Mr. Rosselló said he intends to try and harness the political power of about 5 million Puerto Rico-born citizens scattered around the country to help the statehood push by pressing and evaluating candidates on their support for that effort.

There is no chance that Congress will accept the credentials of the shadow delegation and seat them as representatives of Puerto Rico, which currently has a nonvoting resident commissioner who can participate in congressional debates. But it is a way of making a point. It is also following a well-traveled historical path to statehood.

In 1796, the residents of Tennessee decided to force the issue of statehood by holding a convention, drafting a constitution, electing members of the House and Senate and then demanding that the other states let Tennessee in. The state eventually prevailed, and that hardball path to statehood came to be known as the Tennessee Plan. It has been copied by others, most recently Alaska, and Puerto Rico is now utilizing the technique.

With an eye toward worries about political realignment, the shadow delegation includes three Democrats, three Republicans and an independent. While they may not share the same view when it comes to assessing the quality of the federal response to the hurricane, they would agree that Puerto Rico’s recovery would have been handled differently if it was a full-fledged state.

The new tax law, coming on the heels of the hurricane and a debilitating financial crisis, seemed to Puerto Ricans to be an especially cruel step. The legislation instituted a new tax on intellectual property held by foreign corporations that Puerto Ricans say will eliminate a main incentive for businesses to locate on the island and puts Puerto Rico on the same level as a foreign nation. “We are American citizens and these are American jobs,” the governor said. “It just doesn’t make sense.

He and other statehood backers say the island of nearly 3.5 million people — it would be the 30th largest state by population — would have fared much better with full representation in Congress and the right of residents to vote for president.