Puerto Rico Governor to Push for Statehood Puerto Rico's governor will hold an extraordinary session to push for approval of a resolution urging U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama to honor the results of a recent referendum that would change the island's political status. Luis Fortuno says Puerto Rico embraced statehood and rejected the current U.S. commonwealth status during a Nov. 6 referendum. He said Saturday that Congress and Obama pledged to respect the results of the two-part referendum. In the first question, more than 900,000 voters, or 54 percent, said they were not content with the current status. On the second question, only about 1.3 million voters made a choice. Of those, nearly 800,000, or 61 percent, chose statehood. Some 437,000 backed sovereign free association and 72,560 chose independence. Nearly 500,000, however, left that question blank.