Gov. Cuomo on Wednesday will name Rossana Rosado, the former editor and publisher of El Diario-La Prensa, as New York’s next secretary of state, the Daily News has learned.
Rossana Rosado will be New York’s next secretary of state.
Rosado, 54, will replace Cesar Perales, who has held that post for the past five years and is considered the most influential Hispanic official in the governor’s cabinet.
But at age 75, and after a long career as a civil rights attorney, hospital executive, and top official in Washington, City Hall and Albany, Perales has decided to retire.
Cuomo’s choice of Rosado as his successor comes amid persistent claims that Latinos are underrepresented in state government.
A 2014 study, for example, found that only three of the governor’s 59 commissioners or policy-making appointees were Latino — even though Hispanics make up more than 18% of the state’s population.
To make matters worse, two of them, Labor Commissioner Peter Rivera and now Perales, decided during the past few months to step down.
By tapping Rosado to fill one of those posts, the governor is opting for someone he’s worked well with in the past, someone widely known to both Latino opinion makers and to the state’s business leaders.
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Rosado left El Diario, the country’s oldest Spanish-language newspaper, in 2013 after rising up the ranks from reporter to editor-in-chief to publisher. She became a lecturer at John Jay College while also chairing a Cuomo-created task force that prepares ex-felons for reentry into society.
“The governor told me that if I wanted to help the largest number of people, I needed to come into his government,” Rosado told The News on Tuesday. “I’m excited by his progressive agenda and that he wants to bring everyone to the table.”
Secretary of state, of course, has historically been a patronage post with limited powers — overseeing consumer complaints, spurring economic development, issuing licenses and keeping corporate records.
But someone like Perales turned that post into a far more influential platform across state government.
After all, Perales had previously served as assistant secretary of health under President Jimmy Carter, social services commissioner under Gov. Mario Cuomo, and a deputy mayor under David Dinkins.
It was Perales, for instance, who prodded Cuomo to terminate the state’s participation in Secure Communities, a controversial federal program in which local agencies assisted the feds in identifying undocumented immigrants for deportation.