Councilman Omar Torres is the first openly gay Latino elected to the San Jose City Council. He represents District 3, which encompasses the downtown area. His key focus areas are enhancing educational institutions, expanding green spaces, fostering entrepreneurship, and promoting affordable housing.
Getting to where he is today has not come easy, not only because of homophobia rooted in his Catholic upbringing but in the Latino culture as well. “A lot of us in the Latino community struggle to come out to be our authentic selves,” he said. “Folks in our community are still a little bit conservative when it comes to that because we’re so religious. It is important for us to tell our community that, yes, we are gay. We are no different. We love our family, just like they should love us for who we are.”
Torres, 42, grew up hearing the F word not only in English but in Spanish, too. “I hate the P word in Spanish,” he said. When I hear that word, it just irritates me.”
Even as a council member, Torres still hears gay slur words, but takes them in strides, even laughing at them. “When I do a social media post or send out an email, I get folks who send me nasty emails back, saying ‘Hey F word, don’t send me your newsletter.’ I think, ‘well, unsubscribe,’ but they don’t, so they continue to see my lovely gay face,” he laughed.
Born into a rough neighborhood
Torres was born and raised in the “rough and tough” Guadalupe–Washington neighborhood in San Jose. His parents and grandparents, who worked at the Del Monte Canneries, instilled in him solid working-class values around education, community, and hard work.
“I experienced drug dealing, gangs, and sex workers all hours of the day,” he said. When Torres was 14, a fatal drive-by shooting near a neighborhood elementary school motivated him to organize the community to improve the neighborhood. That was the catalyst for his involvement.
“This unfortunate event resulted in a new beginning for my community, which included the creation of a new youth center and library,” he said. His city council website states that “instead of hiding and restricting our youth to their homes, we retook our neighborhood and ensured that it was a place for our youth to not only learn and grow but also flourish.”
“I didn’t want a cradle-to-prison pipeline that most of my friends went through. As an elected official, it’s important for me to break that. Our city should be creating a cradle-to-career or college pipeline for all of our youth.”
Early political involvement
Before diving into elective office, Torres served as executive director for a local non-profit providing community services to families. He also worked in various departments at City Hall and helped build neighborhood coalitions.
In 2008, Torres coordinated the local “No on Proposition 8” campaign. This was the anti-gay marriage initiative aimed to reverse the California State Supreme Court’s decision that overturned an earlier anti-marriage initiative, Proposition 22. He organized phone banks, rallies, and voter registration drives. Unfortunately, Proposition 8 passed, thus closing the 5-month window when gay marriages were recognized until the U.S. Supreme Court declared that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional in 2013.
Despite Proposition 8 winning, Torres’s year of fighting for LGBTQ+ rights motivated him to come out to his friends, coworkers, and family, which he said made his life easier.
Running for Office
As is the case for many first-time minority candidates, getting elected to a highly visible office is often a bar too high, so many start their elective careers in a down-ballot race, usually school board. This was true for Torres.
His first elected office came in 2014 when he ran for trustee of the Franklin-McKinley School Board, a small K-8 school district in central San Jose. Next came a race for trustee of the San Jose/Evergreen Community College Board in 2020. All of his extensive community work paid off when he ran for the downtown city council seat in 2022.
“I knocked on a lot of doors,” he said. “I went to the voters and said that I was the better candidate, especially with real-life experiences of going through the community college system and having deep roots in my community.”
In the city council race, Torres received the sole endorsement from the Santa Clara County Democratic Party and numerous LGBTQ+ organizations such as HONOR PAC, Equality California, Victory Fund, and the Bay Area Municipal Elections Committee (BAYMEC).
In somewhat of a surprise, he won the endorsement of the center-right San Jose Mercury News over a more conservative but novice opponent. He won his November runoff with an impressive 65% of the vote.
Torres said it’s important for him to create a pipeline for LGBTQ+ leaders. One of his first acts as a councilman was appointing Anthony Tordillos, an openly gay man, to the Planning Commission.
Open about his addiction
Torres has been very public about this substance abuse addiction.
“I currently attend AA meetings or Narcotics Anonymous meetings. I wouldn’t be here as a district council member if I didn’t work on my addiction,” he said, adding that January 9, 2017, was his last drink of alcohol. “I’m proudly gay, but I’m also proudly a recovering alcoholic. It has helped me become who I am. I drank myself almost to death because I couldn’t be my authentic self. Now I don’t have to do that anymore.”
Speaking very openly about his addiction, he continued to say how much he depends on the meetings he attends, his tribe, and his sponsor to stay sober. “I think it’s very important to tell that story,” he added.
Torres said campaign opponents tried to use his addiction against him, telling voters he was untrustworthy because he could relapse at any moment.
Torres believed this backfired. “What they should know is that there are millions of us in recovery,’ he stated. “So when I knocked on doors, some voters would tell me, ‘I didn’t like how your opponent or her volunteers would talk about your recovery. I’m in the program, and you get my vote.”
Serving with dignity
Torres said having an openly gay Latino person serving on the city council is “a very big deal.”
“It’s about serving with honor and dignity,” he said. “It’s filling in potholes and making sure trash is being collected and we’re housing our unhoused and folks have the services they need to survive. If our whole community is healthy, our city is also healthy.”
He said candidates need to know the issues, do their homework, garner financial support, and really want it. Torres urges queer political candidates not to give up, even if they’ve lost races. He encourages them to learn from their mistakes and from other political leaders.
“Once you’re elected, stay levelheaded and hold true to your values,” he said, “and remember why you are there in the first place.”
Torres is aware of the small number of queer elected officials in Santa Clara County. “It’s important for our community to have a seat at the table,” he said, adding more LGBTQ+ candidates need to be recruited into local politics.
Torres is encouraged to see more women-owned small businesses, and more LGBTQ+ members and immigrants moving downtown. He wants to ensure downtown continues to be the epicenter of the LGBTQ+ community, anchored by a vehicle-restricted gay-oriented Post Street.
His immediate dream for San Jose is to have construction cranes in the air, a budget surplus, and office workers back downtown.
He is inspired by prior presidents, John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama, for their resilience. He also admires retired openly gay Santa Clara County Supervisor Ken Yeager and fierce, strong women like prior Councilmember Magdalena Carrasco and Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez.
“I’m resilient. I don’t take no for an answer,” he said. “I look past the ills of our society and keep moving forward. At the end of the day, we’re fighting for our community.”
