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complished in public office, and given my talents as an elected official, it’s entirely reasonable to think that I would be effective at fundraising, and effective at running a campaign, because I’m a competent person who knows how to build a competent team and run a competent operation.” A cohort of Torres’ supporters, including The New York Times editorial board, considered him the logical antidote to a populist demagogue. And where some left-wing Democrats saw Torres’ friendly relationship with elements such as the real estate community as a flaw, to many mainstream Democrats it was a feature. To them, his candidacy is a course correction – an opportunity to balance the scales of a rapidly shifting New York congressional delegation. “He has a very centrist point of view – he was not (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez),” explained George Arzt, a political consultant who once served as then-New York City Mayor Ed Koch’s press secretary. Arzt doesn’t use “centrist” as a slur. He means that Torres is pragmatic. “People were becoming fearful of where the city, and state, and Congress was going in the wake of AOC’s victory, and they felt that he was a person who would have his feet on the ground and get more accomplished than the others in the race.” Arzt and Torres have been friends for as long as Torres has been in the City Council. “Ritchie is unbelievably articulate, charismatic and a very welcoming human being,” said Arzt. “I think all of this comes out on the campaign trail, where people like to touch the candidate – even in these COVID times.” For his part, Torres rejects overly complex narratives about how he won. “Voters are intuitively more intelligent than most people in politics. You cannot fool them,” he said. “You have no choice but to be who you are and to run on the strength of your personal story and your personal narrative, which is exactly what I did. I forged a human connection with the electorate in the South Bronx. The median voter is a Latino or African American woman at or above the age of 55. Those voters came to see me as their son and their grandson, who represents the next generation of leadership.”
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T IS IMPOSSIBLE not to notice the way that Torres speaks, which is formal and deliberate, and also self-conscious. Torres resents being called articulate, because of its racist connotations. However, his manner of speaking is frequently characterized as such by his white, Black and Latino friends and colleagues alike. The way that he talks is always mentioned in passing when he is described by those close to him, as well as anyone who’s watched him stump. It’s worth noting that unlike many other famously well-spoken politicians such as former President Barack
August 24, 2020
Obama or U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, Torres is not a graduate of Harvard Law. In fact, Torres didn’t graduate from college at all. He briefly attended New York University before withdrawing due to his lifelong struggle with depression. (Before running for the City Council, Torres worked in the office of Council Member Jimmy Vacca as housing director.) Torres contributes op-eds to leading publications, including a recent piece for The Washington Post about why he wants to break with precedent and join both the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and Congressional Black Caucus, and his prose style is equally as sophisticated as his speech. “I think part of it is raw talent,” Torres said. “I feel like I have something of a gift for both written and verbal communication.” Like many millennials, Torres has an astute and studied grasp of the ways in which he experiences his identity in the world and borrows from the language of critical race theory to explain how being both Black and Latino has defined him throughout his life. In his Washington Post article, Torres describes race as “chosen and given.” He believes that, though he’s chosen to identify as a Black man and as a Latino, identity is equally the world’s perception of you. When Torres first entered the City Council, there was a meeting among the Black members of the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus, about the lack of representation of Black people in the leadership of the City Council. While initially invited
to participate in the call, minutes before the meeting, Torres received a call from one of his colleagues saying, “There are people who object to your participation in the call.” When Torres asked why, his colleague responded, “Well, because you’re Latino.” Torres pointed out that he’s both Latino and Black because, like many Puerto Ricans, he has mixed racial ancestry. That wasn’t good enough for his colleague. “You have to choose,” his colleague said. There have been times in his life where Torres has felt racially homeless, as he puts it, and this was one of them. However, he has also had to contend with the phenomenon of colorism within the Latino community. Raised by his mother’s side of the family, which is largely light-skinned, Torres felt like an outlier. “There were moments when I was made to feel less authentically Latino and Puerto Rican than the rest of my family,” recalled Torres. This, despite the many famous Afro-Puertorriquenos, he notes, like Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, a leading intellectual figure during the Harlem Renaissance. Growing up in the Bronx, the schools Torres attended were mostly Latino and African American. (The Bronx is 56% Hispanic or Latino and 44% Black, according to census data. The 15th Congressional District is 65% Hispanic and 28% Black.) In middle school he was assigned to a gifted program, a separate track of coursework for qualifying students. The students in those classes were mostly white. “I remember experiencing