When former New York City Councilmember Ritchie Torres decided to run for New York’s 15th Congressional District seat in the 2020 election, he knew he would be faced with uncertainty.
The then 32-year-old was running against longtime New York politician Ruben Diaz, Sr. in the Democratic primary.
“There was skepticism that a young gay man could win in the South Bronx,” he tells CNBC Make It. “And there was skepticism that I, in particular, could defeat the leading candidate in the race, Ruben Diaz, Sr.” Torres points out that in 2011, Diaz was the only Democrat to vote against marriage equality in the New York State Senate.
“Against all odds,” Torres says, he won that race and also won the general election race and became the first openly gay Afro-Latino to be elected to Congress.
“Who would have thought that the first openly LGBTQ congressman from New York City would come not from Chelsea, or the Village, or Hell’s Kitchen. But from the South Bronx, the place where you least might expect it,” he says. “My election represents a distinctive kind of breakthrough in LGBTQ representation in politics.”
Torres win in the 2020 election came at a time when more than 1,000 LGBTQ+ leaders ran for office, the most in U.S. history, reports the LGBTQ Victory Fund. Of those who ran, more than 220 won their race.
CNBC Make It spoke to Torres, along with three other LGBTQ+ politicians about their history-making win in the 2020 election, the power of representation in politics and the advice they have for other LGBTQ+ individuals who want to run for office.
