An openly gay councilman from the Bronx
is leading a 12-person field of Democrats in Tuesday's primary to
replace outgoing U.S. House Representative José
E. Serrano, who announced last year that he was fighting a
diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease and would not seek re-election.
While absentee ballots are still being
counted, Ritchie Torres was leading the pack with 30.4 percent of the
vote. Ruben Diaz, Sr., a vocal opponent of LGBT rights, was trailing
in third place with 14.8 percent.
The winner of Tuesday's Democratic
primary will face Orlando Molina, a Republican who ran uncontested,
in the fall.
As he left an election night event,
Diaz refused to speak with NY1's Juan Manuel Benitez, telling the
reporter – and by extension the news outlet – that he was “bad.”
“It would be the honor of my life to
represent [the South Bronx]. It's my home,” Torres, who is
Afro-Latino, told NY1. “And I would not be here today were it not
for my mother. And South Bronx is full of mothers like mine who have
suffered and struggled and sacrificed so that her baby boy could have
a better life than she did. And the opportunity to represent the
essential workers of this borough, to represent the powerful mothers
of this borough; it's the culmination of a dream.”
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the
nation's largest LGBT rights advocate, congratulated Torres in a
statement.
“Ritchie Torres has always been a
change-maker, a rare elected official with both the vision and skill
to move a community forward – and that's exactly what he’s done
again,” said HRC President Alphonso David. “While all the votes
are yet to be counted, voters in New York clearly embraced an
inclusive future and a leader with a vision to make positive change.”
“These potential results are also a
major win for the progressive movement. The National Organization for
Marriage’s endorsed candidate, Rev. Rubén Díaz, Sr., represents
an antiquated, biased philosophy of the past, not the future of the
Democratic Party or our nation,” he added, referring to the nation's
largest group opposed to marriage equality. (Since the legalization
of same-sex marriage, NOM has widened its agenda to oppose LGBT
rights in general.)
Diaz, a 77-year-old Pentecostal
minister, was leading in the polls. Last year, out Council Speaker
Corey Johnson called for Díaz's resignation after he claimed that
the Council was “controlled by the homosexual community.”
In 2016, Torres was a delegate for the
Bernie Sanders campaign.