Pedro Pierluisi
Pedro Rafael Pierluisi Urrutia (born April 26, 1959) is a Puerto Rican politician and lawyer currently serving as governor of Puerto Rico. He has previously served as Secretary of Justice, Resident Commissioner, acting Secretary of State, interim governor of Puerto Rico and as private attorney for Puerto Rico's fiscal oversight board under the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act.
Contents
- 1 Early life and education
- 2 Early political career
- 3 U.S. House of Representatives
- 4 Rosselló succession
- 5 2020 elections
- 6 Personal life
- 7 Honors
- 8 See also
- 9 Notes
- 10 References
- 11 External links
Early life and education
Pierluisi was born on April 26, 1959, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. His parents are Jorge Pierluisi Díaz and Doris Urrutia. He attended Colegio Marista Guaynabo in Guaynabo, graduating in 1977. In 1981, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in American History from Tulane University, and later earned a Juris Doctor degree from George Washington University Law School in 1984. He was President of the Puerto Rico Statehood Students *ociation chapter at Tulane University. During his studies at George Washington University, Pierluisi interned at the congressional office of then-Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico Baltasar Corrada del Río.
Early political career
He practiced law in Puerto Rico from 1990 until 1993. In 1993, Governor Pedro Rossello nominated Pierluisi to serve as Puerto Rico's Secretary of Justice. His nomination was unanimously confirmed by the Puerto Rican legislature.
U.S. House of Representatives
See also: 2008 United States House of Representatives election in Puerto RicoOn May 18, 2007, Pierluisi announced his candidacy for Resident Commissioner, Puerto Rico's sole delegate to the United States Congress in the November 2008 elections. He accompanied then current Resident Commissioner and gubernatorial candidate Luis Fortuño in the March 9, 2008 NPP primary ticket.
Pierluisi is a member of the New Progressive Party in Puerto Rico which advocates statehood for the Island territory. While on Capitol Hill, Pierluisi caucused with the House Democratic Caucus.
As Resident Commissioner, Pierluisi introduced H.R. 2499, which sought to provide for a plebiscite to be held in Puerto Rico to determine the island's ultimate political status. The bill was p*ed by the House of Representatives but did not receive a vote in the Senate, and lapsed following the sine die adjournment of the 111th Congress. In a separate bill, H.R. 870, Pierluisi sought to add Puerto Rico to Chapter 9 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code so that the island's government-owned corporations could file for bankruptcy — a privilege they do not enjoy due to the territory's exclusion from the code.
On May 15, 2013, Pierluisi filed H.R. 2000, a bill to admit Puerto Rico as a state.
Rosselló succession
See also: TelegramgateIn late July 2019 the embattled governor, Ricardo Rosselló, nominated Pierluisi to serve as Secretary of State of Puerto Rico. He was additionally sworn into the role as a recess appointment. Rosselló then summoned Puerto Rico's Legislative *embly for them to issue their advice and consent. The House of Representatives approved his nomination 26–21. However, the following day, members of the Puerto Rican Senate announced that action on his nomination would not occur until August 1. When Rosselló resigned on August 2, he declared Pierluisi to be governor although he had not been confirmed by both the House and the Senate as secretary of state, and Pierluisi affirmed Rosselló's declaration. Pierluisi's accession to the governorship was challenged in the courts as being uncons*utional. On August 5, the Puerto Rico Senate filed a lawsuit against his appointment as governor by contending that unless he obtained the Senate's *ent, his governorship was uncons*utional. Two days later, the Puerto Rico Supreme Court ruled that the law that enabled his swearing in was uncons*utional and ordered that the succession take place per Law 7 of 2005.
2020 elections
See also: 2020 Puerto Rico gubernatorial election and Government of Pedro Pierluisi UrrutiaOn August 16, 2020, Pierluisi won the PNP gubernatorial primary race against governor Wanda Vázquez Garced. With 75.6% of voting stations reporting, Pierluisi has won about 57.9% of the votes over Vazquez's 42.1%, clinching the nomination for New Progressive Party. On November 3, 2020, Pierluisi was elected as the Governor of Puerto Rico. He received approximately 32.9% of all the votes, distributed among 6 candidates that ran for office.
On Saturday, January 2, 2021, Pierluisi took the oath of office. At 8:00:a.m., there was a private ceremony in which he took the oath from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Maite Oronoz Rodríguez. This was followed by a public ceremony on the northern side of the Capitol of Puerto Rico, where Pierluisi retook the oath of office publicly and gave his inaugural address.
Personal life
Governor Pierluisi is the father of four adult children and the grandfather of five grandchildren.
His first marriage was to María Eugenia Rojo, with whom he shares his four children. They divorced in the late 1990s. In 2019, after twelve years of marriage, he and his ex-wife María Elena Carrión divorced. The Governor is currently single. Pierluisi's father, Jorge Pierluisi, served as Secretary of Puerto Rico's Housing Department under Gov. Carlos Romero Barceló from 1977 to 1985. His brother, José Jaime Pierluisi, an economic adviser to then governor Pedro Rossello, was shot and killed during a carjacking in 1994.
Honors
- :Spain: Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic
See also
- List of Hispanic Americans in the United States Congress
Notes
References
External links
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Congressman Pedro Pierluisi official U.S. House website
- Pedro Pierluisi for Congress (Spanish) official campaign website
- Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
- Profile at Vote Smart
- Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission