The two parties that have dominated Puerto Rican politics for decades are losing their grip as they face their fiercest competition yet from a younger generation fed up with the island’s corruption, chronic power outages and mismanagement of public funds.

For the first time in the island’s governor’s race, a third-party candidate has a strong second place in the polls ahead of Tuesday’s election in the US territory, and some experts say he has a chance of winning.

“This election is already a historic event,” said political analyst and university professor Jorge Schmidt Nieto. “This already marks a before and after.”

Juan Dalmau is running for the Independence Party of Puerto Rico and the Citizens Victory Movement, which was founded in 2019. Gaither’s international poll this month shows Dalmau closing in on Jenniffer González, a member of the New Progressive Party and Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress. He defeated Governor Pedro Pierluisi in his party’s primary in June.

Gaither’s poll shows Dalmau with 29% support, compared to 31% for González; because he nearly caught up with him, as a different poll in July showed he had only 24% support compared to González’s 43%. Jesús Manuel Ortiz from the Popular Democratic Party took third place, followed by Javier Jiménez from the conservative party Project Dignity, which was founded in 2019.

Under pressure

Schmidt said Puerto Rican politics revolves around the island’s status, and that the New Progressive Party, which supports statehood by 2016, and the Popular Democratic Party, which supports the status quo, will share at least 90% of all votes during the general election. .

But that year, after the government announced it could not pay more than $70 billion in public debt, the U.S. Congress created a federal control board to oversee Puerto Rico’s finances. In 2017, Puerto Rico filed for the largest U.S. municipal bankruptcy in history.

The debt was accrued over decades of corruption, mismanagement and over-indebtedness; Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority is still trying to restructure more than $9 billion in debt, the largest of any government agency.

Puerto Ricans largely rejected and resented the billboard, which was created a year before Hurricane Maria slammed into the island as a powerful Category 4 storm, devastating the power grid.

In 2020, Pierluisi won but received only 33% of the vote. His opponent from the popular Democratic Party received 32 percent of the votes. This was the first time that any party failed to reach 40% of the votes.

Power outages that have continued since the election, combined with the slow pace of hurricane reconstruction, have frustrated and angered voters. Under Pierluisi, the government signed contracts with Luma Energy and Genera PR, two companies that together control the generation, transmission and distribution of energy. Outages continued as companies blamed the already crumbling grid for lack of maintenance and investment before the hurricane hit.

“During this four-year period, catastrophic things happened, especially in electrical energy,” Schmidt said. “It affected everyone, regardless of social class.”

He said voters viewed Tuesday’s election as “a moment of revenge.”

Dalmau said he would take down both companies “in an organized manner” within six months if he became governor. Ortiz said he would cancel Luma’s contract, while González called for the creation of an “energy czar” who would review Luma’s possible contract violations while another operator was found.

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However, no contract may be canceled without the prior approval of the federal control board and the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau.

Candidates are also under pressure to create affordable housing, lower utility bills and the overall cost of living, reduce violent crime, revitalize Puerto Rico’s economy after the island has been excluded from capital markets since 2015, and improve its crumbling healthcare system, where thousands of people live. Doctors are flocking to the U.S. mainland in numbers.

Dalmau, who suspended his campaign for two weeks in mid-October after his wife had emergency brain surgery, also said he would eliminate tax breaks for wealthy U.S. citizens on the mainland.

Indifference prevails

Despite promises to turn Puerto Rico around, candidates face voter apathy.

In 2008, 1.9 million of 2.5 million registered voters participated in that year’s elections; In 2020, this number was 1.3 million out of 2.3 million.

Nearly 99,000 new voters registered this year and more than 87,000 reactivated their status, according to the Puerto Rico State Election Commission.

“A much higher number was expected,” Schmidt said.

He noted that middle-aged and elderly people supported González and his pro-state party, while those under 45 “overwhelmingly” supported Dalmau. chance to win.

Bad Rabbit factor

The months leading up to the November 5 elections were contentious.

Reggaetón superstar Bad Bunny paid for dozens of billboard ads criticizing Puerto Rico’s two main parties. In response, the governor’s New Progressive Party funded a billboard touting the obscenity referenced to Bad Bunny.

On Friday, the singer published a one-page letter in a local newspaper mocking González’s pro-state party.

Although the artist does not support any local officials, Dalmau was the only person he recently started following on Instagram.

He made a brief appearance at Dalmau’s closing campaign on Sunday. A silence fell over the crowd of tens of thousands as Bad Bunny said before singing that he did not support a particular candidate or party.

“My party is the people… My party is Puerto Rico,” he later said, praising the alliance between Puerto Rico’s Independence Party and the Citizens’ Victory Movement.

Meanwhile, a so-called “corruption graveyard” was set up in the capital San Juan on Thursday, featuring large black-and-white photographs of nearly a dozen politicians from the island’s two main parties who were indicted or convicted by federal authorities. In recent years. It was created by Eva Prados of the Citizens’ Victory Movement, who is running for the Puerto Rican House of Representatives. On Friday, police reported the photos had been destroyed or stolen.

As the race tightened, so did the number of official complaints about alleged election crimes. These include people who say they received early voting approval even though they did not make such a request.

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A persistent question

On Tuesday, voters will also be asked for the seventh time what Puerto Rico’s political status should be.

The non-binding referendum will include three options: statehood, independence and independence by free association; Issues such as foreign relations, US citizenship and the use of the US dollar will be discussed.

Whatever the outcome, the change in status requires approval from the US Congress.

“For many people, voting in a non-binding referendum is a demoralizing practice,” said Christina Ponsa-Kraus, a professor at Columbia Law School. “The reason Puerto Ricans voted seven times is because every time they voted, Congress did nothing.”

The push for a change of status does not depend on whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump wins on the US mainland.

“What matters is not who becomes president, but who is in control of Congress,” Ponsa-Kraus said, while calling on Congress to offer “non-colonial options” to Puerto Rico.

He added that it was difficult to say whether Dalmau’s gubernatorial rule, which has long represented the Puerto Rican Independence Party, would affect the popular vote.

“My sense is … people can differentiate between a candidate and a status option,” he said. “I believe that Puerto Ricans have historically not supported independence because they do not want to lose their citizenship and they do not want to lose their ability to move freely back and forth between the mainland United States and the island.”