One of the stranger accusations in the Democratic primary race for New York’s Thirteenth Congressional District was that the incumbent, Charles B. Rangel, is a litterbug. The video, leaked by a Rangel opponent, was edited so that viewers could study Rangel dropping what appeared to be a gum wrapper at a campaign event at three different speeds. The Post’s Michael Gartland compared it to a “low-rent Zapruder film.” A Rangel mailer was only a shade less strange. It depicted his foremost competitor, State Senator Adriano Espaillat, as a puppet controlled by the likes of Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin, and urged voters to “Cut Adriano Espaillat’s strings.”
Since 1971, Rangel, the Lion of Lenox Avenue, has represented a shifting district that has always included Harlem. After casting his ballot at P.S. 175, on Tuesday morning, he told a crowd of reporters, “The most nostalgic thing about voting today, and I shared this with my wife earlier, is that it will be the last time I will be voting for myself, for any office.” He went on, “Besides my passion for public service, I should have had a bit more passion for my wife and children.” His wife, Alma, looked on, her face composed.
Winning wouldn’t come easily this time. Rangel, at eighty-four and with a comb-over, had recently endured a censure by a House standards committee, pertaining to, among other things, tax irregularities and failures to disclose income. Michael Walrond, a Harlem pastor who also ran in the primary, presented himself as an alternative to the old guard. The Times and El Diario backed Espaillat, a Dominican-born state senator who accused Rangel of attempting to suppress the votes of Spanish-speaking people. President Obama refused to endorse any candidate. Rangel fought back with a vigorous campaign, including an event that featured Pras Michel, of the Fugees, and was billed as “Uncle Charlie’s First Day of Summer Community Flash Mob Dance Party at Harlem Shake.” At one of his final campaign stops, Rangel acknowledged that the race had been the toughest of his life.
On the morning of the primary, as I crossed 155th Street into Washington Heights, I saw Juan Osorio, an Espaillat volunteer, distributing flyers outside P.S. 28. “In New York City, he is No. 1.” Another Espaillat volunteer, Diego Ayala, said that, as an Ecuadoran, he believed getting another Hispanic into Congress was important, and that ninety per cent of the people he had spoken to were Espaillat supporters.
But allegiances didn’t fall so neatly along racial or ethnic lines. Outside a polling place on Edgecome Avenue, two Rangel volunteers in blue T-shirts were grooving to strains of bachata coming from an open window. Both were born in the Dominican Republic. They were soon joined by Rolando Robles, the editor of El Rumbo di Nueva York, a periodical for the Dominican community.
“Dominicans, in particular, have a dilemma,” Robles said. “They have two choices: between voting for someone who never represented them or for someone who will help us.” The choice, as he put it, was not racial but pragmatic. An El Rumbo editorial put it this way:
P.S. 175 was a short ride away on the C train. After Rangel cast his ballot, Henrietta Lyle, the Chair of Harlem’s Community Board 10, stayed around to chat, flanked by Hazel Dukes, an N.A.A.C.P. activist, and Maxine McCrey, the president of a Harlem woman’s group. All supported Rangel. “We feel like we owe it to him,” Dukes said.
That evening, the Rangel campaign awaited the election results at East Harlem’s Taino Towers—a set of crumbling, low-income apartment blocks which were completed back when Rangel was finishing his first term. At half past ten, the vote still tipped in Espaillat’s favor, and he stood to become the first Dominican-born representative of an area that has, by dint of redistricting and demographic shift, become more Hispanic than black. Many observers had assumed that the election would boil down to race, with Espaillat getting support from gentrifying whites as well as Hispanics.
But nothing is ever simple in politics. The Brighton Beach activist Zev Yourman, who is white, told me that he had come all the way from Brooklyn to offer Rangel his support. “I believe the man has kept Harlem as Harlem,” he said. “Harlem is the seat of African-American culture in the country.” He felt that the significance of a Rangel loss would be devastating. “The end, the end. Harlem would be a memory.”
Nelson Ortega, a Rangel organizer and resident of the Taino Towers, chatted in the East Harlem sunset with two Rangel supporters. Ortega was wearing a large skull earring carved out of buffalo bone; he said that the earring represented the future and equality. As he put it, “We’ll all turn to bone.” As for Rangel, he said, “This whole complex, this one is totally his.” He and the two supporters said that the little things Rangel had done for them over the course his career—listening to their problems, helping them find a new place after their rent was raised—were the best assurance that Rangel could have of their votes. “That’s why the people give him back the love,” Ortega said.
But with Rangel still trailing in the count, the mood at the gathering inside was tense. Wait staff started to clear buffet containers of potato croquettes, rice balls, and chicken wings. Adam Powell, the son of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., tried to rouse the crowd with boxing metaphors. People danced to the Rangel Rap, a bass-heavy production in the vein of 2 Chainz or Rick Ross: “Charlie Rangel stand up guy / You voting for Charlie put your hand up high / Yeah suit and tie, / He’s super fly, / If you Democrat yeah that’s the guy.”
At ten-thirty-nine, a woman in a red shirt let out a loud scream and pointed to the screen above the stage. With thirty-four per cent reporting, Rangel was now ahead. The numbers kept getting better and, at eleven-eighteen, with sixty-nine per cent of the district reporting, everybody suddenly turned around. From the back of the auditorium, flanked by security, the candidate himself, immaculately attired, as always, in a shining red tie and diamond star cufflinks, made his way forward. The room filled with chants of “Charlie! Charlie! Charlie!” Dominican and Puerto Rican flags were waved. Rangel hadn’t actually won yet, but he took the stage anyway. As Elizabeth Kolbert once wrote, in a Profile of Rangel for this magazine, “His voice, when he is telling stories, is gravelly almost to the point of parody.”
“I said, what the heck, let’s all sweat this thing out together,” he joked, and began, by his own admission, “killing time” with a diffuse speech that lasted at least forty-five minutes. As he spoke, Rangel kept ribbing his political consultants and called on journalists in the audience for the latest numbers. As the results continued in his favor, his supporters began flooding the stage, to the point where it threatened to give way beneath their feet. There was a loud crack, and Adam Powell recoiled. “Everyone heavy get off the stage!” someone shouted. Rangel hardly missed a beat; he was contemplating his twenty-third term.
Correction: The Adam Powell at the rally was Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.’s, son, not his grandson. An earlier version also suggested that Rangel had not heard the noise on the stage.
Photograph by Andrew Burton/Getty.
