A lot of us have been assuming that the Puerto Rico Democratic primary is winner-take-all, and thus a potential ace in the hole for Hillary Clinton. But is the delegation legally required to be winner-take-all, or is that just a practical consequence of traditional practice? I ask because Michael Barone's update to the post that first focused attention on this issue seems to suggest that it's the latter and that will not hold this time. Here is what Barone originally wrote:
Democratic delegates are supposed to be allocated by proportional representation. But that notion is alien to highly competitive Puerto Rican politics. In practice, the dominant figure in Puerto Rico identifying with the Democratic Party has seen to it that his faction gets all the territory’s delegates. This was true of Govs. Carlos Romero Barcelo and Pedro Rosello of the New Progressive Party (PNP) as well as Gov. Rafael Hernandez Colon of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD). PPD politicians almost always identify with mainland Democrats (an exception was Sila Calderón, governor from 2000 to 2004, who identified with neither party and concentrated, successfully, on persuading Congress and the Bush administration to close the artillery range on Vieques Island). It’s not clear to me at this distance whether the current governor, Aníbal Acevedo of the PPD, will have similar clout. He’s at odds with Rosello, and the legislature is in the hands of the PNP. But if Acevedo doesn’t determine who gets Puerto Rico’s 63 votes, someone else will. And they aren’t likely to be proportionately distributed.
And here is the update he posted yesterday:
Puerto Rico's Governor Anibal Acevedo-Vila has endorsed Barack Obama for president. This obviously reduces toward zero the chance that Puerto Rico will produce a unanimous delegation for Hillary Clinton. Other Puerto Rico politicians of Acevedo-Vila's Popular Democratic Party and the opposition New Progressive Party have been seen as leaning to Clinton; it will be interesting to see where they end up.
Comments open.
This is the problem with the little echo chamber that is political media (internet included). They convince themself something is true and then act shocked as if the world has changed when it turns out thier assumption - which was easily verifable - are false.
All they had to do was actually read the rules (particularly section 8C, 13 and 20:2-3) and they would know that Puerto Rico is bound by the same allocation as every other State and Territory.