Gorbea's New Ad Claims “I Don’t Come From a Well Connected Family” - Father Is Major Influence in PR

Gorbea's New Ad Claims “I Don’t Come From a Well Connected Family” - Father Is Major Influence in PR

Nellie Gorbea, a Democratic candidate for governor of Rhode Island has launched a new TV campaign in which she claims “I don’t come from a well-connected family.”

Her parents, however, are an influential powerful couple in Puerto Rico. Her father is an energy company executive and served on the board of a leading bank. He was the subject of a major lawsuit by the U.S. federal government as part of that bank's failure.

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Gorbea’s father was a donor to the campaigns of George W. Bush in 2000 and the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004, donating a total of $3,000 to the Bush campaigns.

He made those donations when he was President of Lord Electric Company, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

He has given tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations — from Alaska to Rhode Island, including donations to Republican Alaskan Congressman Don Young [who died in March of 2022]  and to former Rhode Island Democratic Governor Gian Raimondo.

 

 

 

Parents' Subject of Federal Lawsuit

U.S. banking regulators at the FDIC in 2012 filed suit against the director of a Puerto Rican bank of which Gorbea’s father was an officer, alleging that reckless lending and improper management led to the April 2010 collapse that cost the deposit insurance fund nearly $1.5 billion.

Gorbea’s mother was also named in the suit.

Officers and directors of R-G Premier Bank failed to adequately supervise the huge increase in commercial lending during the housing boom and bust in the U.S. island territory, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said in the lawsuit filed in federal court in San Juan.

The suit sought at least $257 million in damages and named 19 bank officials, including founder and CEO Victor Galan Alvarez. The suit also names the spouses of 17 of the directors and officers so that the government could seek their assets and recover losses from the failed institution.

“Between November 2004 and December 2008 alone, the bank extended over $350 million in loans that any prudent banker should have known would probably never be repaid,” the federal lawsuit stated. “The directors and officers also exacerbated and accelerated these losses by robotically approving virtually any loan request that crossed their desks, even though such loan requests had been processed through the obviously deficient lending structure they had created at the bank."

The lawsuit was ultimately settled for millions.

At the same time as Roberto Gorbea was the subject of the FDIC lawsuit, he was posting photos on Facebook of multiple vacations throughout the Caribbean. 

 

 

Gorbea's campaign did not respond to questions about her father's political connections, donations to the Bush campaigns, and the federal lawsuit for his role in the bank failure.

The campaign describes the ad in a press release as, "the spot shows how Gorbea is similar to Rhode Island itself—-small, determined, full of hope, and sometimes underestimated. Gorbea shares her story of how she put herself through college, rooted herself in her community, and earned executive leadership roles in the non-profit sector. "