A New Day in the State of Puerto Rico
Corry, John
A NEW DAY IN THE STATE OF While Newt Gingrich and Frank Luntz toy with statehood for the island, its real business centers on its Democratic governor who is trying to put a Republican newspaper...
...If Puerto Ricans were granted self-determination by a Republican Congress, Mexican-Americans in California, and Cuban-Americans in Florida presumably would all be grateful...
...it is only an attempt by the "rich and powerful" Ferres to flout Puerto Rican law by claiming that "honest and devoted public officials are carrying out a vendetta against them...
...The government promotes itself...
...The U.S...
...They said they often had campaigned for Democrats on the U.S...
...Apparently it made a grave mistake last year when it decided to look more closely than it had before at government financial practices...
...The commonwealth, of course, is paying Rossello's legal bills...
...Recall the House vote in March on the U.S.-Puerto Rico Political Status Act as an example...
...But the 43 were enough for Luis Ferre, and in the gallery he was jubilant...
...We may assume they were acting in concert...
...It buys ads to tell people how good it is," says Hector Davila, a very knowledgeable Puerto Rican reporter...
...Meanwhile, a disproportionate part of the government spending—some $70 million a year, according to the official figures—is spent on advertising...
...Former Gov...
...If the lower courts rule against him, Rossello says, he will take his case all the way to the top...
...Supreme Court may one day have to decide...
...There is an element of class warfare in the governor's defense, and a suggestion of politics, as JOHN CORRY is The American Spectator's senior correspondent...
...The House bill, which the congressional Democrats overwhelmingly had supported, had been written in a way that favored statehood...
...Republicans, meanwhile, deserted their leadership...
...Ferre believes passionately in statehood, and he urged them to vote for the bill...
...El Nuevo Dia filed suit last December, charging Rossello and seven of his subordinates with violating its right to free expression...
...People of Bill Clinton's do not like to rat on friends and acquaintances when everyone lives near one another...
...Rossello, who this year became chairman of the Democratic Governors' Association, shows no sign of backing down, however, and he has his lawyers, too...
...Rossello's aides said later that he did not like the picture of him that accompanied the article, either...
...The governor, in turn, is having a snit, and making threatening gestures...
...Certainly the story did not accuse him of any financial improprieties...
...B ut return now to the dispute between El Nuevo Dia and Governor Rossello...
...None displayed the panache, though, of Carlos Romero-Barcello, Puerto Rico's non-voting delegate to the House...
...It involves some of the same people who took part in the congressional battle, but while that was convoluted, this is clean cut...
...His father, the 94-year-old Luis Ferre, bought El Nuevo Dia in tsi44, when it was called El Dia, and was its publisher until he was elected governor of Puerto Rico in 1968...
...Rafael Hernandez Colon and William Miranda Mann, chairman of the island's Democratic Party, were two of the letter's signers...
...Can an elected official take economic reprisals against a newspaper because he just doesn't like what it says...
...It told the Puerto Rican Cement Company, which is controlled by El Dia, Inc., and various members of the Ferre family, that it was mislabeling its bags of cement...
...Rossello is behaving badly...
...The American Spectator • May /998 37...
...They did, and they say he told them the "situation" would improve if the newspaper assigned a different reporter to cover the governor...
...The bill passed 209 to 208, but only at the last minute, when Earl Pomeroy, a North Dakota Democrat, after huddling with Barcello, went from a no to a yes...
...Other unfortunate things are happening to it, too...
...Pedro Rossello for trying, more or less, to put it out of business...
...Some background first: Puerto Rico, remember, is an island, and people on islands get to know one another, or know about one another, more easily than people in larger places...
...JOHN CORRY San Juan, Puerto Rico El Nuevo Dia, circulation zzo,000 or thereabouts, is published 363 days a year (missing only Christmas and New Year's), and is the oldest and largest newspaper in Puerto Rico...
...The disaffected Puerto Rican Democrats, however, wanted the island to remain a commonwealth...
...The cement was made, in part, with an imported material called clinker, and because it was, the agency said, the bags should have included a warning that said the cement was not made in Puerto Rico or the United States...
...a precedent had been set...
...The letter accused them of selling out Puerto Rico...
...Shortly afterwards, El Nuevo Dia's co-editors say, Rossello's press secretary asked them to meet with him at a San Juan hotel...
...Think of Bill Clinton's Arkansas as if it were ringed by white beaches and a lovely blue-green sea...
...El Nuevo Dia is now forfeiting about $5oo,00 each month in lost advertising revenue...
...Bruce Sanford, a prominent Washington lawyer who specializes in First Amendment issues, is representing it in court, and it is appropriate to hope that he and the newspaper will win...
...Actually pollster Frank Luntz pretty much had promised that in his zzz-page memo to Republican leaders...
...It's a way of avoiding accountability...
...But then came the stories in the newspaper, and the Planning Board decided there really were environmental problems...
...In March, it ran stories on government deficits, fraud in the Puerto Rican Transportation Department, and, most notably, corruption in the government-owned telephone company...
...You have demonstrated to us," their letter said, "that loyalty in the Democratic Party is not a two-way street...
...The vote on the bill was sure to be close, and it was expected that Rossello, as governor, would show up in Washington to lobby...
...he was practicing his freedom of expression...
...well...
...The first edition goes out all over the island, and the second edition is for metropolitan San Juan...
...On the day of the vote, he was on vacation 34 May 1998 • The American Spectator from the newspaper...
...He recalled that Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush had all supported statehood...
...Last year in February, it reported that the Puerto Rican Land Authority was selling huge tracts of property, and then squandering the proceeds...
...Newt Gingrich and other conservatives backed the bill...
...The paper is very much a family affair, and very much a part of Puerto Rican life, and now it is suing Gov...
...He is also trying to turn the First Amendment inside out...
...A NEW DAY IN THE STATE OF While Newt Gingrich and Frank Luntz toy with statehood for the island, its real business centers on its Democratic governor who is trying to put a Republican newspaper out of business...
...In other words, it decided to follow the money...
...mainland, but that it seemed unlikely they would ever do it again...
...The island suffers from statism...
...The usual environmental studies followed, and two years later the Planning Board gave its permission to build on the site...
...Democrat Barcello, among his other efforts, wrote an essay for the commentary section in the Washington Times: "Manifest destiny" was calling, it said, while passions "beat in breasts"—"People on the island are stirring and yearning for the sweet breath of equality that cannot be found while wallowing in the mud puddle of colonialism...
...A brother and sister are the paper's co-editors, and their father is the publisher...
...At issue was the bill to allow Puerto Rico to hold a plebiscite on whether it should remain a commonwealth, try to become a state, or declare its independence...
...It ordered a stop to construction, and said it would hold an administrative hearing on whether it would be allowed to resume...
...The company's egregious failure to label the bags properly, the agency also said, could lead to fines of $io,000 a day for as long as the mislabeling continued...
...The suit brought against him by El Nuevo Dia, or El Dia, Inc., its corporate name, had its genesis when eighteen government agencies, in what clearly was a political reprisal, withdrew their advertising 36 May 1998 • The American Spectator meetings with congressmen and federal officials, his office said he had the flu, when actually he had a urinary infection...
...A small step had been taken toward statehood, and even if Republicans really did want to wallow in the mud puddle of colonialism, their party still would register a big gain in Puerto Rico...
...Eleven days after that, the Consumer Affairs agency was heard from as well...
...One of the hired guns was Harold M. Ickes...
...Then, the week after that, under the headline "Enter the Renewal and the Controversy," it ran a story about the first 3.00 days of Rossello's second term in office...
...His lawyers may argue then, as they are arguing now, that the newspaper's suit has no merit...
...All had advertised routinely in El Nuevo Dia before, and although Rossello would insist the advertising was withdrawn because it was no longer cost-effective, he has not been persuasive...
...the congressmen still seemed confused...
...Indeed he and his subordinates are now being represented by eleven law firms...
...They also say he suggested that if coverage of the government in general became more favorable, the government would stop applying pressure to the cement company and to El Nuevo Dia...
...Thus, two weeks after the vote, the Popular Democratic Party of Puerto Rico, most of whose members are Democrats, published an open letter to congressional Democrats in Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper...
...Luis Ferre, the family patriarch, founded the Republican Party in Puerto Rico...
...In 1993, the cement company, through a subsidiary, had sought the approval of the Puerto Rico Planning Board for its plan to build housing units in the Vega Alta region in the interior of the island...
...The story said the loo days had been marred by the financial malpractices...
...Ground was broken, and construction begun...
...Then he turned it over to his son...
...Meanwhile, some thirty public relations firms also were urging congressmen to vote yes, although mostly they lobbied the Democrats...
...But no matter...
...The principal one is Vemer, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand, which also employs Bob Dole, and it has prepared an interesting defense: If, in fact, the governor withdrew advertising from El Nuevo Dia, he was only exercising his First Amendment rights...
...they would enroll en masse in the Grand Old Party...
...A wisp of low comedy arises here, but the issue is deadly serious...
...On the other hand, Luntz also works regularly for Democrat Rossello, and that may have left him at sea...
...Politicians in Washington get headaches when they try to sort them out...
...Most of the officials against whom the Ferres are supposedly carrying out their vendetta seem to be Democrats, too...
...But Luis Ferre, 94, and courtly and gracious even in a wheel-chair, came to Washington and worked the Republican congressmen...
...They had a similar meeting, the editors say, with Rossello's chief of staff...
...A clubbish atmosphere develops among the upper classes, and social, political, and economic connections are formed in tight circles...
...Arkansas as if it were ringed by white beaches and a lovely bluegreen sea...
...When Rossello, a pediatrician before he went into politics, ran for governor he did so as a Republican, but after he was elected, he said he was a Democrat...
...The eighteen government agencies that withdrew their advertising from El Nuevo Dia all did so the day after the ioo days story was published...
...In their anger, some of them are now talking about becoming Republicans...
...The possibility of bad things happening then would be endless...
...It also said that "in terms of the legislation needed to carry out the government's program, there is not much to show for these first loo days...
...And on, and on, with more acts of retaliation, some small and some sweeping...
...Apparently this annoyed him...
...As nasty journalism goes, however, this was not much, and personal references to Rossello were muted...
...Imagine, too, that the politicians who ran the state also ran the economy, or at least a very large part of it, and that they could spend millions each year promoting themselves and the good things they were doing...
...In the beginning, ten years ago, the advertising operation was a small hyperactive baby, and now it's a full-grown criminal...
...This in itself is not bad, although there Think is always a possibility for mischief...
...Only 43 supported the bill, while r77 voted against it...
...The bill was more controversial than it seemed, however, and Rossello was taking no chances...
...things would not work out the way they had predicted...
...And as time has gone on he has looked increasingly foolish...
...So much, then, for the Democratic lobbyists, not to mention Frank Luntz...
...And so, Puerto Rico, where government is the largest employer, and commonwealth and municipal spending makes up about one-third of the island's payroll...
...Misconduct may be tolerated when it should not be...
...It did note, though, that after Rossello had canceled in Barbados...
...A Hispanic is a Hispanic is a Hispanic, and apparently they all think alike...
...Any decent investigative reporter would have lots to do to uncover them...
...In April, it reported that Rossello's chief of staff was steering insurance contracts to a broker associated with his brother-in-law...
...Party affiliation in Puerto Rico is confusing, however, and issues grow murky...
Vol. 31 • May 1998 • No. 5
