Ruben Diaz Jr. has been around politics in the Bronx for a long time, seeing the changing borough through the course of the 21st century. The former Bronx borough president surprised many when he declined to seek the mayoralty in 2021 and made a pivot to private life, becoming a senior vice president at Montefiore Einstein in the Bronx. In light of City & State\u2019s 20th anniversary, Diaz talked about the changes in Bronx politics since 2006, including the rise of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the overhaul of the borough\u2019s roster of elected officials and when a Latino will get elected to citywide or statewide office. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n
How would you characterize just how Bronx politics has changed over the past 20 years?<\/p>\n
Dramatically, in one word. If you look at every single elected official in the Bronx right now, I want to say, in the last 20 years, since 2006, I think it\u2019s only Carl Heastie, Jeff Dinowitz and maybe (Jose M.) Serrano who are the only ones that are still elected. So I think if you look at all of the elected officials in the Bronx, I think less than a handful were elected then. Demographically speaking, you look at the area in Throggs Neck, Morris Park, once upon a time, you had all white men who represented that area, from Jeff Klein, Jimmy Vacca, and now it\u2019s all Latino women. So the demographic is changing in that part of the Bronx. You have a growing Latino population, especially with Dominicans. You have more Dominicans elected than ever before. I think in 2006 there wasn\u2019t one single elected Dominican in the Bronx. And of course, you didn\u2019t have a female borough president (in 2006), didn\u2019t have a Black borough president, so I would say, dramatically.<\/p>\n
How has this demographic shift impacted Bronx politics?<\/p>\n
I would say that what we have now is the majority of the electeds in the Bronx are female. What we see now is there is a certain level of thought and sophistication, and they\u2019re all professionals. Taking nothing away from those whose shoulders we stand on, but I think that we started to see a Bronx elected official, I think, taken much more seriously than ever in the past because of that sophistication, that professionalism.<\/p>\n
New York City has a large Latino population, but there have been very few Latino major party nominees for citywide or statewide office, and no Latinos elected citywide or statewide. Will that change?<\/p>\n
I was one of the people who wanted to change that, but it didn\u2019t work out for me, because of my family. I made a decision to walk away from running for mayor. I think I would have had a pretty good chance of being the mayor back in 2021. I do think, however, that\u2019s a conversation that the Latino leadership needs to have within itself. So what happens is a lot of times people try to blame other folks and other communities, but we have a lot of elected officials. We have a lot of people who are talented, but for many different reasons, we haven\u2019t been able to accomplish that.<\/p>\n
So whether it\u2019s that we\u2019re not monolithic in terms of political philosophies and people want to put us all in one box, whether people feel like they rather walk away and become entrepreneurs, whether or not, quite frankly, we see elected people who are either already elected or have something to offer, who don\u2019t have the discipline to stay on course or may not want to put in the work. Or even worse, sometimes being undermined \u2013 I\u2019m giving you some juicy stuff here \u2013 or whether there\u2019s undermining happening within our community. Those are all things that maybe one day there\u2019s got to be a Latino conference so that we can get all of that in order. What I\u2019m telling you right now is extremely controversial.<\/p>\n
Because you know what they\u2019ll say? For instance, someone will say, \u2018Well, why we couldn\u2019t have a lieutenant governor?\u201d Well, the governor tried. The governor interviewed many Latinos, and for whatever reason, for many different reasons, people said \u201cno.\u201d Or other people undermine it. Undermined some of the would-be candidates or, you know, because of people\u2019s political differences or philosophies. We could have a Latino run for mayor again. Why don\u2019t Latinos coalesce around one candidate? We\u2019ll get it together at some point, and I\u2019m going to hear it from folks when they read about this one, but that\u2019s good because the conversation needs to happen, and somebody has to call it out for what it is. If we don\u2019t have Latinos, and people are blaming me, people say, \u201cWell, Ruben, you could have been the first Latino citywide.\u201d OK, yes. And then I\u2019ve had my reasons, but that\u2019s my point. My point is that the reasons why we don\u2019t have citywide, statewide Latinos in office is something that has to be resolved within the Latino community and leadership.<\/p>\n
Do you think we will see a Latino elected citywide or statewide in the next four to eight years?<\/p>\n
The solution to that lies with the Latina leaders. I think when you look at the future of city and state politics in New York, when you look at the future of Latino politics, that future lies and rests in the hands of the elected Latinas. Once they get together, the sky\u2019s the limit for our community.<\/p>\n
Why do you say the Latina leadership?<\/p>\n
Because Latinos, the men, already had our turn, and they\u2019re the ones out there. They have larger numbers in terms of elected office. They\u2019re the feisty ones. They\u2019re all intelligent, they\u2019re all caring. They all have phenomenal backgrounds. So I put my bet on them.<\/p>\n
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is mentioned as a potential candidate for president or for the U.S. Senate in 2028, the first time in over 30 years since a Bronxite has been a serious contender for statewide or national office. What are your thoughts?<\/p>\n
I have absolutely no idea. But I think that the sky\u2019s the limit for her. It\u2019s all predicated on what she wants to do. It\u2019s never a bad thing to have different options. A Latina from the Bronx being mentioned as a potential presidential candidate or vice presidential candidate or U.S. Senate candidate, that already says a lot about her and what she\u2019s been able to accomplish. It\u2019s exciting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ruben Diaz Jr. has been around politics in the Bronx for a long time, seeing the changing borough…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[72903,128,12617,9,24,63,87,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-181077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-20th-anniversary","tag-bronx","tag-interviews-profiles","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-politics","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}