The late congressman’s upending of New York politics by choosing progressivism over partisanship offers a lesson for today.
Charlie Rangel in Harlem in 1970.(Bettmann via Getty Images)
Former US representative Charles Rangel’s death at age 94 has inspired long obituaries recalling the legacy of the Harlem Democrat, who served 46 years in the US House, cofounded the Congressional Black Caucus, chaired the powerful Ways and Means Committee, shaped the character of the Congress and was censured by it, earned a Purple Heart for his wounds and the Bronze Star with Valor for his bravery during the Korean War, and later emerged as one of the boldest critics of George W. Bush’s Iraq War. Yet one of the most remarkable maneuvers of Rangel’s long political career has gone mostly unmentioned—perhaps because it does not fit easily within the partisan narratives of American politics.
In 1969, with Richard Nixon, a Republican determined to exploit unrest and racial division for partisan advantage, in the White House, and conservative Democrats (seemingly influenced by the presidential bids of Alabama segregationist George Wallace) scheming to pull the party to the right, New York was at the center of the fight for the soul of American politics. Rangel, then a young state legislator who had caught the attention of Democratic leaders that year with an audacious if ultimately unsuccessful primary bid for City Council president, suddenly found himself in a position to push back against the politics of reaction in New York. But he could not do so from within his own Democratic Party.
The city’s 1969 mayoral race produced June primary results that suggested New York was veering to the right. John Lindsay, the liberal Republican incumbent mayor who was up for reelection, was defeated in the GOP primary by state Senator John Marchi, a conservative with ties to the Nixon White House. On the Democratic side, the most right-wing candidate, City Comptroller Mario Procaccino, beat more liberal contenders—including former mayor Robert Wagner Jr., Bronx Borough President Herman Badillo and novelist Norman Mailer—with a campaign that attacked “limousine liberals” (a term he is actually credited with inventing), exploited opposition to desegregation and open housing, and employed “law-and-order” dog whistles to bring the worst of national politics to the nation’s largest city. Alabama’s Wallace hailed the results from the Big Apple, claiming that Procaccino and Marchi engaged in the same sort of campaigning that he perpetuated in the South, “except that they had New York accents.”
After his primary defeat, Lindsay decided to keep running as an advocate for civil rights, a proponent of anti-poverty programs, a foe of the Vietnam War, and the only prominent progressive in the field. He had the endorsement and ballot line of New York’s small Liberal Party, and he hoped to swing enough progressive Black, Puerto Rican, and Jewish voters away from the Democratic line to prevail. But in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, and with two Republicans potentially splitting the vote, Procaccino was the clear front-runner. Pundits said he could win simply by keeping most of his party’s multiracial, multiethnic voter base on his side.
But Charlie Rangel was not about to side with Mario Procaccino.
Shortly after the primary election, the Harlem legislator upended the city’s political calculus by becoming the first prominent Black Democratic elected official to support Lindsay’s reelection bid.
Forty-six years later, New York faces another definitive mayoral election, which once again pits rival Democratic factions against each other. These are different political times. But endorsements continue to influence the outcome of municipal races. And what Rangel did in July 1969 offers a reminder of the outsized role that political prescience, and courage, can play in city politics.
Rangel’s decision to break with party orthodoxy—at a point when other prominent Democrats were wrestling with whether to back Lindsay—was such a big deal that New York’s media corps packed the press conference where he and the mayor shook up urban politics. “In New York City, the Democratic Party has traditionally represented a symbol of hope that one day the benefits promised in our constitution would be extended to include the poor, the persecuted and the denied,” said Rangel, who argued that Procaccino had betrayed the party’s commitment to address the needs of those “entangled in the barbed-wire of prejudice, racial and economic discrimination.”
“Today,” he warned, “a voter can no longer depend on the party label to determine the philosophy of the party’s candidate. I have taken a long hard look at [the issues and the contenders], and in good conscience I must reject my party’s candidate for mayor of the city of New York. In doing this, I break from my family and community’s tradition. But I believe that a united party is far less important than a united city—because if our cities are torn apart then, indeed, what is there to hope for?”
A hush fell over the press room as Rangel continued.
“While, politically, it may be wise for me to sit this election out, I believe my higher duty is to attempt to bring our people together once again,” he said. “I believe that our present mayor, Mayor John Lindsay, is the best person to do that job.… I intend to work very hard toward his reelection and I’m convinced that, with his efforts and the efforts of other people in the city of New York, we will have the type of voter registration drive that would make it possible for all future candidates of the Democratic Party to understand that they cannot afford to move to fall away from the traditions of our great party.”
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Lindsay welcomed the endorsement as “a very meaningful move” that would help forge “a coalition, an independent coalition, that can move our city forward in a joining of all persons of progressive spirit.”
After Rangel’s announcement, that coalition rapidly expanded. The powerful New Democratic Coalition, a group tied to the Democratic reform movements that had gained traction in critical Jewish, Black, and Puerto Rican precincts, endorsed Lindsay—in a move that The New York Times wrote, “officially puts the city’s most liberal citizens behind the Mayor.”
Five days later, US Representative Shirley Chisholm, the Democratic National Committee member from New York who three years later would become the first Black woman to bid for the party’s presidential nod, endorsed Lindsay. “The situation in New York City is so critical and so important that none of us should let partisan politics stand in our way,” declared Chisholm. “Our times and our cities do not allow this kind of thing.”
The momentum grew, as prominent white liberals—such as Paul O’Dwyer, the New Democratic Coalition leader and 1968 Democratic nominee for the US Senate—joined Rangel and Chisholm in backing Lindsay. By late October, the Times was reporting, “Most political activity in central Harlem involves Lindsay’s campaign.” That proved to be vital. On election day, the mayor won reelection, with strong support from Harlem and other Black neighborhoods for a Republican who, the Times observed, “had earned the confidence of the disadvantaged and minority groups of the city.”
Rangel’s early decision to break with his own party had proven to be the “very meaningful move” Lindsay predicted. The mayor’s second term would be marred by controversy, and bitter disputes with Nixon and the GOP—culminating in Lindsay’s 1971 decision to register as a Democrat. Rangel would, in 1970, defeat US Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr., in a headline-grabbing result that followed a campaign which saw the mayor appear on 125th Street and Seventh Avenue to hail Rangel as candidate who was “young, energetic and committed to social change” and who Lindsay predicted would make “a vigorous, active congressman.”
John NicholsTwitterJohn Nichols is the executive editor of The Nation. He previously served as the magazine’s national affairs correspondent and Washington correspondent. Nichols has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books on topics ranging from histories of American socialism and the Democratic Party to analyses of US and global media systems. His latest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Times bestseller It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.