NY Democratic Socialist Claire Valdez wants Puerto Rico’s debt canceled, oversight board gone

Democratic congressional nominee Claire Valdez says she wants Puerto Rico’s public debt canceled and the federal board that oversees the island’s finances abolished, framing the push as part of a broader effort to end what she calls the island’s colonial status.

Ms. Valdez, the Democratic Socialists of America-backed nominee for New York’s 7th Congressional District, laid out the positions in an interview with El Diario NY published Monday. She is set to succeed retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez after defeating Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and Queens City Councilwoman Julie Won in the June Democratic primary, taking 59.3% of the vote to Mr. Reynoso’s 33%.

Asked about her strategy toward the 2016 law that created the island’s fiscal oversight board, Ms. Valdez said the effort would take time, but was direct about her goal: “I think the debt should be canceled,” she told the outlet. “An elected board making decisions about … the future of the island is not, in my opinion, a path towards true democracy.”

“I come to this with a decolonial organizing history and lens,” Valdez added. “And so making sure that Puerto Rico has real representation in Congress … until it is no longer a colony is really, really important.”

She argued that an unelected board deciding the island’s future does not reflect democracy, and told El Diario that Puerto Rico’s resources, including its land, should not be used as a military staging ground for operations in Cuba and Venezuela. She also said she approaches the issue from what she described as an anticolonial organizing background, and that securing real congressional representation for the island matters for as long as it remains, in her words, a colony.

The panel Ms. Valdez wants dissolved is the Financial Oversight and Management Board, created under the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, known as PROMESA. According to the board’s own account, it has restructured about 80% of Puerto Rico’s outstanding debt, cutting total liabilities from more than $70 billion to roughly $37 billion, a figure it says will save the island more than $50 billion in debt payments. 

Ms. Valdez’s campaign platform also calls for repealing the Jones Act, which she blames for driving up shipping and grocery costs on the island, and for building a publicly accountable renewable energy system to replace its current private utility contractor. 

The Puerto Rico positions sit alongside a broader left-wing agenda. Ms. Valdez backs abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which she has described as a “fascist agency,” along with Medicare for All and ending U.S. weapons sales and military aid to Israel. She has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza, which she has described as a “genocide,” a position that drew renewed criticism after she marked the Fourth of July with a social media post calling for “liberation from Palestine to Puerto Rico.”