Ritchie Torres, Mondaire Jones Elected to Congress
Two out gay New York House hopefuls clear fi nal hurdle after contentious primaries
BY MATT TRACY
The long wait appears to
be over.
Unoffi cial results
show out that out gay
congressional candidate Ritchie
Torres of the Bronx easily won his
race in a deeply blue district, while
another gay Democrat, Mondaire
Jones of Northern Westchester and
Rockland County, scored a comfortable
double digit victory in another
historically blue district. The
victories by Torres and Jones cap
an historic rise to Capitol Hill by
each of the two men.
With nearly 270,000 votes
counted out of a total of roughly
477,000 registered voters at 9 a.m.
on Wednesday, Jones holds more
than a 13 percentage point lead
in a crowded fi eld in the 17th District
and appears on track to become
the fi rst out gay Black person
elected to Congress, while Torres
vanquished his only opponent en
route to a victory in the Bronx’s
15th District, making him the fi rst
out gay Afro-Latinx member of
Congress and the fi rst out member
of the New York City congressional
delegation.
Within hours of polls closing at
9 p.m., the LGBTQ Victory Fund,
which works to elect out queer
public offi cials, declared both Torres
and Jones winners.
In a written victory statement,
Torres said, “We are at a crossroads
in the Bronx and in our nation. The
scourge of COVID-19 has laid bare
the inequalities that for too long
have been allowed to fester in our
communities. The hit our neighborhoods
have taken is stark, with
a pandemic laid over an economic
disaster with a recovery that helps
only those at the top, not at the
bottom. Quite simply, Bronxites
risked their lives in the spring and
while those they helped are recovering,
our community continues to
suffer. I will be a fi ghter for those
forgotten workers.”
Jones and Torres will join fourterm
incumbent Sean Patrick Maloney
— who represents the 18th
District just north of Jones’ district
At midnight on November 3, Mondaire Jones held a roughly 10 percentage point lead.
City Councilmember Ritchie Torres has won election to the US House from the Bronx.
but who found himself in a
surprisingly tight two-point race
with most of the election districts
accounted for — to give New York
State the largest LGBTQ delegation
in Congress.
Jones, according to unoffi cial totals
from the New York State Board
of Elections, holds a lead of about
50.2 to 36.7 percent over Republican
nominee Maureen McArdle
Schulman and faced no real threat
from third-party candidates Joshua
Eisen of the ECL Party, Yehudis
Gottesfeld of the Conservative
TWITTER/ @MONDAIREJONES
MATT TRACY
Party, and Michael Parietti of the
Serve America Movement Party.
Torres, who was endorsed by
Gay City News ahead of the June
primary, extinguished Republican
Patrick Delices, running up
the score with more than 84 percent
of the vote with 100 percent
of election districts reporting unoffi
cial results. Delices was a onetime
State Senate candidate who
was crushed by State Senator Luis
Sepúlveda of the Bronx in 2018.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic,
a large share of absentee ballots
POLITICS
were also submitted, but those
votes will not be fully tallied until a
week or more after the election.
Jones and Torres were widely expected
to clear the general election
hurdle after overcoming contentious
and crowded primary competitions
in their respective districts
earlier this year. Jones tallied
nearly three times as many votes
as the second-place fi nisher in an
eight-person primary contest that
also featured Assemblymember
David Buchwald and State Senator
David Carlucci. Torres fended
off a collection of formidable foes
in the June race, including Assemblymember
Michael Blake, who is
also vice chair of the Democratic
National Committee; former City
Council Speaker Melissa Mark-
Viverito; and an entrenched anti-
LGBTQ lawmaker, Ruben Diaz,
Sr., who admitted on Twitter on
November 3 that he voted for President
Donald Trump.
Torres, a 32-year-old city councilmember,
is already the fi rst out
gay elected offi cial in the history of
the Bronx — a feat in and of itself
considering the homophobia he endured
during his fi rst run for offi
ce in 2013. Seven years later, it
is the Bronx — not Manhattan or
any other borough — that has produced
the city’s fi rst out gay congressmember,
and he again faced
homophobic dog whistles when the
Sergeants Benevolent Association
labeled him as a “fi rst class whore”
in a recent tweet.
In an interview with Gay City
News last year, Torres elaborated
on his campaign for a seat that
has long been occupied by outgoing
Congressmember José E. Serrano.
“It’s an historic race,” Torres
said during that interview in May
of 2019. ”I’m Black, I’m Latino, I’m
LGBT. I’m a millennial. I’m a child
of the Bronx. My values and beliefs
are shaped by who I am and where
I come from. It’s true of most people
but it’s true of me especially.”
Torres has managed to move the
needle on LGBTQ issues at the city
➤ TWO GAY WINS, continued on p.8
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