Returning to a familiar place for his family, Gov. Ned Lamont spent the weekend in Puerto Rico on a trip that combined both business and pleasure.
Lamont is highly familiar with the island because his mother, Camille Buzby Lamont, was born in 1926 in San Juan and raised there. He estimated he has visited the island 15 times in his lifetime.
“I’ve been going down there for years,” Lamont told The Courant. “February is not a bad time to go visit by the way.”
Lamont met with the island’s governor, Jenniffer González Colón, to discuss issues of common interest that link Connecticut and the island.
“I reached out to the governor just to let her know,” Lamont said in an interview.
“She was very gracious and invited me over. It used to be an old fort. Now, it’s a palace,” he said. “It’s really something. So I spent an hour and a half with her. We have a major Puerto Rican population right here in Connecticut. She remembered that and knows a lot of the players pretty well.”
Connecticut ranks among the top three for the highest Puerto Rican populations among the 50 states.
Among other things, the governors talked about the Jet Blue flights back and forth from Bradley International Airport to San Juan that have contributed to an increase in tourism.
“The tourism is picking up bigtime,” Lamont said. “They’re doing a lot with pharmaceuticals down there. Obviously, that’s a big piece of our growth, especially in the Greater New Haven area. So we talked a little bit about some synergies there.”
“I welcomed Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont to La Fortaleza for a productive dialogue on opportunities for collaboration between the State of Connecticut and Puerto Rico, strengthening strategic partnerships that drive investment and economic growth,” González Colón said on Facebook.
According to UConn, Hartford in 2021, with a population of 121,562, had 40,770 residents with Puerto Rican heritage, the highest population count of Puerto Ricans in Connecticut. Further, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Connecticut is “one of seven states in the nation where the largest Hispanic group in the population is of Puerto Rican heritage.”
Reactions on a Facebook post from Identidad Latina Multimedia about Lamont’s visit with González Colón were mixed, with many Puerto Rican Connecticut residents expressing pride that Lamont had visited the beautiful island and others suggesting he was pandering to get the Latino vote in his upcoming bid for reelection. Others had unfavorable opinions about both governors, with some warning that González Colón not adopt Connecticut’s high taxes.
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont recently returned from Puerto Rico, where he has visited 15 times because his mother was born on the island. Here, he is shown with U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona (second from right) during a break in marching on Main Street at the 2022 Puerto Rican Day Parade in Hartford. Accompanying Cardona were Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, State Attorney General William Tong, and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal. (Photo by Cloe Poisson/Special to The Courant)
Unlike Lamont, a Democrat, González-Colón served for six years as chairwoman of the Puerto Rico Republican Party and previously served as Speaker of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives.
Lamont’s grandparents, Jesse Milton Buzby and Helene Geissere Buzby, moved to the island about 100 years ago, and his mother married his father, Ted, in 1951 in San Juan.
“My mom always liked to go back and see the homestead, so that’s what we did — right before the wrecking ball turned it into a hotel,” Lamont said.
Christopher Keating can be reached at [email protected]