José Granados

José Granados Navedo, (born February 1, 1946), is a former Speaker Pro Tem of the House of Representatives of Puerto Rico. Married, with three children, he lives with his family in Florida.

While attending the Academia Catolica during his school years he was elected President of his Sophomore Class, publisher of the School Newspaper and President of the Student Council. After enrolling in the University of Puerto Rico he was elected to the General Studies Student Council and was elected its President. While in college, he represented Puerto Rico in the First International Youth Congress held at the United Nations General Assembly.

Granados continued his political career as a student leader at the University of Puerto Rico campus in Río Piedras, along with future House Speaker Edison Misla Aldarondo, future Senator Oreste Ramos, Jr. and future Senate Vice President Orlando Parga, Jr. In 1968 he was an unsuccessful candidate for elective office under the Statehood Republican Party (SRP) banner, as most statehooders switched their allegiance to the New Progressive Party (NPP), an offshoot of the SRP, which went on to win that year's general election. As Secretary General of Acción Progresista, a pro-statehood student organization, he founded the longest lasting pro-statehood newspaper weekly, Decisión, in 1971. In that year, he was elected president of the New Progressive Party Youth organization and was nominated as one of that party's candidates for an at-large seat in the House of Representatives of Puerto Rico.

Elected to the House in 1972, he became an outspoken member of the opposition. After Gov. Rafael Hernández Colón's defeat in 1976, Granados was elected in 1977 as the Majority Leader in the House. In 1981, after the NPP lost control of that legislative body, he became outgoing Speaker Angel Viera Martínez' Minority Whip. When Viera Martínez bolted the NPP to join the Puerto Rico Renewal Party (PRP) in 1983, Granados became House Minority Leader, a position he held until 1988.

In 1981, Granados founded the Puerto Rico Statehood Commission, a grassroots non-partisan organization dedicated to research and education on Puerto Rico statehood. The organization operated until 1986 and included among its leaders a wide array of prominent statehooders, such as attorney Zaida Hernández, who served as House Speaker and subsequently an appellate court judge. Also included were attorney Zulma Rosario, former Corrections Administrator and current head of the Government Ethics Office, attorney Nélida Jiménez Velázquez, also an appellate judge, Senator Oreste Ramos, Jr., Sol Luis Descartes, a former Treasury Secretary under PDP Governor Luis Muñoz Marín, who is the current Secretary of State, former Senate President and attorney Luis Dávila Colón, currently Puerto Rico's most prominent political analyst. Granados' ideological organization still serves as a model, a quarter century later, for NPP educational efforts.

...
Wikipedia