Political Activity and Public Service
In 1972, Torres was defeated in his first election for a seat in the California State Assembly by 615 votes. Soon after the election, he became the national legislative director for the United Farm Workers, AFL-CIO, at 25 years of age.
Two years later, Torres won a seat in the California State Assembly, where he served for the next eight years. In 1982, he was elected to the State Senate, unseating incumbent Alex Garcia after an extremely bitter Democratic primary.
Torres served in the State Senate for another twelve years, from 1982 to 1994. He served as chairman of the Insurance Committee, Assembly Health Committee, Senate Joint Committee on Science and Technology, the Joint Committee on Refugees, the Senate Committee on the Entertainment Industry, and he was the founding chairman of the Senate Toxics Committee. Torres co-authored legislation that created the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, and the California Clean Water Act.
In 1994, Torres was nominated for insurance commissioner, making him the first Latino Democrat nominated for a state-wide office in California history. Torres would eventually be defeated by Republican Assemblyman Chuck Quackenbush.
Torres found himself in the midst of controversy when on January 14, 1995, speaking at the University of California, Riverside to a group composed mainly of Latinos, Torres said that Proposition 187, passed by voters months prior, was "the last gasp of white America in California."
Torres served as a German Marshall Fund Fellow and delivered a paper on Western European immigration issues. He was appointed by the United States Senate, by the late US Senator Edward M. Kennedy, to the Commission on International Migration and Cooperative Economic Development, which presented its recommendations on immigration reform to then President George H.W. Bush in 1990.
Torres served as President of the Kaitz Foundation, dedicated to bringing more people of color into management within the cable television industry through the Kaitz Fellowship program. The foundation provided grants to minority oriented motion picture and cable television associations. The Kaitz Board was comprised by a majority of the top CEOs in the cable television industry.
Senator Torres is a member of the Board of "One Legacy," an organ transplant foundation in Los Angeles, and the Latino Community Foundation, serving the Bay Area and headquartered in San Francisco. He has served on the Board of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the San Francisco Ballet, “Heal the Bay” in Santa Monica, and the Advisory Board of The Princeton Review.
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