The contest to decide who succeeds retiring 45-year veteran Rep. Charles Rangel has set off a scramble among more than a half-dozen Democrats eyeing a district that's changed from predominantly black in 1970 to a Hispanic majority today.
Rangel is leaving the seat open for the first time since World War II, when voters elected Adam Clayton Powell to be New York’s first black congressman – and the 2016 Democratic primary may depend on whether Hispanic and black voters consolidate behind a single candidate of a similar background,
or split their votes among several, Politico reports.
"Neighborhoods change, and people tend to vote for people who look like them," former New York Gov. David Paterson, a close ally of Rangel, tells Politico.
According to Politico, among the contenders are:
- State Sen. Bill Perkins, 65, and state Assemblyman Keith Wright, 60, both "African-American stalwarts of Harlem politics," Politico notes.
- Clyde Williams, also African-American and a former Democratic National Committee political director and aide to President Bill Clinton.
- State Sen. Adriano Espaillat and his longtime rival, state Sen. Guillermo Linares, who are both Dominican-American from the Washington Heights neighborhood in Manhattan.
- Adam Clayton Powell IV, the son of the legendary black congressman and a Puerto Rican mother, who represented East Harlem in the State Assembly, and – Suzan Johnson Cook, a former ambassador-at-large in the Obama administration, whose roots are in the Bronx.
Rangel's 13th Congressional District covers all of northern Manhattan – including Harlem, a historically black neighborhood in its western stretch, and Puerto Rican in its eastern portion, Washington Height and Inwood, a predominantly Dominican-American area, pockets of the rich Upper West Side and Morningside Heights neighborhoods – and a small swath of the Bronx.
Rangel tells Politico he'll eventually endorse a successor, which could tip the race despite the hit to the veteran's reputation and power from an ethics scandal that led to his censure by the House in 2010. https://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/US-Rangel-Censure/2010/11/28/id/378196/
"I would not know how, as a politician for half a century, to let any race go by without making an endorsement," he tells Politico.
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