Island Upset

PUERTO RICO

After 28 years of uninterrupted victories, Puerto Rico's ex-Governor Luis Munoz Marin and his Popular Democratic Party found defeat hard to take.

When Luis Alberto Ferre, 64, a wealthy, M. I. T. -trained engineer, defeated the PTJ.P. candidate for the governorship two weeks ago, Munoz waited a week to wish him luck. The 70-year-old statesman also held a post-election press conference to point out the error of Ferre's political ways. Luis Negron Lopez gave out a premature victory statement early on Election Night, when he was 15,000 votes ahead. When final returns showed him to be the loser by a margin of 390,000 to 367,000, Negron sulked for four days before offering Ferre his congratulations.

Ferre's New Progressive Party was founded only last year, but its success was widespread. It won 26 mayoral elections; the P.D.P. had not lost one of the island's 76 municipalities since 1944.

Ferre's party gained a 27-to-24 majority in the House of Representatives, and captured twelve out of 27 Senate seats.

A split in the P.D.P. contributed to its defeat. Outgoing Governor Roberto Sanchez Vilella was Munoz' handpicked successor but ran afoul of the old man -and much of the island's Roman Catholic population--when he divorced his wife of 31 years and married a younger woman. Opposed by Munoz for renomination, Sanchez bolted the P.D.P. to run as a third-party candidate. He pulled 87,000 votes that probably would otherwise have gone to the P.D.P.

A millionaire whose family cement company in 1963 became the first Puerto Rican corporation listed on the New York Stock Exchange, Ferre began campaigning nearly two years ago using slick, up-to-date U.S.-style methods never before tried in Puerto Rico. He spent $35,000 for a 250-page market research study and three polls of voter attitudes. What is more, he evidently benefited from growing support for Puerto Rican statehood. He has long favored statehood, which Mun0z as adamantly opposes because it would mean higher U.S. taxes on Puerto Rico's still developing economy. Ferre campaigned for statehood in a 1967 plebiscite; his cause won a surprisingly high (39%) vote. While he insists that his election was "not a mandate for statehood but a mandate for better government," he favors another plebiscite in 1971.

The Governor-elect's most telling campaign issue, however, seemed to be Mun0z. Ferre charged him with developing "one-man rule in the manner of a Latin American political boss." Even P.D.P. workers seemed to agree that Mun0z, after long service and such distinguished accomplishments as gaining commonwealth status and strengthening the island economy with his much-publicized Operation Bootstrap, had finally become a liability. Said one: "The future of the P.D.P. rests in what we do with Mun0z. If in 1972 he has the same power he enjoys now, we're washed up." Since Munoz can be expected to hang on to whatever power he can as president of the island's Senate, the P.D.P. could be heading for extinction.

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