Who Is Pedro Pierluisi, Who Has Been Sworn In as Puerto Rico’s Next Governor?

A week after announcing his imminent resignation, Gov. Ricardo A. Rosselló of Puerto Rico nominated a new secretary of state who could succeed him. Pedro R. Pierluisi faces a confirmation hearing in the Legislative Assembly on Thursday.
But Mr. Pierluisi’s path to the governor’s seat is hardly an easy one. He faces serious opposition from some lawmakers, especially in Puerto Rico’s Senate, which could block his confirmation. That would leave the next in line — Wanda Vázquez, the secretary of justice — to become governor.
With the vote still uncertain, here is a look at the man who could take charge of the island’s troubled government.
Mr. Pierluisi, a 60-year-old lawyer, served as secretary of justice for three years under Mr. Rosselló’s father, former Gov. Pedro J. Rosselló. He was elected to represent Puerto Rico in Congress as its nonvoting resident commissioner and served there from 2009 to 2017.

Mr. Pierluisi was re-elected after his first term even though the governor at the time, Luis G. Fortuño, who was also on the ballot for the New Progressive Party, was not. That popularity made Mr. Pierluisi, who comes from a political family, an attractive candidate for governor in 2016.
But he lost the primary that year to the younger Mr. Rosselló by about 2 percentage points, or about 10,000 votes. Mr. Pierluisi then backed Mr. Rosselló, who like him is a Democrat when it comes to national politics, though Puerto Rico’s political parties do not neatly match up with those on the mainland. The New Progressive Party supports statehood for Puerto Rico.
n 1994, while Mr. Pierluisi was secretary of justice, his younger brother, José Jaime Pierluisi, a 28-year-old aide to the governor, was fatally shot in a carjacking in San Juan, the capital.
Mr. Pierluisi is seen as competent and experienced. As resident commissioner, he ensured that Puerto Rico received federal stimulus funds and was covered by the Affordable Care Act. Both were considered important achievements.
But he also faces a serious potential conflict of interest: After leaving office, Mr. Pierluisi went to work for O’Neill & Borges, a law firm that does external legal consulting for the federal oversight board appointed by Congress to oversee Puerto Rico’s troubled finances.

Mr. Pierluisi took a leave of absence from the firm on Tuesday. Yet any connection to the unpopular board — which is led by Mr. Pierluisi’s brother-in-law, José B. Carrión III — is problematic in the minds of some lawmakers who will decide whether to confirm him.
In a statement accepting his nomination on Wednesday, Mr. Pierluisi cast his Washington connections as an advantage.
“It is also crucial to restore the trust of federal authorities and Congress, where I have earned respect,” he said, “and to re-establish a productive relationship with the oversight board, based only on what is good for Puerto Rico and facilitates the end of its mandate.”
In 2016, The New York Times found that Mr. Pierluisi introduced legislation as resident commissioner that would benefit at least two Wall Street companies that had hired his wife, María Elena Carrión, to advise them. The family’s net worth rose in part thanks to Ms. Carrión’s work helping the firms find bargains on distressed financial assets in Puerto Rico.
Both Mr. Pierluisi and Ms. Carrión, an experienced investment banker, said at the time that nothing he had done was intended to help her financial advisory firm, which she set up 20 days after he was elected in 2008.
Mr. Pierluisi and Ms. Carrión are now in the process of divorcing, according to the Puerto Rican news media.

By Patricia Mazzei

Who Is Pedro Pierluisi, Who Has Been Sworn In as Puerto Rico’s Next Governor?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What did Trump’s 2nd impeachment accomplish?

  That’s happening Former President Donald Trump was  acquitted  by the Senate on Saturday of the charge that he incited the insurrection on Jan. 6. The impeachment trial ended with 57 senators, including  seven Republicans , finding Trump guilty — well short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict. Over the course of a  week of testimony , House impeachment managers laid out the case that Trump was directly responsible for the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol carried out by a mob of his supporters. Trump’s attorneys countered by arguing that his baseless claims of election fraud were protected by the First Amendment and that the Senate lacked the constitutional authority to convict a president who was no longer in office. Several GOP senators cited the latter argument in explaining their decision to acquit. Senate Minority Leader  Mitch McConnell  said Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the violence at the Capitol in a scathing...
Read more

Justices Reject Diversity Plans in Two Districts

WASHINGTON, June 28 — With competing blocs of justices claiming the mantle of Brown v. Board of Education, a bitterly divided Supreme Court declared today that public school systems cannot seek to achieve or maintain integration through measures that take explicit account of a student’s race. Voting 5 to 4, the court, in an opinion by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., invalidated programs in Seattle and metropolitan Louisville, Ky., that sought to maintain school-by-school diversity by limiting transfers on the basis of race or using race as a “tiebreaker” for admission to particular schools. Both programs had been upheld by lower federal courts and were similar to plans in place in hundreds of school districts around the country. Chief Justice Roberts said such programs were “directed only to racial balance, pure and simple,” a goal he said was forbidden by the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating...
Read more

Puerto Rico statehood bid a total success

Image
In the midst of an unprecedented economic and fiscal crisis, Puerto Rico held its fifth status referendum in 50 years last Sunday. Producing a 97 percent victory in favor of statehood, New Progressive Party (PNP) Gov. Ricardo Rosselló has made it clear that he will lose no time leveraging the mandate to push Congress to admit Puerto Rico as the 51st state. Despite this, Rosselló will surely exclude from his sales pitch any reference to the successful electoral boycott organized and supported by practically every movement, party, and sector other than the PNP. Though Puerto Rican voters traditionally churn out en masse for electoral events, only about a quarter of voters participated in Rosselló's referendum. Turnout rates for previous votes on the matter in 2012, 1998, 1993 and 1967 boasted participation rates of 78 percent, 71 percent, 74 percent, and 60 percent, respectively. The boycott, in effect, was thus successful. Though turnout tends to be low in the U.S., such organize...
Read more