As chair of the Oversight and Investigations Committee he focused on predatory lending associated with taxi medallion procurement and the city's Third Party Transfer Program.

[5] In July 2019, Torres announced his bid for New York's 15th congressional district to succeed Representative José E. Serrano.

[10] Torres attended Herbert H. Lehman High School, served in the inaugural class of the Coro New York Exploring Leadership Program, and later worked as an intern in the offices of the mayor and the attorney general.

[17] In that role, Torres conducted site inspections and documented conditions, ensuring housing issues were promptly and adequately addressed.

[27] He also secured nearly $1 million to renovate Dennis Lane Apartments, a Mitchell-Lama co-op in the heart of his district,[27] and "played a crucial role in exposing the city's failures to address lead-paint contamination.

"[1] In August 2019, along with fellow council member Vanessa Gibson, Torres announced Right To Counsel 2.0, an expansion of legal aid to NYCHA tenants facing eviction.

[28] Since the original law passed in 2017, providing legal help throughout the entire eviction case, the council has found 84% of tenants were able to stay in their homes.

[31] Torres's bill would compel these companies to be transparent about the practice "by explicitly stating it in their terms of service or by sending a notification as a transaction is being approved".

[31] As chair of the oversight and investigations committee, newly empowered in January 2018 by city council speaker Corey Johnson,[32] Torres said he had documentation that as early as 2010 the Bloomberg administration was "aware that medallion prices could crumple",[33] a year before ride hailing pioneer Uber started its service in the city.

[34][37] Torres said the "medallion market collapse is a cautionary tale" and "one of the greatest government scandals in the history of New York City".

[33] In July 2019, Torres proposed legislation to address the movement in New York toward cashless business practices at stores and restaurants.

[39] The businesses accept only bank cards and e-commerce payments rather than hard currency, in part for higher efficiency, possibly streamlining both cashiering, and accounting; and for security reasons, as having cash risks robbery.

[41] The TPT was started in 1996 under Giuliani's administration to let the Department of Housing and Preservation (HPD) transfer "derelict, tax-delinquent buildings to nonprofits that could rehabilitate and manage them", ostensibly for working-class people, freeing the city from ownership, or responsibility for tenants.

[42] Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration characterized the TPT as a tool for taking over "distressed properties" in "blighted" areas".

[43] The report,[a] however, holds that characterization is in tension with its findings, which implicate malfeasance by both NYC's HPD and the Department of Finance (DOF), detailing how the agencies were "targeting and taking of numerous black and brown owned properties, and thus stripping these communities of millions of dollars of generational wealth".

[1] Torres said he was seeking the office to pursue "his legislative passions of overhauling public housing and focusing on the issues of concentrated poverty".

[47][50] Media outlets contextualized the contest between the two, noting their age difference; contrasting levels of experience; and Torres's open homosexuality versus Díaz's track record of anti-LGBT rhetoric.

[1] According to The New York Times, Díaz had "a decades-long history of making homophobic remarks";[15] LGBTQ Nation said his anti-LGBT rhetoric started in the early 1990s, right after his start in city politics, when he claimed the city's hosting the 1994 Gay Games "would spread AIDS and corrupt children".

The 15th and its predecessors have been in Democratic hands for all but 11 months since 1927, the lone break in this tradition being American Labor Party member Leo Isacson from February 1948 to January 1949.

"[62][63] Torres voted with President Joe Biden's stated position 100% of the time in the 117th Congress, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis.

He suggested that public housing should be "a model for green and energy efficient buildings to help combat climate change while addressing its capital needs.

"[68] Torres has called the Cross Bronx Expressway "a structure of environmental racism" and supports a plan to cover the highway with green space.

[74][75] In July 2023, Torres was among 49 Democrats to break with President Joe Biden, by voting for a ban on cluster munitions to Ukraine.

[78] On November 7, 2023, Torres was one of 22 House Democrats who voted successfully to censure Rashida Tlaib, passing a resolution that accused her of, "...promoting false narratives regarding the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack," as well as criticized, in particular, her use of the slogan "from the river to the sea".

[79] In explaining why he voted for the censure, Torres wrote on Twitter, “Congress has a right to take a principled stand against hate speech calling for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish nation-state.”[80] In February 2024, he left the Congressional Progressive Caucus due to disagreements over the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

[81] Torres voted in favor of three military aid package supplementals for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan respectively in April 2024, along with most Democrats.

[87] He is a member of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus and has been a prominent critic of SEC chair Gary Gensler's "regulation by enforcement" strategy towards cryptocurrencies.

[91] Torres supported "defunding the police” at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement following the murder of George Floyd.

He said that there "needs to be a radical redistribution of resources from policing into social services and community based alternatives to overcriminalization,” and touted his work as a then-City Council member to successfully cut the NYPD’s budget.