García Padilla Will Not Run Again for Governor of Puerto Rico

Dec 12, 2015
4:58 PM

UPDATE, December 14, 2015, at approximately 4:05pmET: García Padilla confirmed his decision to not seek re-election.

This is the December 14 video of García Padilla’s announcement:

ORIGINAL STORY

This afternoon Caribbean Business reported via sources that Alejandro García Padilla, the current governor of Puerto Rico, will not seek a second term and will announce his intentions tomorrow to the island in a message he recorded yesterday:

Alejandro Garcia Padilla (Photo via US Dept of Labor)

Alejandro Garcia Padilla (Photo via US Dept of Labor)

While the sources were not able to elaborate on the reasons García Padilla will give for not running again, these are expected to run the gamut from issues such as a lack of support from the Popular Democratic Party’s (PDP) legislative majority for his economic measures to the toll the governor’s office has exacted due to the estrangement from his family. It is expected he will emphasize the need to concentrate all his energy and efforts on working with the U.S. Congress to develop the solutions to address Puerto Rico’s fiscal crisis.

In previous public statements, he has condemned other politicians for being “more attentive to electoral results than to searching for solutions to our fiscal crisis.”

With García Padilla most likely out of the race, former Secretary of State David Bernier’s candidacy comes to the fore.

In the last few weeks, there was rampant speculation that García Padilla, a Democrat and the leader of the island’s pro-commonwealth part, would not make a decision unless he had a better sense of where Congress would stand on federal action to aid the island’s debt problems. Even though there was some movement on this front in Washington a few days ago, it appears that Congress won’t move on anything regarding Puerto Rico until the start of next year.