Pennsylvania and New Jersey Face Tight Congressional Races in Districts With Large Puerto Rican Communities

“Every time they say Puerto Ricans don’t vote, it’s because the [U.S.] government isn’t responding to the things we’re telling them are important,” said Rafael Álvarez Febo, co-founder of Puerto Rican Professionals Network, a nonprofit organization that seeks to build connections among Puerto Rican professionals in the Philadelphia area.

One issue he believes the U.S. government should prioritize is access to drinking water in Puerto Rico. That is why he was outside Philadelphia City Hall on Aug. 13, taking part in a demonstration he helped organize with a coalition of civic organizations. The event was titled “No Water: An Island in Crisis. A Diaspora in Action.” The demonstration sought to draw the U.S. government’s attention to Puerto Rico’s water crisis.

Since June, hundreds of thousands of people on the island have gone weeks or months without water service, partly because of several breaks in major distribution pipelines that the government has failed to maintain properly. Compounding the problem is a drought that has been classified as extreme in parts of the island and compared with some of the worst droughts Puerto Rico has experienced, including those of 1994 and 2015.

“We were very frustrated by the lack of action, watching a crisis unfold in Puerto Rico over the past three months that nobody here has been talking about,” Álvarez Febo told the CPI.

Speeches delivered at the demonstration outside City Hall emphasized the power the Puerto Rican diaspora can wield in addressing the island’s problems, particularly through its influence over members of Congress running in November’s midterm elections, some of whom face tight races.

Forty-eight miles north of Philadelphia, in Allentown, part of Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District, Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie faces a close race against Democrat Bob Brooks. In neighboring New Jersey, the 2nd Congressional District is also up for grabs, with a tight contest between Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew and his Democratic challenger, Zack Mullock. According to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), that race is among those that could determine control of the House. Puerto Ricans are the largest Latino group in both districts.

Census data on the number of Puerto Ricans in congressional districts do not distinguish between those who are old enough to vote and those who are not. Nationwide, more than 4 million Puerto Ricans are eligible to vote because they are U.S. citizens age 18 or older, according to research by the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York.

Pennsylvania’s 2nd Congressional District Remains Gripped by the Opioid Crisis

Less than 20 minutes north of Philadelphia City Hall by train or car lies Pennsylvania’s 2nd Congressional District, home to the largest Puerto Rican population of any district in the state: 105,911. Pennsylvania has 13 congressional districts where Puerto Ricans are the largest Latino group. Together, those districts, stretching from Philadelphia in the eastern part of the state to central Pennsylvania communities such as the state capital, Harrisburg, are home to nearly half a million Puerto Ricans, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey.

The 2nd District includes the Kensington and Fairhill neighborhoods, where Fifth Street and the Centro de Oro area form the heart of Philadelphia’s Puerto Rican community. According to the Census Bureau, the district has the highest poverty rate in Pennsylvania, nearly twice that of the state’s other congressional districts. It is also the area hardest hit by a longstanding opioid crisis whose roots date back to the 1970s. The crisis intensified in 2010, with open-air drug use and sales, thousands of overdose deaths and dozens of people struggling with addiction living on the streets.

The district has been represented in Congress since 2015 by Democrat Brendan Boyle, a former member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Boyle has introduced or co-sponsored several pieces of legislation addressing the opioid crisis and housing problems. Meanwhile, his largest political contributions have come from the finance, real estate and pharmaceutical industries. Other major donors fall into the category of “ideological” groups, including gun control organizations and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a lobbying group that supports arming Israel, according to Federal Election Commission data compiled by the government transparency organization OpenSecrets.

The CPI requested an interview with Boyle but had not received a response by publication time.

Boyle’s opponent in the midterm elections will be Republican Jéssica Arriaga, a Puerto Rican born and raised in North Philadelphia. In a telephone interview with the CPI, Arriaga questioned why Boyle had represented the area for so long without any visible improvement in the problems of drug addiction, drug trafficking and high housing costs.

“You see death, and you see hell,” Arriaga said, referring to Kensington. “You see all the stores that closed around there. There used to be pizzerias … people went there to buy sneakers. It was like a neighborhood shopping plaza, but you can’t do that anymore,” she added.

Arriaga said she is an operating room technician and described herself as an evangelical Christian. “I was preaching the word of God in many places, in Philly, in Kensington and in Jersey,” she said. She joined the Republican Party in 2024, not out of loyalty to the Trump administration but because she believes in conservative values. Asked how she would address the problems in the district she hopes to represent, she said it was necessary to attract “jobs and opportunities.” However, when asked about specific proposals, Arriaga said she would keep them to herself until after the election for fear that others would copy them.

Pollsmax, a platform that tracks election trends, gives Arriaga less than a 1% chance of defeating Boyle in a heavily Democratic city like Philadelphia and a district that has not had a Republican representative since 1947.

Congressional Representatives’ Ties to Puerto Ricans

Boyle has co-sponsored several bills related to Puerto Rico. In September 2025, he backed legislation introduced by Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner in Washington, D.C., Pablo José Hernández. The Puerto Rico Nutrition Assistance Fairness Act sought to transition the island from the Nutrition Assistance Program (NAP) to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), so island residents would have the same food assistance rights as people living in the United States. In January, the bill was referred to the Subcommittee on Nutrition and Foreign Agriculture and has not advanced since.

In 2022, after the House of Representatives passed the Puerto Rico Status Act, Boyle issued a statement supporting “self-determination,” the principle that the island should democratically decide what relationship it wants with the U.S. government, under whose colonial rule it has remained since 1898.

In 2018, Boyle joined Rep. Nydia Velázquez and Sen. Kamala Harris in introducing the Counting Our Unexpected Natural Tragedies’ Victims Act, which sought to “prevent a repeat of the ambiguity surrounding the final death toll from Hurricane Maria.” The legislation was referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs but did not advance.

In 2015, Boyle publicly supported the Obama administration’s legislative package to address the Puerto Rican government’s fiscal and debt crisis. That legislation led to the PROMESA Act and the creation of the Financial Oversight and Management Board, the body that controls the island government’s finances. The board’s effectiveness has been questioned, and it has faced constant scrutiny.

Meanwhile, Chris Rabb, a Democrat and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, represents the 200th District in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. In the midterm elections, he is running for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District, which has 13,815 Puerto Rican residents and includes West Philadelphia, Center City and parts of North Philadelphia. The district has been represented since 2016 by Democrat Dwight Evans, who is not seeking reelection. Rabb’s only opponent will be independent candidate Dennis Mahoney, and Pollsmax gives Rabb a 99.9% chance of winning.

On Sept. 23, Rabb posted a video on social media with members of the organization Philly Boricuas to commemorate the anniversary of the Grito de Lares, Puerto Rico’s 1868 uprising against Spanish colonial rule.

“I want to say this clearly: I support independence for Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans have the right to determine their own future. I support canceling Puerto Rico’s unjust and unsustainable debt,” Rabb said.

“We see the consequences here in Philly, too. More than 200,000 Puerto Ricans live in the Philly metro area. Many arrived in waves of migration driven by economic hardship, housing crises, weather-related disasters and a lack of resources. And once here, Puerto Ricans continue to face discrimination, displacement, poverty, police abuse, inequality in health care services and economic opportunities,” he added in the video, one of the few featuring a politician running in the 2026 elections speaking directly to Puerto Ricans.

Puerto Ricans in Key Southeastern Pennsylvania Districts

Other Pennsylvania congressional districts where Puerto Ricans are the largest Latino group include those encompassing Reading, whose mayor, Eddie Morán, is Puerto Rican, as well as Allentown and Lancaster. The 6th Congressional District, which includes Reading, has 42,803 Puerto Rican residents and is represented by Democrat Chrissy Houlahan. She will face Republican Marty Young, and Pollsmax gives her a 95% chance of winning.

Between 2025 and 2026, Houlahan’s campaign committee raised $1,750,945. The sector that contributed the most during that period was “finance, insurance and real estate,” with $288,440. Within that category, hedge funds accounted for the largest share, contributing $38,500 during the period, according to OpenSecrets. In Congress, Houlahan, like Boyle, co-sponsored the Puerto Rico Nutrition Assistance Fairness Act. Neither Pennsylvania representative’s legislative record includes legislation specifically aimed at addressing problems facing the Puerto Rican communities they represent in their districts.

In Allentown, part of Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District, which has 77,958 Puerto Rican residents, the representative is Republican Ryan Mackenzie. Between 2025 and 2026, Mackenzie raised $4,311,185 in contributions. The sector that contributed the most to his campaign was what OpenSecrets classifies as “ideological groups,” with more than $650,000 from political action committees (PACs) and more than $500,000 in individual contributions, totaling $1.16 million.

The three PACs that contributed the most were affiliated with Republican congressional leadership, a group called Republican Conservatives, and another classified as Pro-Israel. The second-largest contributing sector during the same period was “finance, insurance and real estate,” according to OpenSecrets.

In February, Mackenzie met in Washington, D.C., with a Puerto Rico Senate delegation led by Thomas Rivera Schatz to discuss extending Medicaid funding for the island.

“As the Lehigh Valley’s Latino population continues to grow, I appreciate the opportunity to foster relationships with leaders representing the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, both at home and abroad,” Mackenzie wrote in a news release about the meeting.

Like other representatives, Mackenzie has not introduced legislation specifically addressing the Latino or Puerto Rican community he represents in the Lehigh Valley. Scott Wong, an NBC News congressional reporter, noted in 2024 that Mackenzie has attended the Allentown Puerto Rican Parade and Dominican festivals. “Yet he has not tailored his message to appeal to Latinos, specifically immigrants or Puerto Rican migrants,” Wong added.

Mackenzie, for his part, told NBC: “The issues facing the Hispanic community are the same as those facing the community at large. They talk about the cost of living. They talk about immigration. They also see crime in their communities and drugs coming across an open southern border. The only thing we do differently is present it in Spanish. That’s all. It’s the same message, the same communication.”

Mackenzie is considered one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the election. His Democratic opponent, Bob Brooks, was five points ahead in polls reported by The New York Times on Oct. 9. On Sept. 28, 41% of respondents to a Franklin & Marshall College poll said they would vote for Brooks if the election were held that day. Brooks spent 20 years as a firefighter in the city of Bethlehem and is running for Congress on a platform that includes banning corporate PAC money from elections and establishing “fair taxes” for millionaires.

Lloyd Smucker, the Republican representative for Pennsylvania’s 11th Congressional District, which includes Lancaster and has 43,711 Puerto Rican residents, appears better positioned to retain his seat against Democratic challenger Nancy Mannion. Pollsmax gives him a 98.9% chance of winning. Smucker visited Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria to observe recovery operations. He also supported legislative initiatives to extend additional federal disaster recovery funding to the island.

New Jersey Could Give Democrats a House Majority

Neighboring New Jersey has 11 congressional districts where Puerto Ricans are the largest Latino group, with a combined Puerto Rican population of nearly half a million. The 1st Congressional District, which covers Camden and the suburbs of South Jersey, has the largest number, with 68,869 Puerto Rican residents. The district is represented by Democrat Donald Norcross. Pollsmax gives him a 99% chance of winning against his Republican opponent, Damon Galdo.

New Jersey’s 2nd Congressional District, home to 61,799 Puerto Ricans, was included by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) on its list of “districts in play” in the November elections. These districts are expected to have highly competitive races involving Republicans whom Democrats consider “vulnerable” and which, according to the DCCC, could determine which party controls the House. Van Drew’s opponent is Democrat Zack Mullock, the mayor of Cape May, whom the Democratic Party sees as having a chance to win. However, Pollsmax gives Van Drew an 82.5% chance of winning.

Van Drew’s press secretary, meanwhile, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that Democrats make certain races appear competitive during every election cycle to attract political contributions. Van Drew was first elected as a Democrat, but in 2019 he declared his loyalty to Trump and switched to the Republican Party. The district he represents has 794,193 residents, of whom 61,799 are Puerto Rican, equivalent to 7% of the population.

In August, just months before the elections, members of Philadelphia’s Puerto Rican diaspora decided to mobilize to underscore their potential political power. Philadelphia and South Jersey share a border along the Delaware River and are part of the same metropolitan area. Among those at the demonstration outside Philadelphia City Hall, organized in response to Puerto Rico’s water crisis, was Ángel Ortiz Siberón, an attorney originally from Guaynabo who moved to the mainland in 2017.

“What drew me was the hardship Puerto Rico is experiencing and the ability we have here to influence decisions at the federal level in ways that we are limited in Puerto Rico, because we don’t have a vote in presidential elections, and we don’t have representation in the [U.S.] Senate. Given those limitations, Puerto Ricans living in the diaspora are better positioned to engage with our representatives in Congress and express the needs of Puerto Ricans on the island,” Ortiz Siberón said.

This translation was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and clarity.