Hernández Rivera leading resident commissioner race with 16% of vote counted
By John McPhaul
With 16 percent of the vote counted at 7:20 p.m on Tuesday, Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González Colón of the New Progressive Party (NPP) was leading the race for governor of Puerto Rico with 38.8% of votes cast as the STAR went to press.
Juan Dalmau Ramírez, the candidate of the alliance between the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) and the Citizen Victory Movement (MVC) was running second with 30.0% of the vote, while Rep. José Manuel Ortiz González, the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, was in third with 24.7% percent. Javier Jiménez Pérez of the Dignity Project was a distant fourth at 6%.
In the race for resident commissioner, Pablo José Hernández Rivera, the PDP candidate, was leading with 47% of votes cast as of press time, with 16% of the vote counted. Sen. William Villafañe Ramos of the NPP was running second at 35%, while Ana Irma Rivera Lassen of the MVC-PIP Alliance was third in the vote count at 8.3%.
Roberto Karlo Velázquez Correa of the PIP and Viviana Rivera, the Dignity Project candidate, were in fourth and fifth place, respectively, with 4.8% and 4.4% of the vote at press time.
In the unofficial vote between the two main U.S. presidential candidates, Democrat Kamala Harris had 75% of the vote at press time, while Republican Donald Trump, the former president, had 24.8%.
What does it say about this election? It clearly sends a message that Puerto Ricans want a change not for statehood even though it was won by a small margin. Juan Dalmau Ramírez is the person who really won, not by the ballot, but by the deep-seated nationalist spirit that all Puerto Ricans have. Times are changing an outside third party did very well. This will be the beginning of a new era for all Puerto Ricans.