(Bloomberg) -- Puerto Rico’s Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, a Donald Trump supporter and lifelong Republican, is leading the race for governor, bucking an attempt by superstar Bad Bunny to sway the vote against her.
With 91% of precincts counted, Gonzalez-Colon, a member of the ruling New Progressive Party, was winning 39% of the vote, according to the island’s electoral board. In second place was Juan Dalmau, with the Puerto Rican Independence Party, with 33%.
If Gonzalez-Colon’s victory is confirmed, it would underscore the power of Puerto Rico’s political establishment — and the limitations of celebrity endorsements.
Gonzalez-Colon prevailed despite widespread frustration with corruption and power outages, and even as Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny, a three-time Grammy winner with a multimillion dollar musical empire, endorsed Dalmau. Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, also paid for billboards across San Juan blasting Gonzalez’s party as corrupt.
Gonzalez-Colon, 48, has been Puerto Rico’s non-voting representative to the US Congress since 2016 and is the former chairwoman of the Republican party on the island. She’s also been a staunch advocate of statehood for the US territory of 3.2 million people.
One of her key proposals is to create a watchdog to oversee the private companies that run the island’s power grid, one of the most unreliable in the US. She has also vowed to bring down energy costs and slash government bureaucracy.
Despite Dalmau’s loss, he still made history. It was the first time since Puerto Ricans were given the right to vote for their governor in 1948 that an independent candidate broke the two-party stranglehold.
Jesus Manuel Ortiz, with the Popular Democratic Party, was in third place with 21% of the vote.
Gonzalez-Colon faced headwinds when comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, speaking at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Oct. 27, called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” While she said the comments were “despicable, misguided and revolting,” she never denounced Trump personally.
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