Charlie Ramos is betting that State Senator Ruben Diaz Sr. has outworn his welcome. Diaz’s conservative positions on abortion, gays and other hot button issues have alienated his constituents, Ramos believes, leaving the veteran legislator vulnerable. So the 40-year-old South Bronx native is challenging the 67-year-old incumbent in the Sept. 14 Democratic primary.
Ramos, a former organizer for Diaz’ son Ruben Diaz Jr., when the Bronx Borough President was then a state Assemblyman, contends that his strong roots in the South Bronx help him to understand the concerns of its residents, and he believes he is more in touch with them than his opponent.
“The people of the Bronx are hurting, and our state government is not doing anything for them,” Ramos said in a May 11 interview.
Ramos says his empathy for fellow Bronxites stems from his own background as the son of a single Puerto Rican mother who was discriminated against because her skin is dark.
Ramos, who grew up and still lives in Soundview, recently started Bronx for Change, an online network seeking to educate Bronxites about politics and decision-making, and to get them involved in the political process.
“It’s disheartening here when you see the lack of political leadership,” Ramos said. “There’s no mechanism to develop our next generation of political leaders.”
He said his decision to run came Diaz voted to kill funding to help HIV-positive New Yorkers get treatment, and an HIV-positive friend told him he would give Ramos his last $20 if he ran against the senator.
Despite his worry that not enough Bronxites concern themselves with elections, he thinks his experience as an organizer will help him get a leg up on the incumbent in September. Ramos worked in local Democratic campaigns, including the assembly race of Ruben Diaz Jr., and for President Obama in 2008. For three years he was the Bronx representative of City Comptroller William Thompson.
Ramos thinks the public is under a “delusion that Latinos don’t know how to organize. Look at Miami,” he said, referring back to time he spent in Florida. There, he said, Cubans whose politics he opposed but whose methods he admired, did what?
His differences with Diaz are profound, he says. “Education, anti-aids, HIV: My mantra has been I’m pro-marriage equality, pro-choice and pro-change.”
“I look at it like a national race,” he said, adding he has gotten support and donations from across the country from people looking to defeat Diaz for his conservative positions on social issues. Diaz, a Pentecostal minister, briefly defected to the Republicans in 2008 over the issue of gay marriage. Ramos says he has garnered support because Diaz has become “the lightning rod against gay marriage, not just in New York, across the country.”
On local issues, too, Ramos claims, Diaz often votes “against the interests that affect this community.”
He lists education, jobs and health care as the issues he would focus on most intently if elected.
He thinks the public school curriculum should be more well-rounded, preparing students for adulthood with classes that address finances and politics, to create “a very holistic, educated population.”
Although he says there are numerous health clinics across the South Bronx, Ramos thinks the quality of health care can and should be improved upon. “Sometimes it seems like a warehouse,” he said of the clinics.
Public housing is another area where Ramos believes structural changes should be made to help Bronxites. He believes the model for public housing should be changed to allow integration of low-income with middle-income tenants. He says that neighbors with jobs would provide a model for young tenants from poor families.
“If your neighbors are going to work, you really have nowhere to hang out,” he said.
“Why not sell some apartments and rent the rest?” as a way to mix income levels in a single building, he suggested. “Create a formula that works for everybody.”
As for neighborhood issues, Ramos sees untapped potential in the district, starting with the Hunts Point food market.
“It’s kind of ironic that you have the Hunts Point Market, one of the biggest food co-ops in the country, to then have people suffering from obesity right next door,” he said. He suggested that a partnership between the market and local bodegas and supermarkets could provide tax incentives to businesses and lower priced fruits and vegetables for residents.
He says he also sees possibilities for a duty-free zone to compete with the one in New Jersey that could bring jobs to the neighborhood.
A version of this story appeared in the June issue of The Hunts Point Express.