Charlie Rangel’s Shadow Still Looms as New Racial Tensions Roil Contest Replace To Him

 

By Ross Barkan

 

Democratic elections in New York are often competitions for ethnic power masked by ideological difference—and that’s certainly true in the 13th CD.

 

For more than a half century, the locus of African-American political power was a congressional district in New York City.

Represented first by Adam Clayton Powell Jr., a civil rights icon weakened by ethical issues and finally bested by Rep. Charlie Rangel, the Harlem-centered district has only known two congressmen since the 1940s. The 86-year-old Rangel, who’s hung on despite his own brush with scandal, is retiring at the end of this year, and nine candidates are battling to replace him in a Democratic primary tomorrow.

On one hand, the race is insignificant: one Democrat will replace another and become a freshman in a marginalized minority party. But viewed through the prism of racial and ethnic pride—and taking into account the departure of a controversial Washington legend—the primary is unusually significant.

Rangel, the charismatic dean of New York’s congressional delegation and a Korean War hero, no longer represents a chiefly black district. After a 2012 redistricting, the 13th Congressional District became majority Latino and extended into the Bronx. This was both a function of New York’s changing demographics and its diminishing federal clout; as the state’s population has shrunk over the decades, it has lost congressional seats, and Rangel has watched as his Harlem fiefdom took on new heavily Hispanic neighborhoods that didn’t view him so reverently.

First elected in 1970, and the definition of a political survivor, Rangel reigned over the district at a very different time for New York and the country. The city was engulfed in a fiscal crisis during Rangel’s early years and Harlem, besieged by crime and later a crack epidemic, was seen as a neighborhood in tragic decline from its golden Renaissance years. As New York’s fortunes started to improve in the 1980s and 1990s, Rangel was credited with rejuvenating Harlem: as a member of a once unassailable House Democratic majority, he was able to rain federal dollars on the neighborhood, and eventually became the first black chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee.

That came to an end following an embarrassing House censure over ethics violations. Rangel lost his clout—but not his swagger.

All of the candidates vying to replace Rangel are running in his shadow. All are far older now than Rangel was when he first took office in 1971 at the age of 40. And all must grapple with his impressive, though checkered, legacy. Harlem is now one of New York’s most desirable neighborhoods, a fact likely unimaginable to Rangel himself when he first entered Congress. New housing, businesses, and people are filling the Manhattan portion of the district. College graduates are coming in droves.

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Source: The Daily Beast

Related story: Charlie Rangel Endorses Assemblyman Keith Wright Ahead of Primary Election