Retrospective
Ruben Diaz Jr. : ‘I bleed this borough.’
As the fi nal days of his tenure
as Bronx borough president
wind down, the Bronx Times
sat down with Ruben Diaz Jr. to
talk about his life and legacy.
BY ROBBIE SEQUEIRA AND ALIYA
SCHNEIDER
It seemed the next logical
step for Ruben Diaz Jr. after
a 12-year, three-term run as
Bronx borough president was a
promotion to Gracie Mansion.
The prospect of becoming New
York’s fi rst-ever Latino and
Bronx-born mayor was not lost
on the 48-year-old Puerto Rican
Soundview resident, who had
been involved in New York politics
since 1997, when at the age
of 23 he became the youngest
member of the New York State
Assembly since Theodore Roosevelt.
Diaz Jr., who went on to
serve seven terms in the state
Legislature, began making
noise in Bronx politics as a
charismatic progressive itching
to change the status quo.
On the strength of the Rainbow
Rebellion coalition – a
rebel faction of the county’s
Democratic party – Diaz Jr.
became one of the faces of a
changing-of-the-guard in the
Bronx that led to the ousting
of longtime party boss Jose Rivera,
who had been accused of
rampant cronyism within the
party until being unseated in
2008.
In Daiz Jr.’s own words, if
you can make it in Bronx politics,
the rest of New York politics
is manageable.
Diaz Jr.’s political rise
– molded through lessons
learned living in the Mott Haven
projects – included a diverse
cast of people he considers
family, the very reason he
withdrew his name for mayoral
consideration in January
2020.
Diaz, a proud family man
who fondly remembers when
he and his wife, Hilda, were two
young 20-somethings raising
their fi rst child, Ruben III, in a
rat-infested apartment on 156th
Street.
“By the way, those were the
best years of my life,” he recollects.
For Diaz Jr., the mayorship
was a chance to show what a
family born in the Bronx and
bred by the Bronx could look
like, how Hilda rose from a toll
collector to assistant chief of operations
at LaGuardia Airport.
He wanted to show off the
(Above) “He sold out,” said Ruben Diaz Jr., a lifelong Yankees fan, of former Yankees manager Buck Showalter
taking a job managing the crosstown rival Mets.
(Below) “What gets me so angry about my father is that he wants to create this public persona when it comes
to issues like marriage equality, but that’s not really him,” Diaz Jr. told the Bronx Times about his father Ruben
Diaz Sr. File photos
young men and fathers that
his sons Ruben III and Ryan,
the latter a combat army guard
who recently served in Germany,
are becoming.
Diaz Jr. yearned to show
the realities of his vibrant and
blended family – Blacks, Dominicans
and Puerto Ricans
sharing love in one space – but
his family wasn’t eager for the
attention being the First Family
of New York would bring.
“My family was like, we
know you’re going to win and
we know you’re going to put
your blinders on, but we just
don’t want to be in that bubble,”
he said.
Without his family all in,
Diaz Jr. wasn’t excited about a
marathon campaign.
“I wasn’t going to go into
this without my whole family’s
support 100 percent,” he said. “I
don’t mean ‘okay, go ahead do
it,’ I mean I wanted to put my
family out there to show the
world what a Puerto Rican family
from the Bronx really looks
like.”
LIKE FATHER, (UN)LIKE
SON
Diaz Jr. blazed a different
cultural and political trail
from his 78-year-old father, a socially
conservative Democrat
and Pentecostal minister who
isn’t known for evading controversy,
especially when it comes
to sharing his religious beliefs
about gay marriage. A current
member of the New York City
Council, Rev. Ruben Diaz Sr.,
known for his trademark cowboy
hat, announced he will retire
from politics after the year
ends, following a failed run for
U.S. Congress in 2020.
Diaz Jr. mentioned marriage
equality, abortion rights
and handing out condoms in
schools as topics they disagree
on.
“I love my father,” the
younger Diaz said. “I respect
my father. I’ve never had an argument
as an adult man with
my father on anything personal,
or private. All of the disagreements
and the back and
forth that we’ve had have always
been around politics, policy
and how we’ve been on opposite
ends.”
In 2011, Diaz Jr.’s lesbian
niece Erica Diaz, who was 22 at
the time, held a counter-protest
to a much larger anti-gay marriage
rally Diaz Sr. held during
an AIDS walk. But she ended
up joining her grandfather on
his stage, where they hugged in
front of a crowd of people who
didn’t believe she should have
the right to marry. Diaz Sr.,
known as “Papa” in his family,
announced he loves her and respects
her decisions.
Erica’s move showed the
crowd that while she disagrees
with her grandfather, “nobody
is going to stop the love that we
have for each other as family
members,” Diaz Jr. said, calling
his niece “gangster.”
Diaz Jr. himself voted
against gay marriage in 2007
while in the Assembly before
changing his view after years
of refl ection, which he announced
publicly in 2013.
In 2019, when Diaz Sr. got
fl ack for saying the City Council
is “controlled by the homosexual
community,” Diaz Jr.
tweeted that his father’s comments
were “antagonistic,
quarrelsome and wholly unnecessary.”
“What gets me so angry
about my father is that he wants
to create this public persona
when it comes to issues like
marriage equality, but that’s
not really him,” Diaz Jr. told
the Bronx Times. “And people
think that this is who he
is on a personal level, to the
point that he doesn’t even get
along with his granddaughter,
his fi rst grandchild. And that
BRONX TIMES REPORTER, DEC.8 31, 2021-JAN. 6, 2022 BTR