Residents of Puerto Rico, which was leveled by Hurricane Maria last fall, are growing tired of San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz for what they say are her attempts at trying to capitalize politically on the storm.
Cruz has been a vocal critic of President Donald Trump and the federal government's response to the storm that battered the U.S. territory in the Caribbean Sea.
As Puerto Rico continues to struggle with getting the power turned on across the island, some residents are sounding off on the mayor.
"She comes out, goes on television and pats herself on the back," small business owner Simon Menendez of San Juan told Fox News.
"It stopped being about us a long time ago."
A female bartender who wished to remain anonymous added, "We get passed around from politician to politician. They use us and think we aren't smart enough to know. It's insulting."
Edwin Melendez is the director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at New York's Hunter College and told Fox that Cruz took advantage of the island's hurricane crisis.
"The impact of Hurricane Maria has created a situation of flux in Puerto Rican politics," he said. "Local and federal responses were not up to par in Puerto Rico and that opened up an opportunity for her. She got the spotlight. She took it."
The latest data shows 83.6 percent of Puerto Rico's electrical grid is back up and running — the entire island was in the dark after the hurricane hit. There's no word on when the remainder of the island will have power restored.
A blackout struck the island Thursday after two power plants were shut down, according to the Associated Press. San Juan and its surrounding areas were impacted. Officials would not say how many people were without power, but nearly 1 million people live in the areas where the outage took place.
Cruz has called Trump the "disaster-in-chief" and the "miscommunicator-in-chief," and wore a "Nasty" t-shirt during a television interview last October.
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