Jeb Bush makes a play for Puerto Ricans | McClatchy Washington Bureau

When Jeb Bush campaigns Tuesday in Puerto Rico, he won’t be speaking just to people on the island.

Puerto Ricans could have an early say in the Republican presidential primaries. They also make up one of the fastest-growing voting blocs in Florida, and they might play a role in other tightly fought states in the primaries, such as new York, and in the general election, such as Pennsylvania.

“It’s smart politics to head to Puerto Rico this early on,” said Florida Republican state Rep. Robert Cortes, who was born in Brooklyn but grew up in Puerto Rico.

Traditionally staunchly Democratic voters, Puerto Ricans twice helped Barack Obama win Florida. But before that, they twice helped put the bilingual Bush in the governor’s mansion.

“There’s an assumption that Puerto Rican voters are automatically Democrats,” Cortes said. “But I think we’ve shown that’s not necessarily the case.”

Voter registration trends show increasing numbers of Hispanics registering independent.

“Hispanics, even though they tend to be faithfully Democratic, are becoming more independent. They’re much more willing to consider other candidates,” said Carlos Vargas-Ramos, a research associate at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York.

Bush will visit the Universidad Metropolitana de Cupey on Tuesday in San Juan, then hold a town hall-style meeting with the Republican Party of Puerto Rico. He’ll also attend a fundraiser with former Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuño, a Republican, who like Bush has backed statehood for the U.S. commonwealth.

Puerto Ricans on the island can’t vote in the 2016 election: It’s a U.S. territory, not a state. But islanders can vote in the presidential primaries, which are run by the parties, not by the federal government.

Bush has experience with Puerto Rican primaries: He spent months on the island campaigning for his father, George H.W. Bush, who won the 1980 primary in Puerto Rico, though he lost the Republican nomination to Ronald Reagan.

Hillary Clinton easily won Puerto Rico’s Democratic primary in 2008, but it failed to deliver the boost she’d hoped would slow then-Sen. Obama’s march to the Democratic nomination. In 2011, Obama broke a 50-year record, becoming the first president since John F. Kennedy to visit the island.

While small, Puerto Rico’s primary is scheduled for March 13, two days before the Florida primary and thus a potential springboard for its winner.

“The fact the primary has been moved up from June to mid-March means Puerto Rico will have a much greater say,” said Fernand Amandi, managing partner of the Miami-based political firm Bendixen & Amandi International, which does work mostly for Democrats but also for some Republicans. “In the hunt for delegates, every single one counts.”

And in Florida, Amandi noted, Puerto Ricans are the fastest-growing segment of the Hispanic electorate, and they’re poised to become the largest soon, surpassing Cuban-Americans in the state.

Bush might face fellow Floridian Sen. Marco Rubio in both primaries, and some Republicans in Florida say the advantage wouldn’t automatically go to Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants.

Bush “has ties to Puerto Rico going back decades and has a very good rapport in the community,” said former Republican state Rep. John Quiñones, who served in the Florida House of Representatives with Rubio and was the first Puerto Rican elected to the Legislature.

Still, the long game is November 2016, and Bush’s visit appears part of a strategy aimed at reversing Republicans’ slide in popularity among Hispanic voters. There are some 639,000 eligible Puerto Rican voters in Florida and 712,000 in New York, according to Mark Hugo Lopez, director of Hispanic research at the Pew Research Center.

New York will have a big bloc of delegates in the GOP primary; it will be reliably Democratic in the general election. Florida is an up-for-grabs big prize in both the primaries and general election.

“It’s good political outreach; they understand the math,” said Steve Schale, a Democratic strategist who led Obama’s 2008 Florida campaign.

In Florida, most of the new voters in three swing counties across the Interstate 4 corridor are Puerto Ricans and African-Americans, Schale said.

“If Republicans can find a way to make a dent in the Interstate 4 corridor that performed very strongly for Obama in 2008 and 2012, they have an opportunity to make Florida competitive,” said Matt Barreto, a top official at Latino Decisions, which researches Hispanic opinion.

He notes that if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, the former New York senator would start among Puerto Ricans “with huge head winds, given her huge popularity in New York.”

Clinton has been less vocal about statehood for the island.

Still, Barreto questioned how vocal Bush will be, noting that if Puerto Rico were to become a state “it would almost certainly vote Democratic in the presidential race. Its two U.S. senators would almost certainly be Democratic and probably all four congressional members would be Democrats.”