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P E R S P E C T I V E : L e t t e r F r o m T h e E d i t o r
Progressive Must Unite Around
Ritchie Torres in the Bronx
Ritchie Torres is the candidate progressive voters should rally around in the June 23 primary.
BY PAUL SCHINDLER
What’s the most consequential
question in
New York’s June 23
Democratic congressional
primaries?
Whether the Bronx’s District 15 —
one of the most heavily Democratic
but also poorest House districts in the
nation — chooses the Reverend Ruben
Diaz, Sr., a city councilmember
who has been stridently outspoken
against LGBTQ rights and a woman’s
right to choose for more than a quarter
century.
With perilous uncertainty about
the presidential contest in November
and a tough calculus for Democrats to
regain control of the Senate, it is vital
that New York deliver as progressive a
House delegation to support Speaker
Nancy Pelosi in the 2021 Congress.
Diaz deserves no place in that delegation.
But the danger on June 23 is that
Diaz has remarkable name recognition
in the Bronx — as, alternately,
a councilmember and a state senator,
as a Pentecostal minister who on
numerous occasions has rallied his
followers to mass political gatherings
on issues like opposition to marriage
equality, and as the father of the borough
president who shares his name,
Ruben Diaz, Jr.
The other big problem is that there
is a big fi eld of contenders in the race,
MATT TRACY
many of whom proclaim themselves
— with varying degrees of truthfulness
— as progressives. Among numerous
candidates, there are two
other members of the Council, a
former Council speaker, a state assemblymember,
and a Democratic
socialist who has the support of the
neighboring district’s congressmember,
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
It is altogether possible for the vast
majority of District 15 voters to cast
a ballot for one of the progressive
choices yet have Diaz slip by as victor
based on a very narrow plurality.
Voters must coalesce around one of
Diaz’s opponents.
Our wholehearted recommendation
is that voters choose Councilmember
Ritchie Torres.
Torres’ story is a remarkable one.
The child of a single mother in Bronx
public housing who struggled week
in and out to put food on the table, by
his early 20s, as a staff member for
then-Councilmember Jimmy Vacca,
Torres was responsible for housing
issues — which usually meant he
worked as a tenant organizer in poor
neighborhoods where many folks
were NYCHA residents like he was.
In 2013 at age 25, when he ran his
fi rst successful Council race — which
made him the Bronx’s fi rst out gay
elected offi cial — Torres, in an interview
with Gay City News, exhibited
uncanny thoughtfulness, poise, and
gut connection to the issues facing
his community.
“As a young man of color, I can say
that there is a crisis of young men in
our society,” he said at the time.
When asked a question, his answers
were not programmed, he
would take a moment to formulate
his thoughts, and then he offered
striking insights communicated in
precisely articulated fashion.
Torres hit the ground running
when he took offi ce in 2014, and
though he was elected at the same
time as Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was
hailed as a progressive champion —
a sheen that has by now worn very
thin — Torres never shied away from
taking on City Hall.
The housing work he did in Vacca’s
offi ce served him well during the four
years he chaired the Public Housing
Committee. Torres pressed the
NYCHA chair on the public housing
agency’s lamentable record in lead
paint testing; misrepresentations
made by that offi cial in response to
his questioning led her to resign several
months later.
When de Blasio entered into a consent
decree with the Trump administration
giving the feds extraordinary
control over NYCHA, Torres, by then
chair of the Oversight and Investigations
Committee, challenged the
mayor himself, asking why he surrendered
before the facts of Washington’s
investigation into the agency
were made public.
Last week, Torres joined with Council
Speaker Corey Johnson in demanding
that investigation of NYPD
conduct during the recent protests be
handled free from interference by de
Blasio’s Corporation Counsel Offi ce.
Charging that the mayor is “tonedeaf,”
Torres wrote, “Calling it an
‘independent investigation’ does not
make it so… Corporation Counsel, a
Mayoral offi cial, has a confl ict of interest
that disqualifi es it from investigating
the NYPD. It would represent
the NYPD in litigation. We cannot
afford a sham investigation that has
neither the appearance nor the substance
of independence.”
Beyond his evident willingness to
push hard against City Hall, Torres
➤ RITCHIE TORRES, continued on p.25
June 18 - June 24, 2 24 020 | GayCityNews.com
/GayCityNews.com
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