Pedro Juan Rosselló González (Latin American Spanish: [roseˈʝo]; born April 5, 1944) is a Puerto Rican physician and politician who served two consecutive terms as the seventh democratically elected governor of Puerto Rico from 1993 to 2001. Rosselló was president of the New Progressive Party (PNP) from 1991 to 1999 and 2003 to 2008. He was also a member of the Senate of Puerto Rico for the district of Arecibo from 2005 to 2008. His son, Ricardo, was governor of Puerto Rico from 2017 to 2019.
In 1988, Rosselló ran for Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico, but lost to Jaime Fuster. From 1990 to 1991, he successfully challenged former Governor Carlos Romero Barceló for the presidency of the New Progressive Party (PNP). As governor from 1992 to 2001, he served as president of the Council of State Governments, and chairman of the Southern Governors' Association and the Democratic Governors Association.
In 2003, Rosselló won the PNP gubernatorial nomination for the 2004 general elections against PNP President Carlos Pesquera, but lost the governorship to Anibal Acevedo Vilá by a disputed razor-thin margin. From 2005 to 2008, Rosselló filled a vacant seat left in the Senate of Puerto Rico from the district of Arecibo. As a senator, he unsuccessfully tried to replace Kenneth McClintock as the Senate President. Rosselló lost the PNP gubernatorial nomination for the 2008 general elections to Resident Commissioner Luis Fortuño, who was elected governor. During the governorship of his son Ricardo from 2017 to 2019, he served as a shadow member to the United States House of Representatives from Puerto Rico.
Rosselló González was born in San Juan on April 5, 1944, to Juan Antonio Rosselló Matanzo (1913–2001) and Iris M. González Paz (1919–2012). Rosselló's paternal grandfather Pedro Juan Rosselló Batle migrated in 1902 at the age of 23 from Lloseta, Mallorca, in the Balearic Islands, Spain; his brother Juan had also left for Puerto Rico a year earlier.
After completing his elementary and secondary education at Academia Santa Teresita and Academia del Perpetuo Socorro, both located in San Juan, Rosselló moved to the mainland United States to attend college. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree, magna cum laude at the University of Notre Dame in 1966, as well as several academic and athletic distinctions. After graduation, he continued his studies in medicine at Yale University, which he completed in 1970, also graduating Magna Cum Laude. Later he specialized in general and pediatric surgery at Harvard University. Following his residency at Harvard, he practiced medicine in Puerto Rico while also attending the University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences Campus where he earned a master's degree in Public Health (MPH) in 1981 (also graduating Magna Cum Laude). In 2011, he began studying toward a Doctor of Education in Education Leadership from the University of Turabo, graduating in 2015. During his college years, Rosselló became an avid tennis player that led him to be named the captain of Notre Dame's Men's tennis team, a P.R. 5-time-Mens-Champion, and also to play for Puerto Rico's team in regional championships, including the Central American and Caribbean Games. He was inducted into the Puerto Rico Tennis Hall of Fame in 2004.
Rosselló started his professional career alternating as an instructor at Harvard Medical School and as an assistant professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences Campus, where he would later become an associate professor.
He became chief of pediatric surgery and later chief surgeon at the University of Puerto Rico Children's Hospital. In 1985, Rosselló was named Health Services Director for the city of San Juan by then Mayor Baltasar Corrada del Río.
Rosselló began his political career in 1988 when he ran for the office of Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico, (the island's non-voting observer/representative in the United States Congress) losing to incumbent Jaime Fuster of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD). Nevertheless, he was the candidate from the New Progressive Party (PNP) for whom the most votes were cast in the 1988 elections. This positioned him well to become the party's next leader.
After leading a "Statehood Crusade" throughout the islands of Puerto Rico, in 1991 he became president of the PNP, successfully leading an opposition to a referendum sponsored by the then Puerto Rico's Governor Rafael Hernández Colón. In 1992 he successfully ran for Governor of Puerto Rico, defeating Victoria Muñoz Mendoza of the PPD.
As governor, Rosselló launched an anti-crime campaign known as "Mano Dura Contra el Crimen" (literally, "Strong hand against crime") in which the Puerto Rico National Guard was used to assist state police in deterring the ever-increasing crime wave that had begun in the late 1980s. This crime-fighting initiative supposedly managed to reduce violent crimes in half by the time he left office in Jan. 2001, but the figures are disputed due to poor recordkeeping and extensive juking of crime statistics by Puerto Rican police. The U.S. Department of Justice would document these problems with Puerto Rico's police force in a 2011 report. There were also widespread incidents of police brutality, as Rosselló and Police Superintendent Pedro Toledo aggressively deployed riot police against political protests. These protests arose over litany of controversies that marred Rosselló's government, including the privatization of the island's utilities, massive cost overruns and contract disputes on development projects, and several corruption scandals involving top cabinet officials. Among the officials convicted was Edison Misla Aldarondo, who served as speaker of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives during Rosselló's administration. In January 2003, a federal jury convicted Misla Aldarondo of extortion, money laundering and obstruction of justice arising from his use of political influence to assist investors seeking to purchase a government-owned hospital. He was sentenced to 71 months in prison and three years of supervised release, fined $12,500 and ordered to forfeit $147,400. The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld his conviction and sentence in 2007. After Rosselló left office, crime rates either returned to pre-Mano Dura levels or successive governments simply reported more accurate crime statistics. Violent crime declined by a similar extent across the US during that period, but Puerto Rico's crime rate blew past pre-Rosselló levels throughout the 2000s and 2010s. He also worked to eradicate drug traffic in Puerto Rico Publics School on his campaign "Zona Libre de Drogas" (Drug-Free Zone). The Rosselló government was never able to address the extensive penetration by narcotraffickers of the police and local government, and by 2010 Puerto Rico had one of the highest gun homicide rates in the world, a figure largely driven by drug crime. His administration was also characterized for investing in large-scale, controversial infrastructure projects which included a train system, dubbed Tren Urbano, and a new convention center in San Juan, now officially named the Pedro Rosselló Convention Center. His policies also included a push towards reducing the size of government and taking government out of areas in which it should not act as a direct competitor of the private sector. His administration reduced the unemployment to less than 11% in 2000 creating thousands of jobs during his 8 years of government. Most of these government and private sector jobs disappeared in the 2000s as the island's debt problem, largely unaddressed during Rosselló's administration, spiraled out of control and forced later governments to purge civil service rolls and resort to regressive tax measures to raise revenue. Some other large-scale infrastructure projects were the Coliseum of Puerto Rico, the Museum of Art of Puerto Rico, Highway 66, and the SuperAcueducto.
Under his administration, a healthcare reform bill was approved. Rosselló's Health Reform made Puerto Rico one of the few jurisdictions in the entire world to have had virtually 100% of its population covered by health insurance. Additionally, under this Reform, Puerto Rico became the only jurisdiction in the US to have nearly 100% of its infants under the age of 2 vaccinated. He led two campaigns for Puerto Rican statehood in 1993 and 1998 in which locally enacted plebiscites were held to consult the Puerto Rican electorate on the political status with the United States. He supported the congressional Young Bill, which sought to carry out a referendum in Puerto Rico to define the political status of the island. However, the bill died in committee in the Senate of the United States. Nevertheless, Rosselló carried out a non-binding plebiscite in 1998 which gave electors four options and a fifth None of the Above column. The opposing Popular Democratic Party led a campaign to boycott the plebiscite and called the electorate to vote for the None of the Above column. The boycott was successful, as the None of the Above column – which did not represent any kind support for any status option – garnered 50.3% of the total votes.