How the GOP came to represent the U.S. territories

How race and identity are shaping politics, policy and power.

Mar 07, 2023 View in browser   By Jesús A. Rodríguez With help from Brakkton Booker, Jesse Naranjo, Ella Creamer, Rishika Dugyala and Teresa Wiltz Del. James Moylan (R-Guam) gives an interview in his office, Feb. 7, 2023, on Capitol Hill. | POLITICO illustration/Francis Chung/POLITICO What’s good, mi gente! This week, the White House is planning to extend Temporary Protected Status for Nicaraguan immigrants, POLITICO uncovers an unknown domestic surveillance program within the federal government, and President Joe Biden drafts New York City Mayor Eric Adams to ride the national TV circuit. Even though he just got to Congress, there’s one thing James Moylan, the Republican delegate from Guam, would love to do: take his colleagues to visit his island, some 6,000 miles west of California in the Pacific Ocean. “When you’re on the island, it’s easier for my colleagues to understand the importance of Guam,” he told The Recast. “When you fly that far to get to Guam, you realize it’s closer to get to China than it is to get back home to the continental U.S.” Speaking from his Capitol Hill office, which in early February still had barren walls as he moved in, Moylan struck a hopeful tone: that his tenure would begin a new era in Congress in which territories like Guam would no longer be ignored. For 150 years, the Americans living in the territories — 98 percent of whom are racial or ethnic minorities — have had a complicated relationship with the federal government: Although the more than 3.5 million people who live there are Americans, they can’t vote for president. Not all of them are citizens by birth. They have no senators, and their representatives in Congress cannot vote on legislation when it reaches the House floor. They don’t receive full Social Security benefits even though they pay into the system like their counterparts on the mainland. Del. James Moylan (R-Guam) is seen in his office on Capitol Hill Feb. 7, 2023. | Francis Chung/POLITICO But now, thanks to Moylan, three out of five members of the territorial caucus — that is, the congressional delegates of Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands and the Virgin Islands — are Republicans. It’s the first time in history that Republicans represent a majority of the territories.   Was The Recast forwarded to you by a friend? Don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter here. You'll get a twice-weekly breakdown of how race and identity are the DNA of American politics and policy.   Moylan is joining two other Republican colleagues in Congress from the territories: Puerto Rico’s Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González-Colón and American Samoa’s Del. Aumua Radewagen. After he flipped his seat by a 5-point margin, news outlets began to read in the tea leaves of his election results the much-rumored red wave that failed to materialize in the 2022 midterms. Slim though it may be, however, a Republican majority is a majority — and Moylan plans to capitalize on it. He made it a point to lobby Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) during freshman orientation for an appointment on the coveted House Armed Services Committee. Now that he’s on the panel, he’s urging Washington to counteract China’s military presence by investing in Guam’s military installations as a bulwark. “The further away we can deter the [Chinese Communist] Party in the Indo-Pacific area, the better it is for the nation,” Moylan told The Recast. “This is a good time, as a Republican in a Republican majority, and sitting on committees, [to ensure] that the voice of our island is heard.” James Moylan, a Republican delegate-elect to the U.S House of Representatives from Guam, arrives at an orientation meeting at the U.S. Capitol, Nov. 14, 2022. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images Already, he and González-Colón have partnered to introduce a bill that would extend Supplemental Security Income benefits to the residents of four of the territories. And a local outlet in American Samoa reported that Radewagen cast a tie-breaking vote within her caucus to elect House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (Minn.), an example of how non-voting delegates can influence internal party dynamics. But Del. Stacey Plaskett, a Democrat who was elected to represent the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2014, says Democratic majorities are much more inclusive of territorial delegates than Republican ones, although she notes she’s been able to work with Republicans on major issues like reducing regulations and hurricane relief. “Members of Congress who’ve been around a long time say that in the 1970s, there was an agreement by both Republicans and Democrats that a member of the territory could never sit on Ways and Means,” Plaskett told The Recast, because it would have been “way too much power for someone from a territory.” But, she notes, “it’s the Democrats who put me on Ways and Means and Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries who put me in charge of [the Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government] or put me on the Intelligence Committee.” Plaskett also held an influential post as a manager during the second impeachment of President Donald Trump. Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.) questions IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig as he testifies before the House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee, March 17, 2022, on Capitol Hill. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images Are the territories becoming more Republican? If you ask González-Colón, Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner and the former chair of the Puerto Rico Republican Party, the answer is yes. She says Puerto Ricans, who make up the greatest share of the territorial population with 3.2 million residents, have been dissatisfied with inflation and the island’s lack of energy independence and care deeply about the fight against drug and human trafficking. Residents from other territories, she said, will find common cause in many of those issues. “We are our nation’s Caribbean border — it’s not just the frontier with Mexico,” she said. “It’s imperative that we confront the threats posed by criminal drug trafficking organizations seeking to enter our nation through our maritime borders.” But voters in the territories also tend to favor candidates with long track records of service, electing them to office term after term based on their personal resumes rather than their party affiliation. And despite the fact that the territorial seats are now majority-Republican in a Republican majority, it might take a while for their political power to consolidate; González-Colón admits that her SSI bill will be tough to pass. Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González-Colón holds up an American flag with 51 stars at a news conference Oct. 29, 2019, on Capitol Hill, | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo “I know it's going to be an uphill battle, because of the cost of it,” she notes. The existence of a majority-Republican territorial caucus at least dashes the stereotype that all U.S. citizens who live in the territories lean Democratic. While there is scant polling available that comprehensively measures the political stances of the U.S. territories, some Republicans have warned for years that Democrats want to grant Puerto Rico statehood because its residents would reliably vote Democratic, giving the party a political edge. The claim resurfaced late last year while Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was stumping for Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker. During a rally, Graham asked the crowd: “Does anybody need D.C. and Puerto Rico to be a state?” “No!” the crowd shouted back. “That dilutes our power,” Graham said. González-Colón says members of her own party who make these comments need to be educated, and that the GOP should more vigorously support Puerto Rican statehood. “They don’t even see what’s going on right now. You get a lot of conservatives — even more than in many other states — so I think that’s a wrong perception of the island,” she said. “They don’t know us. They don’t have any data.” Statehood is, unsurprisingly, a thorny issue in the territories — even though it would confer equal rights and benefits to their residents. Although Congress has little appetite to admit more states to the union anytime soon, local leaders often pose the question to the territories in plebiscites or unofficial polls. Critics of statehood often argue that it would formalize a colonial framework imposed by the United States during its imperial wars. In Puerto Rico, a majority of voters who turned out for a plebiscite conducted in 2020 said they favored statehood. But opponents have pointed out that the referendum was not binding, which could have driven turnout down, and the yes-or-no format presented voters with no other alternative arrangements. (In recent years, an independence movement on the island has gained momentum.) In the Virgin Islands, a similar referendum took place at the same time, with 72 percent of residents voting to start a constitutional convention to adopt a territorial constitution, a first step toward statehood. Guam’s Moylan favors statehood, and believes his Republican colleagues in Congress want to listen, but some local residents like Julian Janssen, chapter leader of the Progressive Democrats of Guam, think it should be up to the local Chamorro people to decide the status of the island. Given all these dynamics, there may only be one certain takeaway for those trying to understand the politics of the U.S. territories. As Plaskett put it: “We’re obviously not a monolithic, single-minded people.” We’ll be keeping tabs on whether this red contingent holds — and whether it translates to increased attention and political power for the territories. All the best, The Recast Team   THE TIME CAPSULE Tear gas fumes fill the air as state troopers, ordered by Gov. George Wallace, break up a demonstration march March 7, 1965, in Selma, Ala., on what is known as Bloody Sunday. | AP Photo Today marks 58 years since the events of “Bloody Sunday,” in which Alabama state troopers and their newly deputized posse of white men from surrounding Dallas County ruthlessly assaulted civil rights protesters marching from Selma to Montgomery. The Recast’s Jesse Naranjo has this remembrance. On March 7, 1965, about 600 demonstrators embarked from Brown Chapel AME Church en route to the state capital, marching silently in support of voting rights for African Americans and to commemorate the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a civil rights activist and Baptist deacon who was killed by state troopers weeks earlier following a demonstration. They were led by John Lewis, the late congressman and civil rights icon who was then leading the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s voter registration efforts, and Hosea Williams, another civil rights leader affiliated with the Southern Christian Leadership Council. When the marchers reached the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the outskirts of Selma, they encountered a wall of troopers and deputies blocking their path. The officers proceeded to shove protesters, charge them on horseback, beat them with nightsticks and tear gas them. Dozens were injured and 17 were hospitalized. A 14-year-old girl was beaten so brutally she required 37 stitches on her head and Lewis suffered a skull fracture, the marks from which stayed with him for the rest of his life. State troopers beat the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's John Lewis, a future member of Congress, March 7, 1965, in Selma, Ala. | AP Photo Images and video of the violence appeared on newspaper front pages and on news programs, stunning the nation. President Lyndon B. Johnson issued a statement deploring the violence and promised to send a voting rights bill to Congress in short order. The president was inundated with messages urging federal action from labor and civil rights leaders, including baseball legend Jackie Robinson. A telegram from Jackie Robinson to President Lyndon B. Johnson dated March 9, 1965, urges the president to take action in the aftermath of "Bloody Sunday." | The National Archives A few days later, demonstrators, now joined by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., marched again, though they stopped at the foot of the Pettus Bridge and turned around. Later, a group of clergymen who’d joined the march were beaten in Selma by Klansmen, and one, James Reeb, was killed. The president, in a March 15 address to Congress, urged action on voting rights, comparing the events in Selma to those at Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution and at Appomattox during the Civil War. Days later, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was introduced and became law in August of that year. Civil rights leaders, presidents and politicians annually mark the anniversary of Bloody Sunday with a march across the same bridge. Asked to reflect on his experience then compared to the commemoration in 2000, Lewis remarked, “This time when I looked there were women’s faces and there were Black faces among the troopers. And this time when we faced them, they saluted.”   ICYMI @ POLITICO Sheyann Webb-Christburg poses for a portrait on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. on March 3, 2023. | Sydney A. Foster for POLITICO Witness to History — Sheyann Webb-Christburg was a 9-year-old girl when she was doused with tear gas at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. Fifty-eight years later, she is one of a handful of people who is still alive to tell the history of that day, POLITICO’s Eugene Daniels reports. The Eye in Your Doorbell — More than 10 million Americans own Ring video doorbells. With police gaining increased access to the surveillance footage of the Amazon product, a new panopticon seems to be emerging, our Alfred Ng reports. A Bad Trip? — Over the past five years, Oklahoma has transformed into a free-market weed utopia. But there are signs of a fledgling backlash. Read Paul Demko’s dispatch from Tuskegee, Okla., in POLITICO Magazine.   THE RECAST RECOMMENDS Debra Lee’s memoir comes out today. The former CEO of Black Entertainment Television shares the highs and lows of her journey to the top of television. Chris Rock’s special, “Selective Outrage,” made history as Netflix’s first live global event (you can still watch if you missed it). And yes, Slapgate is addressed. This image released by Netflix shows Chris Rock during a performance his comedy special "Chris Rock: Selective Outrage" at the Hippodrome Theater in Baltimore, Md. | Kirill Bichutsky/Netflix via AP At long last: You can stream De La Soul now. The new Netflix doc “Split at the Root” presents a close-up of the U.S. immigration system, following a mother separated from her sons at the border. Kali Uchis’ “Red Moon in Venus” is studded with enchantingly soft R&B tracks about love and heartbreak. Spyro and Tiwa Savage make for an afrobeats dream team on a remixed “Who is your Guy?” TikTok of the Day: TK   Follow us on Twitter Brakkton Booker @brakktonbooker Rishika Dugyala @rishikadugyala Teresa Wiltz @teresawiltz Jesús Rodríguez @jesusrodriguezb Jesse Naranjo @jesselnaranjo   Follow us

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