Head of CASA is a man with a plan

Gustavo Torres is everywhere and nowhere, like air, an essential quality for a movement man. Tonight, it also makes him the perfect anxious host, dressed in a plain suit and tie that help him disappear. He chats up this cluster of guests here, reappears by that new clump of visitors there, then surfaces again in another room altogether — until everyone feels at home in one of the great mansions of suburban Washington.

“Welcome to CASA; this is your house!” he says, opening his arms as wide as Jay Gatsby beckoning friends into a dream come true.

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This is not a Gatsby crowd, however, nibbling spanakopita after crossing the Ionic portico — even if the three-story red brick Georgian Revival pile was built by swells in the Jazz Age.

These are swaggering honchos of Big Labor, mingling with like-minded politicians, soft-spoken clergy, cunning idealists who hard-bargain on behalf of night cleaners, and simple residents of the teeming garden apartments visible outside every window of the mansion — which is set like a mirage on a hill in the heart of the struggling immigrant barrio that got its name from the mansion: Langley Park.

They have been summoned on this winter evening to the new home of CASA of `Maryland, where Torres is executive director. CASA’s previous casa was a construction trailer, until Torres drove the $13.8 million rehab of the abandoned estate.

“This has got to be the snazziest office of any immigrant-rights organization in the country,” says Eliseo Medina, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union. “The people who started this plantation, if only they had known it would become the People’s home.”

The guests move from the dark wood-paneled grand salon to an equally elegant reception room.

The ostensible purpose of the evening is to honor Medina, along with SEIU President Mary Kay Henry. But in their remarks, the speakers can’t help paying homage to Torres and CASA.

“I’d like to say I’m here for Mary Kay and Eliseo, but when Gustavo Torres calls, I generally get in my car and go over and ask him what he wants,” says Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot.

There’s a subtext of anticipation for the Maryland legislative session, when Torres will help lead a coalition pushing to allow undocumented Maryland high school graduates to pay in-state college tuition. But why stop there?

“I’ve started to lobby Gustavo,” Medina says. “Are you just a CASA of Maryland? How about a CASA of the East? A CASA of the United States?”

Torres squints bashfully. As a matter of fact, he has been thinking along similar lines. His own immigrant journey is not over yet. At the peak of his influence, he is on the cusp of his greatest legislative victory — albeit one that is being diluted by a populist backlash.

Suddenly a giddy band of mariachis bursts into the salon. The halls of old Langley Park brim with the brassy, sassy sound of Mexico.

* * *

Torres’s admirers can sound fawning, but there’s an equally fervid crowd convinced that he is an evil genius. Republican state Del. Pat McDonough could be a spokesman.