Puerto Rico Governor Misread Anger Brewing Against Him – The New York Times

With crisis enveloping his administration, the governor found himself increasingly isolated, having lost support from the public, the leaders of his political party and many of his own aides, who tendered their resignations and left Mr. Rosselló, 40, almost completely alone.

“You had an isolated governor, whose cabinet is resigning, with the mayors of his party asking him to resign, and with the people on the street asking him to resign,” said Antonio Sagardía, Puerto Rico’s former justice secretary. “It was impossible to govern like that.”

Mr. Sagardía said he spoke to Mr. Rosselló on Tuesday and told him that he had no choice but to step down as governor after Puerto Rico’s Justice Department issued search warrants for cellphones belonging to Mr. Rosselló and 11 of his current and former aides as part of a criminal investigation into the private group chat.

The leaked messages, in addition to being rude and profane, suggested the administration was inappropriately favoring its politically connected friends, just days after federal authorities had arrested two former top officials and four other people in a corruption investigation.

For people who thought they knew Mr. Rosselló, reading his crude comments introduced them to a side of him that he appeared to have shown only to his male buddies.

“He was very respectful, always very kind, very much a gentleman,” said Representative Jenniffer González-Colón, Puerto Rico’s nonvoting resident commissioner in Congress, who publicly demanded Mr. Rosselló’s resignation last Friday. “It was two completely different personalities.”