August 24, 2020
be a principal, and there was an expression in his leadership program that he thinks Torres – who Treyger admits has ruffled many feathers in government – exemplifies. “If you want to make everyone happy,” said Treyger, “don’t be a leader – sell ice cream.”
T
ORRES, 32, is all but guaranteed to succeed Serrano in the House of Representatives, since the South Bronx congressional district is overwhelmingly Democratic. That would make Torres the first openly gay Latino member of Congress. Because he is Afro-Latino, he will also join Mondaire Jones, the Democratic nominee to replace Rep. Nita Lowey in Westchester and Rockland County, to be the first openly gay Black members of Congress. The achievement was especially significant because Torres overcame the Bronx’s socially conservative streak to beat Rubén Díaz Sr., a Penetecostal minister with a history of homophobic remarks. In a field stacked with fellow ambitious progressives such as Mark-Viverito and Assembly Member Michael Blake, some on the left feared that Díaz could have won. When I met Torres on Zoom in August to discuss how he pulled it off, he seemed reluctant to talk. When not out in the field, his days are usually filled with an endless array of Zoom meetings, and this day was no different. “My condolences to you,” he said wryly, upon turning on his Zoom camera. He wore a coral polo with white stripes and an open collar, and sat in a gray, upholstered chair positioned in a nondescript corner of the living room in his Belmont apartment. Asked if he was offering condolences because he anticipated a bad interview, he replied, smiling, “We’ll see, I guess.” This is how Torres jokes, when he does joke. Cautiously friendly, he has a muted, mildly sardonic conversational manner. He disagrees that he’s soft-spoken – “You should see me at a City Council hearing, and then ask yourself if I’m soft-spoken” – but he accepts the characterization of being contemplative. “But I never want to be Hamlet: contemplation to the exclusion of action,” he said. “In politics, it’s important to be decisive, to take a stand, which is what I do.” In a field as crowded as the Democratic primary in New York’s 15th Congressional District this year, having a distinctive narrative is how a candidate stands out from the pack. Torres’ narrative is that of a progressive pioneer. He was raised by a single mother in the Throggs Neck Houses, a NYCHA development in the East Bronx. He overcame poverty, homophobia and racism to become the youngest member of the City Council and the first openly gay man elected to public office in the Bronx. While Díaz’s conservatism never seemed to stand in his way when running for City Council or, previously, serving in the state
City & State New York
Senate, Torres was able to use it against him in the House race. But during his campaign, Torres spent a lot less time highlighting Díaz’s controversial remarks about the LGBTQ community than he did tying Díaz to President Donald Trump. Flyers portraying Díaz and Trump as one in the same appeared in mailboxes across the South Bronx, with pictures of Trump and his MAGA hat next to Díaz and his trademark cowboy hat. (Torres for Congress did not send these mailers.) A notice for absentee voters on Torres’ campaign website underscored these links, stating: “Democratic primary voters in New York’s 15th Congressional District need to see that Councilman Ruben Diaz, Sr. is not the same person as his son, the Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. They need to see that Ruben Diaz,
“WHEN YOU HOLD GOVERNMENT AGENCIES ACCOUNTABLE THE WAY RITCHIE DOES, YOU DON’T MAKE MANY FRIENDS IN GOVERNMENT. BUT HE’S NOT IN IT TO MAKE FRIENDS.”
– New York City Council Member Mark Treyger
Sr. is a Trump-Republican pretending to be a Democrat and that he is a close Trump ally and supports Trump’s dangerous agenda that hurts families in the South Bronx.” The notice also mentions that Díaz invited Trump to speak at his church and quotes him saying that he likes Trump. “That was really, really effective,” said South Bronx transit and housing activist Ramona Ferreyra, who supported the Working Families Party-endorsed Samelys López in the race. “People really started looking at (Díaz) Sr. and saying, ‘Shit, he’s a Republican.’” If the Bronx Latino electorate has indeed evolved on progressive issues enough to accept a gay candidate, it could be because circumstances have worsened so much in what is one of the poorest districts in the country, reducing Torres’ sexuality as a factor. “I think, just like every other place, we’ve gotten to a point where rhetoric and politics are just not matching what’s happening on the ground, and the average voter is becoming hip to that,” said Amanda Septimo, a progressive, WFP-endorsed candidate for the
17
Assembly. “I think it’s because our struggles are so heavy, in this moment. In these last few years, we’ve seen wealth inequality at its worst. You see everything happening with NYCHA, health disparities, education disparities and income disparities. Everything is just exasperated.” And it’s worth noting that many older Bronx residents might not have even been aware of Torres’ sexuality, depending on how they get their news. “I think it’s all about mainstream media and how much voters paid attention to the mailings they received as well as the mainstream commercials,” said Bronx City Council Member Vanessa Gibson. “A lot of people assume that conservative Democrats — older, African American and Latinos — are anti-LGBT. Many of them are faith-based leaders. They are women and men of faith, meaning they go to a church. But I don’t think that Ritchie was necessarily promoted as the LGBT candidate to everybody. Many of the abuelas, our seniors at our senior centers, probably didn’t necessarily know that Ritchie was even a gay Afro-Latino.” The bottom line, said Gibson, is that, especially facing the ramifications wrought by the coronavirus, Bronx residents are struggling to survive and meet their basic needs. They’re on food stamps and lack health care benefits, and Torres was the leading candidate talking about those issues. By focusing on Díaz’s relationship to Trump and highlighting the needs of the district, Torres was able to overcome the Bronx’s historical social conservatism. “In a struggling district where people had finally connected Rubén Díaz Sr. with Republican values,” Ferreyra said, “people saw (Torres) as the alternative, without having to risk embracing (Democratic Socialists of America) progressivism.” Unable to knock on doors because of the coronavirus pandemic, Torres raised a ton of money, he blasted out mailers, flooded airwaves and sent mass texts. In total, Torres raised $1,715,179.08. Reports noted that a large share of that money came from real estate developers, as well as a stream of donations from outside the district. Raising money from the much-despised real estate sector is the kind of more moderate, or perhaps conciliatory, move that led some on the left to mistrust Torres and back López, a first-time candidate, against him. Torres frequently countered that the overwhelming majority of donations came from small donors. He resents depictions of him as a tool of monied interests, arguing that they undersell his individual savvy. “The assumption there is that it’s unthinkable that a young, poor kid of color from the Bronx raised $1.7 million on his own. There must be a white male puppeteer that made it happen for him, and whatever,” Torres said. “I think, given what I’ve ac-