Lifelong Queens Story: Brian Romero Seeks Assembly Seat
By MOHAMED FARGHALY
mfarghaly@queensledger.com
Brian Romero grew up in a flood-prone basement apartment in East Elmhurst, later couch-surfed through homelessness, and spent years working as a social worker and activist in western Queens. Now, the former chief of staff to Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas is running to succeed her in Assembly District 34, the same neighborhoods that shaped his politics and his life.
Assembly District 34 stretches across parts of East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, Woodside, Corona and Astoria.
Romero says his candidacy is rooted less in ambition than in lived experience, growing up poor, housing insecure and surrounded by the same pressures facing many families in western Queens today.
“I’ve lived in four of the neighborhoods of this district,” Romero said. “These neighborhoods are very personal to me.”
Romero is the son of Colombian immigrants who arrived in the United States on work visas. His father came first, followed by his mother and older sister; Romero and his identical twin brother were born in New York. The family lived in a basement apartment in East Elmhurst that was not up to code and flooded frequently, an experience Romero says shaped his views on housing and public safety.
“It flooded often,” he said. “We often had to put things above the ground. There were things we couldn’t have on the floor, because we were like, ‘That’s going to be ruined.’ And we had very little.”
When Romero was seven, his family unraveled. His father struggled with alcoholism and was abusive, leading Romero’s mother to leave with three children. She worked multiple jobs but could not keep up with the cost of rent. Eventually, the family became homeless.
Romero spent about a year sleeping on his aunt’s couch. His siblings were separated, staying with relatives and family friends while their mother worked to put the family back together.
“She tried,” Romero said. “Two jobs, three jobs. That’s why all the after-school programs were really important.”
The family eventually resettled in Astoria, chasing cheaper rents — a familiar story for many immigrant and working-class families in Queens. Romero attended I.S. 141, later enrolling at the Academy of American Studies, a Long Island City high school. Unsure of his future, he gravitated toward social work after a conversation with a priest who later became his godfather.
“He said, ‘Maybe you should consider social work. Sounds like you want to help people,’” Romero recalled.
Romero began his higher education at Borough of Manhattan Community College before transferring to John Jay College of Criminal Justice and later Hunter College, earning all of his degrees through the City University of New York. At BMCC, he joined an LGBTQ committee and became politically active, inspired in part by seeing openly gay men, including Danny Dromm and Jimmy Van Bramer, successfully run for office in Queens.
“It was the first time I thought, ‘Wow, people like that can actually win,’” he said.
That activism led to an internship with then-Councilmember Ydanis Rodríguez in 2018 and 2019, where Romero worked on legislation and budget issues while still an undergraduate. But he remained torn between politics and social work, ultimately choosing to pursue the latter.
After graduating, Romero worked in outpatient mental health clinics, including on the Lower East Side, before completing an internship at Rikers Island. The experience was deeply personal: Romero’s twin brother had been incarcerated at age 16, and Romero saw echoes of his family’s trauma in the young men he worked with.
“It wasn’t an easy job,” he said. “But there was something about being closer to those young men and being able to listen and be there for them.”
Romero later provided psychotherapy to young Black and brown men in the city’s juvenile detention system and worked extensively with immigrant communities, LGBTQ New Yorkers and people living with HIV. But he grew increasingly frustrated by the limits of clinical work.
“There’s gotta be something more I can do for them,” Romero said, describing patients who lost care due to insurance cuts, immigration status or poverty. “No matter how much I trained, the system kept failing them.”
That frustration pushed Romero back toward policy. He became a policy manager at the nonprofit GMHC, where he was forced to quickly learn the mechanics of city, state and federal advocacy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he helped build coalitions around healthcare access, criminal justice reform and the early “tax the rich” movement aimed at stabilizing nonprofits as funding evaporated.
It was during this period that Romero met González-Rojas, who was then running to unseat longtime Assemblymember Michael DenDekker. After she won, she asked Romero to become her chief of staff.
He hesitated, wary of elected office and determined not to abandon activism. Romero made his conditions clear, including continuing to participate in protests, even risking arrest.
“She said, ‘You’re an activist. I’m an activist too,’” Romero recalled. “She told me, ‘I would never stop you from being an activist.’”
Romero stayed for four and a half years. As chief of staff, he helped González-Rojas build relationships across ideological and regional lines in Albany, encouraging her to meet with more than 40 legislators during her first year. He points to the successful campaign for universal school meals as his proudest legislative accomplishment.
“I would not have been nourished as a kid were it not for free breakfast,” Romero said.
Those experiences now inform his pitch to voters. Romero describes himself as “all three”, an activist, a community board member and a legislative staffer — arguing that his background gives him a rare understanding of how policy affects people on the ground.
On public safety, Romero rejects a narrow law-and-order framing, arguing instead that safety is inseparable from affordability.
“I don’t distinguish community safety from the larger questions about affordability,” he said. “When the rent is as high as it is and people can’t afford housing, that is an unsafe situation.”
He supports expanding mental health services, school-based health clinics and access to care for undocumented immigrants, and argues that police are often tasked with problems they are not trained to solve.
“We cannot separate safety from affordability,” Romero said.
Romero has also staked out opposition to the planned casino development in Queens, while acknowledging the appeal of union jobs and new housing.
“I think our community absolutely deserves jobs and affordable housing,” he said. “I just wish we lived in a city and state where we didn’t rely on Steve Cohen to give us all these things.”
If elected, Romero says his priorities would center on three areas: making the wealthy “pay their fair share” to fund public services, protecting immigrant communities through measures like the New York for All Act and access to legal representation, and advancing an affordability agenda that includes social housing, a livable wage and universal childcare.
“No one should have to go through what I did as a kid,” Romero said. “We are treating individuals as disposable when we have such incredible wealth in this state.”
Romero has drawn endorsements from Rep. Nydia Velázquez, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, González-Rojas, Assemblymember Catalina Cruz, the Working Families Party and City Councilmember Julie Won.
Asked what success would look like after four years in office, Romero returned to the sense of solidarity he witnessed during the pandemic.
“A successful District 34 is one where we all show up for each other,” he said. “Because our livelihoods are connected.”
