The first Resident Commissioner to caucus with
the Republican Party since the 92nd Congress
(1971–1973), Luis G. Fortuño served one term
in the U.S. House of Representatives before becoming
governor of Puerto Rico in 2009. As a principal figure in
Puerto Rico’s Partido Nuevo Progresista (New Progressive
Party, or PNP), he was the primary advocate for Puerto
Rican statehood during his tenure in Washington and
an outspoken critic of the island’s limited influence in
Congress. “After 106 years of territorial status, and 88 years
of being U.S. citizens, we are tired of waiting,” Fortuño
said in March 2005. “The people of Puerto Rico deserve
better. We have earned the right to be heard.”1
Luis G. Fortuño was born October 31, 1960, in San
Juan, Puerto Rico. The son of a dentist, Fortuño was
educated at a private high school and graduated from
Georgetown University with a bachelor’s of science in
foreign service in 1982.2 He attended law school at the
University of Virginia in Charlottesville, earning a J.D. in
1985, after which he returned to Puerto Rico and began
practicing at one of the island’s premier law firms.3 He
made a name for himself in the legal world of corporate
finance, and in 1993 he was appointed executive director
of the Puerto Rico Tourism Company, where he worked to
attract new business to the island.4 In 1994 PNP governor
Pedro Rosselló selected Fortuño to lead Puerto Rico’s
Department of Economic Development and Commerce,
an umbrella agency that was responsible for the oversight
of several government bureaus.5 Fortuño and his wife,
Lucé, have triplets (two sons and a daughter).6
Fortuño left the Rosselló administration a short while
later and “became something of a white knight for his
party, symbolizing youth and fresh ideas,” according to
the Miami Herald.7 In what appeared to be a changing
of the guard, Rosselló declined to run for re-election,
and Fortuño joined a crowded field seeking the PNP
nomination. He withdrew in June 1999, however, and
resumed practicing law for clients as far away as Florida.8
A member of the Republican National Committee from
Puerto Rico, Fortuño kept a low profile until 2003, when
he entered the race for Resident Commissioner.9
The island’s incumbent Resident Commissioner, Aníbal Acevedo-Vilá of the Partido Popular Democrático (Popular
Democratic Party, or PPD), opted to run for governor in
2004, clearing the way for the PNP’s bold campaign to
re-take the seat. Roughly a year before the general election,
Fortuño beat out three other candidates for the PNP
nomination, including former Resident Commissioner
Carlos Romero-Barceló. His opponent in the general
election was Roberto Prats of the PPD.10
As in every election on the island since the 1950s,
the future of Puerto Rico’s relationship with the federal
government emerged as a dominant issue early on.11
In the early 2000s, the George W. Bush administration
began laying out options for Puerto Rico’s future status;
commonwealth status, the island’s longstanding arrangement
with the federal government, was not initially included.
An advocate for Puerto Rican statehood, Fortuño supported
the Bush administration’s proposal. “The federal government
can have a relationship with a state, or with a sovereign
nation,” the PNP candidate said that December. “At the
end of the day, you really have two options, I believe:
either statehood or independence.”12
Unlike most Puerto Rican elections, the 2004 race
attracted national attention. For the first time in more
than 30 years, there was a chance that Puerto Rico’s next
Resident Commissioner would caucus with the GOP.13
Although Fortuño had identified with the Republican
Party since college, his House campaign signaled a larger
political trend. “It’s been a priority of the Republican Party
and the House leadership to recruit more Hispanics into the
party and Luis Fortuño was pretty much a dream candidate
for this Resident Commissioner spot in Puerto Rico,” said a
national GOP official.14 Fortuño campaigned from San Juan
to Madison Square Garden and spoke at the Republican
National Convention three months before the election.15
At home, Fortuño campaigned on his belief that Puerto
Rico was more conservative than most people realized.
He focused his platform on lowering taxes, limiting
government influence, and achieving statehood.16 The race
was extremely close, and early results put Fortuño ahead
with a slight lead. His margin shrank throughout the
evening, but by the end of the week he had squeaked by
Prats with 48.8 percent of the vote—a victory of one-half
of 1 percent.17
At the start of the 109th Congress (2005–2007),
the Republicans appointed Fortuño to the Committees
on Education and the Workforce, Resources, and
Transportation and Infrastructure, all of which had
jurisdiction over issues that were important to Puerto Rico.
Early in the first session, he supported the Job Training
Improvement Act of 2005 as well as the Transportation
Equity Act.18 The first bill Fortuño introduced—the
Caribbean National Forest Act of 2005 (H.R. 539),
placing Puerto Rico’s El Toro Wilderness under the
National Wilderness Preservation System—became law
in December 2005, capping an ambitious first session
in which Fortuño also worked to reform the island’s tax
code and its Medicare system. “There are 100 different
issues people have been trying to get on the table since
the 1980s,” he told the Miami Herald in 2006. “The
big difference is that as a member of the Republican
conference, I sit at the table.”19
With a four-year term as Resident Commissioner,
Fortuño did not have to think about re-election right away,
and in summer 2005 he created a political action committee
called L.U.I.S.—“Leading Us in Success”—to defray his
travel costs while he campaigned for other members of the
GOP. “Being a Hispanic, a Puerto Rican and a Republican,
certainly I believe I can be helpful in a number of places,”
he told a Capitol Hill newspaper that July.20
In the second session Fortuño offered his defining piece
of legislation: the Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2006
(H.R. 4867). Together with 110 co-sponsors, Fortuño
introduced the bill on the 89th anniversary of Puerto
Ricans’ American citizenship in hopes of renegotiating
the island’s relationship with the federal government. The
measure recommended two plebiscites and “[guaranteed]
that the terms and conditions of Puerto Rico’s future
be developed jointly and democratically by the people
of Puerto Rico and the Congress and not by the whims
of an elite few,” Fortuño said. The first plebiscite would
determine whether Puerto Rican voters wanted “to remain
a U.S. territory.” If voters chose what Fortuño called a
“constitutionally viable permanent non-territorial status,”
the second plebiscite would be held to determine whether
they favored independence or statehood.21 Fortuño
believed that statehood would galvanize the people of
Puerto Rico, and he pointed to Hawaii as a model for what
could happen in the Caribbean.22 The House referred his
bill to the Resources Committee, but it was not acted on.
In the 110th Congress (2007–2009), Fortuño lost
his spot in the majority after the Democrats regained
control of the House for the first time since 1995. He kept
his seats on the Education and Resources Committees
but moved from Transportation to the Committee on
Foreign Affairs.23 GOP House leaders also named Fortuño
Ranking Member of Natural Resources’ Subcommittee
on Insular Affairs, which oversaw the federal government’s
relationship with its territories. This assignment carried
additional weight after Fortuño was named chairman of
the Congressional Hispanic Conference in 2007.24
The 110th Congress opened with a debate after
Democrats proposed allowing statutory representatives to
vote on amendments in the Committee of the Whole.25
Fortuño was the only Republican who would be affected
by the bill, and he supported it alongside the Delegates
from the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam,
and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The measure passed and was
celebrated for its “symbolic importance,” but its limited
scope meant the measure had little influence on the
legislative process. Nevertheless, Fortuño hoped the vote
would be the first step toward resolving America’s oftennebulous
insular-federal relationship. “What the House
really needs to do for the almost 4 million U.S. citizens
that I represent before the Senate, the executive branch,
as well as this House is to authorize a self-determination
process for Puerto Rico.… What my constituents really
deserve is the opportunity to seek equal representation and
equal responsibilities in the Federal system or, alternatively,
the freedom of a sovereign nation,” he said.26
Fortuño spent much of the rest of the 110th Congress
pushing to reform Puerto Rico’s status, along with its
tax code and its Medicare and Medicaid systems.27 With
legislation like the Puerto Rico Economic Stimulus Act
of 2007 (H.R. 1339), Fortuño fought to improve health
care and general services for the island’s military personnel
and veterans.28
In 2008, Fortuño ran for governor of Puerto Rico
against incumbent Aníbal Acevedo-Vilá. Federal
prosecutors had indicted Acevedo-Vilá earlier in the year
on multiple counts of violating campaign finance law, and
though he was cleared of all wrongdoing a few months
later, the incident cast a long shadow over the campaign.
The island needed new leadership in order to “re-establish
the people’s confidence in their government,” Fortuño
said.29 That November Fortuño won the governor’s
mansion by a wide margin.30
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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