How Charlie Rangel Defied His Party to Save New York From the Reactionary Right

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.”