Ritchie Torres

Ritchie Torres has represented New York's 15th congressional district in the Bronx since January 2021, and is among the most improbable and strategically significant pro-Israel voices in the United States Congress. Born May 12, 1988, in the Bronx to a Puerto Rican mother and an African-American father, Torres grew up in public housing in the Throggs Neck section of the Bronx, one of the poorest urban communities in America. NY-15 — which covers the South Bronx — is consistently ranked the poorest congressional district in the United States by median household income. Torres worked as a housing activist before being elected to the New York City Council at age 25 in 2013, making him the youngest City Council member elected at that time. He came out as gay during his council tenure, becoming the first openly gay Afro-Latino member of Congress upon his election in 2020.

Torres's emergence as a leading pro-Israel voice defies the standard demographic and ideological profile of the progressive urban left he emerged from. He has called the characterization of Gaza as a genocide a "blood libel" — the strongest language any Democratic member of Congress has deployed on the issue. In February 2024, he formally resigned from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, citing its positions on Israel as incompatible with his own. He has appeared at pro-Israel rallies, written op-eds in Jewish publications defending Israel's military operations, and positioned himself as the counterargument to the Squad — the proof that a Black and Latino progressive from the poorest district in America can reach independent conclusions about the Middle East that contradict the ideological consensus of his political tribe.

The political pressure on Torres is acute: in the 2026 election cycle, he faces at least four primary challengers, all running explicitly on anti-Israel platforms. The primary will be the most watched congressional race in the country among pro-Israel observers — a referendum on whether a pro-Israel Democrat can survive in the South Bronx. Torres's significance on the Iron 100 is structural, not transactional: he demonstrates that the pro-Israel coalition is not a monolith of white Republican evangelicals and wealthy Jewish donors, but a cross-racial, cross-class alliance that can hold even under maximum leftist pressure. At Rank 14, Torres is the most politically endangered pro-Israel voice in Congress — and the most valuable precisely because of it.