Kenneth McClintock
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Kenneth D. McClintock-Hernández (born January 19, 1957) is a politician in Puerto Rico of Puerto Rican and Irish-American descent. He is the current President of the Senate of Puerto Rico whose expulsion from the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico on February 13, 2006 was downgraded to a generic censure by the party's general assembly on August 20, 2006.
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[edit] Early life
Kenneth Davison McClintock-Hernández was born in London, England on January 19, 1957 while his father, George D. McClintock (1925-2001), an architect born in Texas City, Texas, was working for the United States Air Force. His mother, Nívea M. Hernández (1931-2000), born in Puerto Rico, was a retired university professor and a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Puerto Rico. McClintock, along with his brother Steven George McClintock and his sister Elaine M. Montgomery was raised and educated in Puerto Rico.
He graduated from University High School (UHS), where he served as student council president, studied at the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras School of Business Administration, and in 1980 obtained his Juris Doctor degree from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. McClintock never took the bar neither in Louisiana nor Puerto Rico, as his intention was not to be a practicing attorney, but a public servant. He began that public service career, before law school, as the staff director for the Puerto Rico House of Representatives Consumer Affairs Committee. He subsequently served as a legislative assistant to the NPP House delegation, under delegation leaders Jose Granados Navedo, who over a decade later pleaded guilty to various violations of federal laws, the late Angel Viera Martinez and Edison Misla Aldarondo, convicted many years later of federal and state law violations. He also served as an aide to then Senator and current mayor of Guaynabo Hector O'Neill.
McClintock has spent almost all of his adult life working, first as a full-time staffer and subsequently as a legislator, in the Puerto Rico Legislative Assembly. His many critics point out that this background has given him tunnel vision, which prohibits him from seeing the big picture when it comes to the myriad problems that affect the Island. Supporters, however, suggest that his wide participation in Puerto Rico's religious life, community activities and continued contact with students in schools and universities, as well as his weekly radio programs in Spanish and English over the years (his WOSO Radio Speakout weekly program has been hosted by him for over eight years) has kept him accessible and in contact with ordinary people's concerns.
He is married to Maria Elena Batista, director of Sports and Recreation for the municipality of San Juan and a former Olympic swimmer. The McClintock-Batista family have a son, Kevin Davison, born in 1995, and a daughter, Stephanie Marie, born in 1997. They live in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He is an active member of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America's Diocese of Puerto Rico and has served as a delegate to its Diocesan Convention.
[edit] Political career
[edit] Early years
McClintock has, since his teenage years, been involved in politics in one way or another. At the age of 14, McClintock was appointed by President Nixon as delegate to the White House Conference on Youth held from April 18-21, 1971. In 1978, President Carter appointed him to the National Advisory Council for Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
[edit] 1980s
In 1984, the Jaycees recognized his achievements by bestowing on him the Outstanding Young Man of the Year in Journalism Award for his weekly columns in the El Mundo daily newspaper.
He was the Executive Director of the U.S. Democratic Party, chapter of Puerto Rico, from 1984 to 1988 and has attended all eight Democratic Party conventions since 1976 as a delegate or as a staffer. He was a super-delegate to his eighth Convention in 2004 and, as a Democratic National Committeeman, will attend his ninth Democratic National Convention in 2008. Current DNC Chair Howard Dean appointed McClintock to the DNC Rules Committee for the 2005-2008 term.
[edit] 1990s
He was a Municipal Councilman for San Juan from 1990 to 1992 and during his tenure was the author of the municipal ordinance that raised the salaries of Municipal Guards beyond $1,000 USD a month for the first time in Puerto Rican history.
In 1992, he was elected the youngest Senator-at-Large for the 12th Legislature. In November 1996 he was the top vote getter among all New Progressive and Popular Democratic parties senatorial candidates. He was reelected to his fourth term in 2004, nominated by his New Progressive Party caucus as Senate President on November 4, 2004 and formally elected and sworn in for a four-year term as the Senate's 13th President on January 10, 2005.
In 1996, President Clinton appointed McClintock as an at large member of the Democratic Platform Committee, where he was instrumental in drafting the platform plank on Puerto Rico.
During 1999, he was Chairman of the Council of State Governments, the youngest and first Hispanic in that organization's 67-year history. During his terms in CSG leadership, the organization strengthened its international ties, admitting several Canadian provinces as international member jurisdictions, co-sponsoring the foundation of the Parliamentary Conference of the Americas, and co-chairing with CSG President and then Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson a mission to the People's Republic of China. As Chairman, McClintock increased the presence of Hispanics in CSG committees and task forces and helped organize CSG's best attended Annual Meeting ever, held in Quebec City, Canada.
He has authored over 1,000 legislative measures during his over 13 years in the State Legislature, of which over 170 have already become law.
He served as the second President of the Parliamentary Conference of the Americas from 1999 to 2000, a forum that brings together the parliamentary assemblies of the unitary, federal and federated states, regional parliaments and interparliamentary organizations of the Americas. The Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico hosted the General Assembly of COPA in July 2000. He currently serves on the Governing Board of the Council of State Governments, the Executive Committee of the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators, the Executive Committee of the Parliamentary Conference of the Americas and the Board of Directors of The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars, a Washington, DC-based non-profit organization.
[edit] 2000s
Prior to his election as Senate President, he served as Senate Minority Leader from 2001 to 2004 and he chaired the most important committee of the Senate of Puerto Rico: the Committee on Government and Federal Affairs, as well as the Joint Committee for the Córdova-Fernós Congressional Internships Program from 1993 to 2000. The Senate Committees he chaired filed reports that have served as the ground to make radical changes in public policy. The report on the conditions of the companies availed to the tax benefits of the now-defunct Section 936 of the Federal Internal Revenue Code earned for him an interview in ABC's Prime Time Live program and Univision Network. He has testified in diverse hearings of the Congressional Committees, and has been the guest speaker in several universities throughout the United States. He has been interviewed in ABC's Good Morning America, has debated on Fox News Network and has appeared on BBC news programs, as well as on C-SPAN's Washington Journal.
His efforts to promote economic equality to Puerto Rico's consumers by stateside corporations were profiled in a Business Week article in 1998. In 1996, he was appointed by Governor Rosselló as co-chair of the New Progressive Party's Platform Committee, a position to which he was reappointed by the New Progressive Party’s 2000 gubernatorial candidate Carlos I. Pesquera.
In 2004, he chaired the New Progressive Party's Senate Campaign Committee and flipped his party's 9-member minority, of which he served as Minority Leader from 2001 to 2004, into an impressive nearly two-thirds majority in the new Senate in 2005, even though the NPP gubernatorial candidate narrowly lost the election.
[edit] President of the Senate
Since January 10, 2005, Senator McClintock presides the Senate of Puerto Rico. His presidency was in jeopardy during most of that year, as former Governor Pedro Rosselló was sworn in as a member of the Senate on February 13, 2005 and sought the Presidency for the remainder of the term. McClintock was elected to the Puerto Rico Senate Presidency with 23 votes, including 14 of the 17 NPP senators (Sen. McClintock abstained, one seat was vacant and Sen. Norma Burgos abstained in protest for the manner in which the NPP caucus allegedly elected the Senate leadership), and the entire 9-member minority delegation of the Popular Democratic Party, while the Puerto Rico Independence Party senator followed party tradition in abstaining from leadership votes.
Since 2001, Senate rules require a unanimous vote to change the presidency. During his Presidency, he has backed many nominations and many public policy positions of Governor Aníbal Acevedo-Vilá. Some nominations have failed to obtain the Senate's consent, either through outright rejection, deliberate inaction or withdrawal by the Governor following the Senate president's "advice" to do so. He was instrumental in breaking the logjam that led to the end of a a two-week long government shutdown in May, 2006.
Of the seventeen senators that were elected under the New Progressive Party in the 2004 General Elections, five still endorse McClinctock's presidency, thus denying his opponents the unanimity required by Senate Rules II and VI to declare the presidency vacant. As punishment for abandoning him, McClintock stripped eight of the ten senators who supported Rosselló's claim for the Presidency of the chairmanships of Senate committees, leaving a total of ten committees under the leadership of the five senators who still back him and two, the Ethics and the Public Safety committees under the leadership of senators supporting Rosselló. Many Capitol insiders had claimed that this has had the effect of overflowing committees with work and slowing down the process of bills becoming laws. However, when that issue was raised on the floor of the Senate, McClintock ordered an investigation on legislative productivity that statistically demonstrated that committee output was higher during the third legislative session (after committee and chairmanship consolidations) than during the first.
One senator who supports him and came to the NPP expelled from the PDP, former House Majority Leader Jorge De Castro Font was expelled from the New Progressive Party for supposedly being the brain behind McClinctock's strategies to remain Senate President. This sanction was endorsed in a Party state assembly in 2005, for allegedly insulting high officials of the NPP (including its president, Pedro Rosselló), rejecting to comply with majority decisions of the party's state assembly (including support for Rossello's Senate presidency bid), and allegedly making political alliances with the PDP delegation in the Senate. Senator McClintock and four of the other senators who support him had been relieved of party positions for the same reasons.
The party's directorate recommended expelling Sen. McClintock as well as Senate Vice President Orlando Parga on February 13, 2006. On August 20, 2006, however, the party's General Assembly failed to ratify their expulsion, approving instead a generic censure, reflecting the discomfort that the proposed expulsion created among many party members. As a result of his refusal to yield his leadership position in the Senate, he is seen without any political future by those who support Sen. Rossello's bid, including a number of NPP voters who also support Rossello.
On January 16, 2007 the NPP Senate Caucus imposed disciplinary sanctions on two more NPP senators, José Emilio González, Rosselló's fellow senator from the Arecibo district, and Carmelo Ríos of the Bayamón district. The two were the decisive votes to pass a Concurrent Resolution proposing a constitutional amendment that would turn Puerto Rico's bicameral legislature in a unicameral system, an issue not addressed by the party's platform. At the present time, the caucus has disciplined eight of the 16 members elected to the Senate in 2004.
Members of the NPP hardcore rank and file have clearly stated they would never forgive the negotiations they allege have taken place against the statehood movement by McClintock, and do not acknowledge the Senate President's extensive efforts to lobby in Congress and generate national media coverage for the enactment of legislation to provide self-determination for Puerto Rico, as proposed by a White House Task Force on Puerto Rico's Political Status. Likewise, many political observers, including a number of NPP voters who oppose Rosselló, believe that McClintock's and Parga's removal from party membership rolls will be insignificant within the NPP; since both depended upon the rank and file structure to get elected with the party, while other observers and party leaders have expressed concern that the removals imperil future party victories, by the alienation of tens of thousands of past party supporters. Many party members, however, consider McClintock and his supporters as traitors. On February 23, 2007, McClintock annpunced that if the party disciplinary sanctions are not lifted "within a reasonable time" he will file suit to protect "not only the constitutional rights of the senators who have been sanctioned but the rights of party members to freely select the candidates of their choice in the March 2008 primary". That "reasonable time" ended on March 29, 2007 when he, along with four other senators, filed suit in San Juan Superior Court, claiming that NPP leaders violated the due process required by the state elections laws when parties attempt to discipline its members. Jude Oscar Dávila-Suliveres had set a gearing date for April 12.
However, the most recent El Nuevo Día opinion poll reflected that, in spite of being censured by the New Progressive Party, he has become its third most popular leader, after Resident Commissioner Luis Fortuño and party president Pedro Rosselló, surpassing San Juan Mayor Jorge Santini, former gubernatorial candidate Carlos Pesquera and Bayamón Mayor Ramón Luis Rivera. An even more recent poll published on December 21, 2006, commissioned by Caribbean Business newspaper and WOSO radio station placed McClintock as the island's third most popular poliical leader, behind Resident Commissioner Luis Fortuño and former governor Rafael Hernández Colón and well ahead of Governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, San Juan mayor Jorge Santini and former governors Sila Calderón, Carlos Romero Barceló and Pedro Rosselló, leading some to suggest a Fortuño-McClintock ticket in 2008, which is reported to have the widest support in recent polls.
There have been several attempts to unify the New Progressive Party delegation in the Senate, but all of them have been sabotaged by some Party leaders, such as Secretary General, Thomas Rivera Schatz and Party Vice-President Miriam Ramírez de Ferrer.
As Senate President and throughout his legislative career, he has focused on developing external trade opportunities for Puerto Rico-made products. Innumerable ambassadors, including Sir David Manning, the British ambassador to the United States, have visited his office, and he has met with several world leaders, including People's Republic of China Premier Zhu Ronji in 1999, Costa Rica Presidents José María Figueres and Oscar Arias Sánchez, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, Panama's President Martin Torrijos, as well as several U.S. Presidents, including Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He has also championed improving school-level physical and health education, the theme of his World Health Day 2006 address before the Panamerican Health Organization in Washington, DC last April.
One of the very few Puerto Rican leaders who is fully bicultural and bilingual, McClintock is the most frequently invited statehooder asked to speak at stateside colleges and universities, such as he did in late 2006 at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) and Yale University, where he debated Puerto Rico's political status issue. On December 31 he was the only NPP leader to draw attention to the celebration of the 30th Anniversary of recently deceased President Gerald Ford's statement in support of statehood on December 31, 1976.
He has used his political leadership to slowly rise ever higher in the PNPs hierarchy, culminating with his obtaining the presidency of the Puerto Rico Senate and being mentioned as a possible pro-statehood candidate for Puerto Rico's non-voting seat in Congress in 2008.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Senator Kenneth D. McClintock, Biographical Notes. Parliamentary Conference of the Americas. (used with permission)
- [1] Rule 6.1 regarding the election and removal of the Senate President
- [2] The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars' web site
- [3] for recent El Nuevo Día polling data
- [4] for Dec. 21, 2006 Caribbean Business/WOSO Radio poll results
- The San Juan Star, Dec. 26, 2006, Viewpoint, for examples of speculation on 2008 ticket
