WASHINGTON, D.C. — It’s an issue not widely talked about on the campaign trail — making Puerto Rico the 51st state. 

What You Need To Know

  • Gov. Ron DeSantis was recently asked his opinion on potential statehood for Puerto Rico and said in part, "I understand how closely divided the country is and I’m not going to upset that."

  • DeSantis co-sponsored the Puerto Rico Admission Act of 2018 when he was a Congressman. 

  • The last two states admitted into the Union were Alaska and Hawaii.

While Gov. Ron DeSantis co-sponsored legislation to establish a process to allow the U.S. territory to become a state as a Congressman, he's made new comments on the issue. It follows criticism from Make America Great Again Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC.

The PAC posted an ad this fall hitting DeSantis on the legislation he once supported called the Puerto Rico Admission Act of 2018. It was sponsored by Republican Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico Jenniffer González-Colón “to enable the admission of the territory of Puerto Rico into the Union as a State” and had bipartisan support.

But recently, DeSantis was asked his opinion on potential statehood for Puerto Rico and had this to say: "What I would do is, I would never do anything to give Democrats any additional Senate seats, so whatever it would be, it would have to be Republican seats, or a Republican state to match the Democrat state. I understand how closely divided the country is and I’m not going to upset that."

The comments drew criticism from Democratic Rep. Darren Soto who posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, “Few are surprised Gov DeSantis never really supported PR statehood. This is an attack on millions of Puerto Ricans, many of whom serve in our armed forces, for pure politics. Also ignores reality that the Island has elected both D’s & R’s for years.”

The Puerto Rico Statehood Council, which is non-partisan and does not endorse or oppose political candidates, says it is not reading too much into DeSantis’ recent comments.

"I think that it's just a reaction that happens on the campaign trail, we're not ascribing a great deal of importance or transcendental significance to it," said the Council's Executive Director, George Laws Garcia.

He notes there are more than 1.2 million Puerto Rican voters in Florida alone.

"Puerto Rican voters stateside and the broader Hispanic community are going to be looking at the way in which presidential candidates address this issue," Garcia said. "And the majority of them, at least on the Puerto Rican stateside voters, the majority of them support statehood for Puerto Rico. So that's something that candidates should definitely take into account and they ignore it at their own peril."

Last year when the House was under Democratic control, it passed a bill to give Puerto Rico a say on statehood with some Republican support. It didn’t make it in the Senate, but the White House put out a statement in support of it.