OPINION | In Florida, Puerto Rican voters hold the key to a possible electoral victory | CNN

Governor of Puerto Rico thanked Donald Trump for supporting Puerto Rico 3:32

Editor's Note:

Pedro Reina-Pérez is a professor at the University of Puerto Rico and visiting professor at Harvard University.

Follow him on Twitter: @pedroreinaperez.

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(CNN) -

While speaking in Florida last month, President Donald Trump made what some may consider an unusual call to Puerto Ricans.

"You better vote for me, Puerto Rico," Trump boasted, after falsely claiming that it is "the best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico."

Although Puerto Ricans on the island, a US territory since 1898, cannot vote, there are more than 850,000 of them who can do so in the state of the Sun. Puerto Ricans have 27% of the state participation of the Latino electorate in the 2020 elections , only surpassed by Cubans who represent 29%.

And the Trump campaign is well aware of it.

In early October, the president obtained the backing of the governor of Puerto Rico, Wanda Vázquez Garced.

Vázquez Garced, who has been in office since Governor Ricardo Rosselló was ousted in the summer of 2019, has little or no political influence among Puerto Ricans.

He devastated his primary candidacy for a full term in August and faced an investigation by the local special counsel for alleged mishandling of supplies for victims of the January earthquakes.

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  Puerto Rico needs more than Trump's cynical ploy

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The governor was to appear with Trump at the Sanford airport, about 30 miles north of Orlando, right in the heart of the state's Puerto Rican community, the week he tested positive for coronavirus.

The diagnosis upended what should have been an important appearance that the Trump campaign hoped would have cemented Puerto Rican support for the president.

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Stretching across the state from Orlando to Tampa, in what is commonly referred to as the "I-4 Corridor," this region is home to nearly 1.2 million Puerto Ricans who have resettled in the state primarily during the last 20 years.

They now wield considerable power to influence the final outcome of the general election, and the Republican Party knows it.

For Trump, winning Florida is crucial to a victory and for that he probably needs to have Puerto Ricans on his side.

This result, however, is not as simple as it seems, particularly after the president's controversial and problematic history with the island, its political leaders, and especially those who favor its full integration as a state.

Trump's rally to woo the Puerto Rican vote would have coincided with the third anniversary of his infamous visit to the island in 2017, in which he was filmed throwing paper towels at survivors, nearly two weeks after Category 4 Hurricane Maria devastate the territory.

The moment remains a sad reminder of his lack of empathy and understanding for the people that he may now need to overcome considerable electoral hurdles to win a second term in the White House.

For the past three years, his administration has been criticized for its slow and flawed response to the devastation caused by Maria, yet his tweets withstood any criticism: “Puerto Rico made much more money than Texas and Florida combined, but his government did not. He can do nothing right, the place is a mess, nothing works, ”he tweeted in 2019.

• Funds from the Trump Administration for Puerto Rico will be used to rebuild the electricity system and public schools

But a report from the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security disagreed with him, stating that “FEMA cannot guarantee that basic supplies are provided to survivors of the Puerto Rico disaster as needed to sustain life and relieve suffering as part of their mission of response and recovery.

According to the report released at the end of September, only 37% of the water and 45% of the meals reached distribution centers because the agency mishandled the process, thus confirming what Puerto Ricans denounced for a long time.

The entire relief operation, with thousands of lives at stake, was a complete disaster.

By claiming to be "the best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico," Trump deliberately ignores the well-documented history of disdain he has shown for the island and its people.

In 2019 he boasted: “Puerto Rico is one of the most corrupt places in the world.

Their political system is broken and their politicians are incompetent or corrupt. '

The president is now in a difficult situation with this segment of the electorate and needs to invent new tricks to save any chance of being re-elected.

"As you move through Central Florida, so does the road to the White House," wrote former Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in an opinion piece published in The Orlando Sentinel in August.

"Central Florida has been decisive for all Republican presidential candidates since 1992. In every election in which the Republican presidential candidate wins 50% or more of a dozen key Central Florida counties, the state and the presidency win."

These words carried a dire warning for the Trump campaign.

Ros-Lehtinen, a distinguished politician in the Cuban community in Florida, knows a thing or two about politics in the state.

Citing a recent study by the James Madison Institute, which revealed that openness to Puerto Rican statehood is the issue that moves the votes for Central Floridians of Puerto Rican descent, he points out the obvious.

“My party, the Republican Party, cannot win in Florida without winning in Central Florida.

And we can no longer win Central Florida without having a sufficiently high percentage of this vote from the Puerto Rican 'diaspora', "he wrote in the op-ed.

“None of this means that a candidate must endorse Puerto Rican statehood to win Central Florida.

However, it absolutely requires that a candidate (especially a Republican one) be open and respectful of this aspiration, "he argued.

Accomplishing this with such an unpredictable and racist candidate will be a formidable challenge for the Republican Party.

Speaking to Fox News last month, the president resisted any endorsement of statehood for Puerto Rico, dismissing the controversial issue saying that "many Puerto Ricans don't want statehood."

Referring to rumors of a plan by Democrats to offer Washington statehood, as well as to increase its number of Senate seats, he added "what would the flag look like?"

Given his record of inconsistencies and his disregard for Puerto Ricans, Trump has no viable options to attract Puerto Rican voters in the I-4 Corridor to his side.

They may well be the key to Trump's luck.

Elections 2020 United States