The race for governor of Puerto Rico is being turned upside down by Alianza third-party candidate Juan Dalmau

Puerto Rico voters will elect a new governor next week, ending an unprecedented race that has seen the emergence of a new coalition party that has a strong chance of prevailing over the two long-established parties.

For the past seven decades, Puerto Rico has been governed by the pro-government New Progressive Party, currently in office by Governor Pedro Pierluisi, or the Popular Democratic Party, which supports the island's current territorial status. And in every election during that time, candidates from these two parties were frontrunners.

This year, however, the candidate from the Puerto Rican Independence Party, a minority party that advocates for the island's independence from the United States, made a breakthrough.

Independence Party candidate Juan Dalmau has gained enough momentum to have a fighting chance of defeating incumbent Pro-Statehood Party candidate Jenniffer Gonzalez and relegating Peoples Democratic Party candidate Jesús Manuel Ortiz to third place.

But Dalmau's growing support isn't necessarily tied to more Puerto Ricans supporting independence. Instead, he has become the face of Alianza, a new coalition between the Independence Party and the Citizens' Victory Movement – a party founded in 2019 by several people who unsuccessfully ran as separate, independent candidates in 2016.

After the 2020 election, the two smaller parties realized that if they joined forces as part of a “strategic alliance,” they could garner enough support to potentially defeat the incumbent party, said Carlos Vargas-Ramos, a political scientist at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York.

Under “Alianza” (Alliance), the coalition has branded itself as a movement that opposes the pro-statehood party and the People's Democratic Party by promising to prioritize good governance over the issue of Puerto Rico's status, and as A tempting alternative for voters with feelings serves disappointment from both traditional parties.

The frustration and hopelessness of the Puerto Rican electorate was first felt in 2016, when voter turnout was a record low of 55% – an unusual milestone for an island known for its high voter turnout of 73% to 89%. Voter turnout remained unchanged in the 2020 election.

The low turnout was preceded by a series of crises that undermined people's trust in Puerto Rican government institutions.

The islanders are grappling with economic turmoil stemming from a financial crisis that peaked in 2015, when Puerto Rico accumulated about $72 billion in national debt – but, unlike other U.S. jurisdictions, was unable to legally file for bankruptcy . As a result, Congress passed the PROMESA Act in 2016 to create a federally appointed financial oversight board to allow Puerto Rico to restructure its debt.

As the board carried out the largest restructuring of the federal debt in U.S. history, it implemented severe austerity measures that led to layoffs of state workers and cuts to the health and education budgets. Additionally, Puerto Rico has been struck by devastating natural disasters, including Hurricane María in 2017 and a series of earthquakes in 2020, as well as the pandemic.

In 2019, Puerto Ricans took to the streets to participate in their largest protest in recent history and to overthrow then-Gov. Ricardo Rosselló after a political scandal involving him and a dozen members of his cabinet.

“Something different” vs. “Sequel”

For a generation of young Puerto Ricans like Cristina Rodríguez, 31, who have lived through these crises and blame the ruling parties, “Alianza” is an option to bring about much-needed change.

“The 'Alianza' not only has the youth to change things, but I think they also remember from their own experience how previous governments failed us throughout our childhood and everything that my generation did as an adult “I had to endure it,” Rodriguez said. “I have great hope that for the first time I see something different happening.”

But “Alianza” still faces a significant challenge among voters who in the past have viewed issues of good governance as inextricably linked to Puerto Rico’s current territorial status or who do not want to disrupt the traditional party system.

Iraida Quiñones, a bright and energetic 89-year-old who has long been a loyal supporter of the pro-territorial People's Democratic Party, will vote for her party's candidate, Ortiz, on Election Day, “even if it's the last thing I do.” “.”

Quiñones, like many Alianza supporters, is unhappy with the last three governors, all of whom belong to the pro-statehood party. But she believes voting for another traditional party is her best chance of toppling the incumbent party.

The island's avid statehood supporter and former housing minister, Miguel Hernández, 51, said he had already voted by mail for González to ensure “the continuation of the current government.”

Fears of independence

Among the voters that “Alianza” hopes to attract, there are still a significant number who appear unable to abandon Dalmau’s support for independence, even though he is running a campaign that prioritizes “honest government” and himself does not support independence if elected.

The vast majority of Puerto Ricans support statehood or the current territorial relationship with the United States. Historically, the island's chances of meaningfully exploring independence as an option were hampered by the United States, which viewed Puerto Rico as an important military base during both World Wars and the Cold War, particularly after neighboring Cuba went communist under Castro. Puerto Rico's history ranges from local gagging laws to a government-sanctioned surveillance program called Las Carpetas to the persecution of pro-independence activists and even assassinations.

Dalmau's main opponent, pro-statehood candidate González, was ahead in the polls and used this complicated history to his advantage, staging political attacks that distorted Dalmau's program of promoting social democracy to argue that he supported communism for Puerto Rico wanted.

Jorge Schmidt Nieto, a political science professor at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez, said the attacks had proven effective among voters whose Cold War-era fears remain virtually unabated.

Complicating matters for “Alianza” is that Puerto Rico’s 2020 electoral law restructured the electoral process in a way that in practice gave the ruling party “an institutional advantage,” Schmidt Nieto said.

One of these benefits is that parties and candidates can provide ballots to early voters. Because the state party is the largest, it has the infrastructure to exploit this advantage on a large scale and has virtually secured around 200,000 votes for González, Schmidt Nieto said.

Against this backdrop, a number of allegations of possible electoral fraud have emerged. A report from the Center for Investigative Journalism in Puerto Rico found that at least 5,872 deceased people voted in the 2020 and 2016 elections.

The Justice Department has since appointed a district election officer to monitor voting rights violations in Puerto Rico as part of its Election Day program.

Who shows up to vote – and what possible effects that has

González is currently the island's resident commissioner, Puerto Rico's non-voting representative in Congress. Unlike Governor Pierluisi, who supports Vice President Kamala Harris, González supports former President Donald Trump. Ortiz, the popular Democratic candidate, is supporting Harris.

All gubernatorial candidates, including González, have spoken out against comedian Tony Hinchcliffe's racist jokes in which he called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.” Dalmau and Ortiz also criticized González for his support of Trump.

With polls showing González leading Dalmau by about two to eight percentage points, Charles Venator-Santiago, director of the Puerto Rican Studies Initiative at the University of Connecticut, said he “wouldn't be surprised if Dalmau won by a narrow margin.”

Venator-Santiago said Puerto Rico could make history if enough young people vote and a fourth emerging party called Project Dignity, which favors Christian democracy, gets enough pro-statehood supporters to vote for its gubernatorial candidate, Javier Jiménez, a single-party governor , who has never held office before.

“The gap is not that big. Now the question is: Who will show up to vote across the island or not?” Venator-Santiago said.

Election Day in Puerto Rico is Tuesday.