07/09/10 Fourth District Republican Congressional Candidate Rick Torres' Interviewed By The Fairfield Minuteman

Rick interviewed by Fairfield Minuteman Hi New Canaan Friends , I wanted to share with you the just published interview I had with the Fairfield Minuteman. Please see it below or click the link. Torres: I'll bring small-government approach to Congress Published: Thursday, July 08, 2010 by G. C. Peters Rick Torres has carefully honed his political philosophy on the whetstone of life in the two Black Rock sections of Bridgeport where, first, he grew up and, second, where he and his wife Michel raised a family. He is tough-skinned on the one hand and philosophical on the other. He is a cabinetmaker and a jack-of all trades. He is proud of his business, the Harborview Market, not only because it engages him with the public but also because it allows him to chat with his friends over a cup of coffee about the critical issues of the day. Torres will be a candidate in the Republican 4th District Congressional primary in August. Dan Debicella received his party’s nomination in May. We were sitting at an outdoor table when Torres arrived. His first words after introductions were, “Let’s go.” He led the way to his van, we hopped in and he started talking as soon as we drove off. He explained that he wanted to show us what he was all about. He drove to his home as he talked about his vision, one that he knows well because he has lived the two parts of it: the one where his family was dependent on government and the one where he learned to stand on his own two feet. “We’ve been in the same house for 21 years. It’s a cool thing, this old-fashioned American neighborhood. It’s a good place to connect with friends.” He parks his van and says, “You won’t meet a more conservative person than me. “I’m a Bullard-Havens Technical High School carpenter, one of the most arrogant of all trades. I did all the work. My wife tolerates me.” To be fair, he worked his way through prep school education in exchange for carpentry work. He went to college where he met his future wife and then married her. From there, Torres went to graduate school before he dropped out to support a family. Upon arriving at his home, he parked, we exited, and he promptly started to cover his life as husband and father, who with his skills made all the necessary repairs and improvements from the landscaping walls to the pool in the backyard, from the interior cabinets to the kitchen counter. As he spoke and moved from outdoor to indoor and then to the backyard, he called out to those young adult children at home by name, to a daughter coming down the stairs with a basketful of laundry, to his wife who was busy in the house. All were part of his eagerness to explain himself to the fullest. And they, as the most important part of his life, were there to share his enthusiasm for another campaign. This is the present tense of his life, his home—now to the P. T. Barnum Apartments. We got into his van, and Torres, thoroughly convincing and extremely serious about his goal of becoming the 4th District’s Congressman, ousting Jim Himes, is still talking, almost non-stop. He is going to show us the other half of Black Rock, the past tense of his life. The one he lived in when he was permitted to come back to the States from Cuba because he had been born here and had left with his family because of the Cuban Batista’s ouster by Castro. But things were not what they had seemed. One dictator supplanted another with another set of politics. Torres stopped at the corner of Clinton Park and showed us just where he lived, the exact spot in what had been “government housing” but is now the southwest corner of Stop and Shop. He could see the rest of the tenement housing in P.T. Barnum from his room. Suddenly, a driver making a turn, looking our way, was seen by Torres who says, “I know that guy. I grew up with a lot of guys who are still here.” “Here” are the P.T. Barnum Apartments. And right “here” is where he ruminates aloud on his philosophical fundamentals as a Republican candidate for Congress. “Eliminate public housing,” he says fearlessly. Public housing is a permanent life style. It is not the American Dream. This and where he lives now are the two sides of Black Rock. “The continuum here is that there is no ownership. That’s the awful reality. These folks will never taste it.” Then he drove to Iranistan Avenue, to the heart of his thesis, where on the right side of Iranistan is a beautifully maintained, sophisticatedly laid-out community, built in 1918 of brick. 257 modest houses put up in 90 days, a housing co-op of private homes called Seaside Park, all brick, all double hung windows with neat lawns and flower beds, on neat intertwining streets where all kinds of people live in a clean and relatively prosperous setting. Whereas across the street is Marina Village, a complex of row houses, row upon row of government housing. Those buildings on Iranistan have wire mesh grills on first floor windows, one building after another. Turn the corner on our walk through the project and we are immediately struck by the differences of a group of people who have no ownership and no incentive to defend their property against the villainous blight. And now, Torres, who has been speaking the whole time, telling us how if only these people were given their homes here, things would improve or those who showed pride in ownership would work together to maintain their properties and see to it that others did too. Torres the candidate introduces himself, speaks to the people he sees on the street, and later says aloud, “This has to change. This is what I want to change.” The candidate Torres is the same Torres who does not tire expounding on his dissertation on the twin images of the neighborhood he grew up in. He believes, “I’m for small government in defense of liberty, meaning: giving people back control.” We get back in the car and he shows us the University of Bridgeport, an anomaly dropped into the heart of the most beautiful part of the City, side by side with what is the best and worst of Bridgeport, and beyond the University, Seaside Park and some of the best beaches around. Torres is exuberant about this part of Bridgeport, you can feel the kinship in the tenor of his voice. He played here as a kid. He says it; he wants to go to Congress to remedy the situation that is Bridgeport. He wants to teach people the need to stand on their own two feet. He would have those in the projects take ownership, and let them climb out by their own bootstraps. On the way back to the Harborview Market, his family’s place of business, Torres swings by the property alongside the finger inlets and parks in front of a gated barbed-wire lot and deplores the view of what is most beautiful to him and shameful, part of a waterfront that has been given up to a huge public incinerator and open lots that serve as a construction company’s transfer station for hills of dirt. Torres sits and looks at the piles of dirt and says of it and the area, “This is an atrocity, waterfront property—the brilliance of a garbage plant and using waterfront to store dirt.” He reflects some more. He thinks again about the waste of humanity, and even as he does, a woman with her daughter who recognizes him drives by and stops to chat. He does. Torres is running for Congress for Social Justice. “That’s the difference between the two parties: Social Justice.” Thanks for taking time to read the interview. Please remember that I do need your generous contributions to win this election. A contribution of $25, $50, or $100 can help me win. P.S. If you haven't seen it yet, please watch my video interview with Judge Napolitano on Freedom Watch. Sincerely, Rick Torres Rick Torres 2010 Logo is registered trademarks of Rick Torres for Congress. Rick Torres for Congress P.O. Box 3311, Bridgeport, CT 06605.