Rangel Fends Off Challengers to Win Difficult Primary
by THOMAS KAPLAN, nytimes.comJune 26th 2012
Surviving one of the toughest re-election fights of his career, Representative Charles B. Rangel fended off four challengers on Tuesday to win the Democratic nomination for a 22nd term in Congress.
"I'm just glad that my community has faith and confidence in me," Mr. Rangel told reporters shortly before declaring victory at Sylvia's, the famed Harlem restaurant.
Mr. Rangel's victory capped a gripping campaign for a Congressional seat that for decades has been at the center of black political power — and preserved a career in Washington that had been threatened by ethics troubles and changing demographics.
Mr. Rangel was censured in 2010 after the House Ethics Committee found him guilty of 11 counts of ethical violations, including failure to pay taxes, improper solicitation of donations and failure to report his personal income accurately.
And because of the decennial redistricting process, Mr. Rangel, who turned 82 this month and had been slowed by back problems, was forced to run in a district that had been extended from Harlem into the Bronx, giving its population a Hispanic majority.
But Mr. Rangel, who was first elected to Congress in 1970, waged a campaign focused on his legislative seniority. And he stressed the backing of many elected officials, suggesting that New York's political establishment was not ready to usher him from office.
At Sylvia's, a sign described the congressman as "The Lion of Lenox Avenue." Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright, a co-chairman of the state Democratic Party, predicted that Mr. Rangel would serve indefinitely in Congress, saying, "Charlie Rangel might be the Strom Thurmond of Harlem."
"No one has been through the fire more so than our congressperson," Mr. Wright said, "and we in the district have sent him back because we have faith in him, and that he has our interests in mind, and quite frankly he's one of us."
Mr. Rangel took the stage looking emotional, and sounded a note of damaged pride and fierce determination. He said of his critics, "If they didn't think after 42 years that I was the best qualified, I promise them that in the next two years they'll have no question about the fact that we elected the best."
Yvonne Carr, 61, of West Harlem, was among Mr. Rangel's supporters. "Sometimes other people throw their hat into the ring, and they haven't really been out here in this community for a long time," Ms. Carr said Tuesday morning. "I know he is elderly, but he's been here."
Mr. Rangel's top challenger, State Senator Adriano Espaillat, would have been the first Dominican-born congressman had he defeated Mr. Rangel and won the November election. But his challenge was encumbered in part by the presence of three other candidates, including Clyde Williams, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton, and Joyce Johnson, a former local Democratic district leader.
At a restaurant in Washington Heights, as Latin music played in the background, Mr. Espaillat's supporters huddled around a laptop as early returns showed their candidate in the lead. But as the night went on, the laptop was put away, and a lone supporter yelled an expletive when the Spanish-language television network Univision flashed the results.
Mr. Espaillat acknowledged defeat, saying, "We came in slightly short this time," but he said, "The summer of 2012 will always be remembered as the summer when northern Manhattan came together." He pledged to work with Mr. Rangel, saying, "We will be working with him to make sure the community gets what it deserves to get."
Mr. Rangel's fight for his party's nomination, in New York's 13th District, was the most closely watched of several competitive primaries as redistricting and retirements created the opportunity for change in the city's Congressional delegation.
In Brooklyn, Assemblyman Hakeem S. Jeffries defeated City Councilman Charles Barron in an unexpectedly hard-fought Democratic primary that drew national attention because of Mr. Barron's history of incendiary language — the councilman has described Muammar el-Qaddafi as his "hero," called Thomas Jefferson a pedophile and once likened Gaza to a "concentration death camp." But the Democratic establishment rallied to Mr. Jeffries, a lawyer and prodigious fund-raiser, who promised a more collaborative approach to legislating.
Reporting was contributed by Joseph Berger, David W. Chen, Aaron Edwards, John Eligon, Michael M. Grynbaum, Raymond Hernandez, Eric P. Newcomer, Kate Taylor, Sarah Wheaton and Vivian Yee.
(Page 2 of 2)
"I think Barron's a hatemonger," one voter, Barbara Haws, said Tuesday morning at a polling place at Brooklyn Technical High School in Fort Greene. "We don't need any more of that."
Another voter, Joe Pressley, said, "I need someone in office who's going to be a bridge builder, and that's Hakeem."
If elected in November as expected, Mr. Jeffries would succeed Representative Edolphus Towns, who is retiring.
Mr. Barron and a handful of supporters gathered Tuesday night at Sistas' Place in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Mr. Barron blamed the Democratic establishment, Wall Street and "the white media" for his defeat. He ridiculed Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a fellow Democrat, for making robocalls on behalf of Mr. Jeffries, and criticized Mr. Jeffries for not telling critics of Mr. Barron, "Don't do that to another black man."
Mr. Jeffries gathered with hundreds of supporters at Sanders Studio in Brooklyn, and spoke of the importance of unity, saying, "We still have a long way to go with racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia."
"I'm going down to Washington to stand up for our children, to stand up for job creation, to stand up for civil rights, to stand up for senior citizens, and to stand up for our president, Barack Obama," he said.
In Queens, Assemblywoman Grace Meng claimed victory in a four-way Democratic primary for an open House seat created by the retirement of Representative Gary L. Ackerman. Ms. Meng will face City Councilman Daniel J. Halloran in November; she was favored to win because the district is mostly Democratic, and, if she were elected, she would be the first Asian-American member of the New York Congressional delegation.
Nydia M. Velázquez, a 10-term incumbent in Congress whose district includes portions of Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens, successfully fended off a spirited challenge from City Councilman Erik M. Dilan, who was backed by the county Democratic machine in Brooklyn.
In the lone statewide primary, Republicans nominated Wendy E. Long, a Manhattan lawyer who is backed by the state's Conservative Party, to run against Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, a Democrat who is favored to win re-election in November. In winning the three-way Republican primary, Ms. Long effectively ended the short-lived career of Representative Bob Turner, a Republican from Breezy Point, Queens, who stunned the political establishment last year when he won a special election to succeed Anthony D. Weiner, a Democrat, in a heavily Democratic district in Brooklyn and Queens.
The primaries on Tuesday were challenging, for candidates and voters, because they defied the state's usual political calendar. For decades, the state's Congressional primary has been in September, but this year, a federal court ordered it moved to June to ensure that military voters had enough time to submit absentee ballots for the general election.
The reconfigured district boundaries meant that some voters went to polling places only to find out that their Congressional district had changed. Others did not know there was an election.
"I think most people had no idea what's going on," Stanley Greenberg, who voted for Mr. Jeffries, said in an interview at a polling place in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn.
Anticipating low turnout, campaigns were aggressive about trying to reach voters, and some voters reported being inundated with mailings and phone calls.
"The number of phone calls I got from the Jeffries campaign was unbelievable," said Diane Wachtell, who said she was greeted by three Jeffries volunteers on her way to vote at P.S. 261 in Boerum Hill.
At Dr. Sun Yat Sen Middle School in Manhattan's Chinatown neighborhood, one voter, Craig Marsden, said he was prompted to vote by about eight phone calls from campaigns, including one recorded message from Mr. Clinton endorsing Ms. Velázquez. "I didn't know so much was at stake," Mr. Marsden said.
« Previous PageReporting was contributed by Joseph Berger, David W. Chen, Aaron Edwards, John Eligon, Michael M. Grynbaum, Raymond Hernandez, Eric P. Newcomer, Kate Taylor, Sarah Wheaton and Vivian Yee.
Original Page: http://pocket.co/so9W_
Shared from Pocket
Victor Cuvo, Attorney at Law
No comments:
Post a Comment