’s time to say whether you are for Puerto Rico, or against.”

Rosselló asserts that most island residents support his position, pointing to plebiscite votes in 2012 and 2017, just before Maria, that favored statehood over continuation of commonwealth status, though critics have said the votes were framed in a way that favored the former.

The governor argues that statehood is the remedy to all that ails Puerto Rico, including inadequate disaster relief, a deep, long-lasting recession, and a virtually bankrupt government whose spending is under the control of a board created by Congress that he contends has wrested too much decision-making power from the people of the island.

During the town hall, Rosselló called the island’s peculiar status “a geopolitical black hole” and cast the pursuit of statehood as a matter of equal rights.

“We are treated differently,” he said in an interview with the Miami Herald. “That’s been going on for ages.”

He said he hopes Congress will authorize a definitive vote by Puerto Ricans on statehood by the next presidential election cycle.

“It’s a reasonable ask,” Rosselló said.

This story was originally published October 26, 2018 at 5:58 PM.