Ritchie Torres: ‘We Should Break That Cycle of Insanity’

The Bronx’s moderate congressman on Israel, immigration, Daniel Penny and the possibility of a primary challenge against Gov. Kathy Hochul

 

By Tunku Varadarajan of The WSJ. Excerpts from the interview:

"What would Gov. Torres do? He offers a list. “Nowhere is the system in the state more broken than on the subject of public safety.” Recently enacted state laws prevent judges from considering public-safety risks when ruling on the detention of pretrial defendants, make it harder to impose bail as a condition of release, and impose “discovery rules with layers and layers of paperwork that have crippled district attorneys.” As a result, repeat offenders are routinely released onto the street.

Mr. Torres would also “favor cooperation with the federal government” in the removal of “an undocumented immigrant who has a violent criminal history, or a history of recidivism,” and roll back the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. “There’s nothing compassionate or progressive about allowing those with severe mental illness to languish and die on the streets and subways of New York.”"

"Mr. Torres also departs from the party line on education and energy. He would “defend the right of every parent to send their children to the school that is best for them” and wants “a variegated educational landscape that includes public schools, charter schools, private schools and religious schools.” He likes charter schools, which New York law limits in number. “You can either raise the cap,” he says, “or you can shut down charter schools that are underperforming and then free up slots. I would be supportive of either course of action.”

"He opposed the 2021 closing of the Indian Point nuclear power plant and breaks with his party’s green absolutists by asserting that “nuclear is the most scalable, reliable form of clean energy.”"

 

"“The reality is that the fracking ban in upstate New York, on the one hand, serves the goal of clean energy. But on the other hand, it has probably deepened the crisis of working-class depopulation in New York state.”"

 

"Whether or not he becomes governor, Mr. Torres wants to have a national impact. “I hope,” he says, “to be the face and voice of a movement to reorient the Democratic Party back to the center on issues like public safety and border security. There’s a need to return to the basics.”

He says Kamala Harris’s defeat demonstrates “that we swung the pendulum so far to the left that we fell out of touch with working-class voters, including working-class voters of color, who historically have voted for the Democratic Party. . . . Trump managed to build the kind of multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual working-class coalition that Democrats like me dream of building.”

Most Democrats are center-left, Mr. Torres believes, but “the far left has an outsized impact in defining the public’s perception of the party. We in the center have to clearly differentiate ourselves from the far left or we risk being associated with something that is deeply unpopular. . . . We should break that cycle of insanity.”"