Rebecca Lynch hired Richard Torres — a registered sex offender and convicted crack dealer — to help with her City Council campaign. Photo: Facebook ; Gregory P. Mango
A City Council candidate who used to work for Mayor Bill de Blasio hired a registered sex offender — who is also a convicted crack dealer— to go door to door for her to collect the signatures she needs to run for office, The Post has learned.
Records show Richard Torres pleaded guilty in 2005 to committing a lewd act on a child in South Carolina — but that didn’t stop Rebecca Lynch from tapping him this June to visit the homes of unsuspecting Queens families to gather names for ballot petitions.
“I like the things that she stands for. That’s the reason I got on the campaign,” said Torres, 41, who spent five years in prison for the crime.
Torres said he collected signatures not for money, but because Lynch supported a “ban the box” law to forbid employers from questioning job applicants about their criminal records.
And it’s no wonder — he was also convicted in 1997 of possession with intent to distribute crack, records show.
Torres described himself as a volunteer for Lynch’s campaign — even though state records show it paid him $660.
“People that work for her” didn’t ask him about his criminal past, he noted. And he didn’t bother to volunteer any details, he admitted.
Despite pleading guilty to the sex charge, Torres maintained his innocence when questioned last week by The Post, saying he took a deal only to avoid a more serious charge that carried a 30-year sentence.
“My wife set me up,” he said. “She said that I did something to her son. She took him to the hospital, and all the records came back negative.”
The youngster was 6 years old at the time, New York state records show.
Lynch, 27, a registered lobbyist for the Teamsters union who is backed by the Working Families Party, began working in de Blasio’s community-affairs unit in early 2014 and left last month.
She is one of four Democrats running for the Queens council seat vacated by Mark Weprin.
It appears Torres’ pavement-pounding helped Lynch’s campaign — she has secured over 1,860 signatures, according to a spokeswoman, easily surpassing the minimum 450 needed to be on the ballot for the September primary.
Lynch’s campaign distanced itself from Torres.
“Obviously, we are horrified,” said spokeswoman Sally Frank. “He hasn’t worked for us in weeks, and neither has the person who hired him.”
Last month, de Blasio and the City Council enacted a “ban the box” law, a move that Working Families Party leader Bill Lipton cheered as advancing the council’s “already impressive record of fighting for working families.”
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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