Torres Survived the Primary, Then Opposed an Israel Aid Cut

Card photograph: ARCHIVE, June 25, 2024. Ritchie Torres speaks at the Israeli Embassy’s We Belong: Pride and Solidarity event in Washington. Ted Eytan / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0. Cropped for the card; adaptation shared under the same license. Source photograph.

Ritchie Torres won New York’s 15th District Democratic primary on June 23 with roughly 72% of the vote, defeating Michael Blake and Jose Vega. Ballotpedia’s election account confirmed the result. Three weeks later, he voted against a broad Israel funding restriction in the House. The challenge from his left had not changed that position.

City & State’s July 1 reporting described a lopsided campaign: Torres had about $15 million in resources against Blake’s roughly half-million. Blake failed to win endorsements from Zohran Mamdani or the Working Families Party. The result contrasted with other 2026 primary defeats for heavily supported Israel-aligned Democrats, including Haley Stevens in Michigan.

City & State reported about $1.6 million in individual contributions routed to Torres through AIPAC over his congressional career. That is a career total, not one payment from AIPAC during this primary. His campaign defended him through his Bronx roots and local record; the outlet also documented support from established borough politicians.

A local record alongside the foreign-policy fight

Blake focused his challenge on affordability and Torres’s support for Israel. Torres’s campaign emphasized housing repairs and internet access in low-income housing. Ballotpedia described those competing appeals and noted Torres’s prior City Council service. Both candidates claimed to represent material needs in the Bronx, rather than campaigning solely on foreign policy.

City & State reported that Torres appeared alongside Mamdani at a May event on neighborhood internet access, despite their disagreement over Israel. It also described his established relationships in the district. Those details complicate the idea that an Israel-policy challenge alone explains a primary outcome: an incumbent can maintain local alliances while defending positions that left organizers oppose.

ARCHIVE, December 2020. Ritchie Torres’s official portrait for the 117th Congress. Ike Hayman / House Creative Services, U.S. House of Representatives. Public domain. Source photograph.

From Iron Dome to the July funding vote

In a July 2025 interview with David Frum, Torres defended Iron Dome as protection for Israeli Jews and Arabs against rockets. He criticized opposition to both defensive and offensive assistance. That argument distinguished interceptors from weapons used in attacks, but did not resolve the separate question of conditions on offensive transfers.

The July 15 House vote presented a broader restriction. Massie’s amendment would have prohibited Israel funding within the act and reduced Foreign Military Financing by $3.3 billion, according to the House vote sheet. Torres voted no.

For Palestinian-solidarity organizers, that vote identifies a concrete disagreement over U.S. support, beyond Torres’s defense of missile interception. A broad appropriations prohibition and a restriction on one weapons sale have different scopes. They also give Congress different ways to place limits on the military relationship.

Torres also won another term in the November 3 general election, amNewYork/Bronx Times reported, citing unofficial New York City Board of Elections returns. The result returned him to Congress with the same documented position: support for the security relationship and opposition to July’s proposed funding restriction.