So we've arrived finally at the point where the incumbent in the 36th Councilmanic District, Al Vann, relieves the watching world of its suffocating suspense.
He wants another four years.
The truth, of course, is that almost everyone assumed Vann would swish his hat into the ring.
Presumably, the desire for another four years was the reason he voted (along with the majority of Councilmembers) to end the two-term restriction on city office holders.
(Unless the motivation was that he deeply believed the city needed to have Mayor Mike Bloomberg in office for another term.)
Speaking of which, we are certain Vann and other black Brooklynites will be giving at least strong verbal support to Bill Thompson in Thompson's race against Bloomberg.
After all, Thompson is a black Brooklynite himself.
Now this takes us to an interesting irony in this political episode, which is this:
The loudest backing of Thompson seems to be from across the river, in Harlem, where bigshots Charles Rangel, David Dinkins and others have announced their support of Thompson -- with great fanfare, including Dinkins shouting his endorsement loudly the mountaintop (or rather, steps) of City Hall.
This should not necessarily be a cause for celebration on the part of Bill Thompson.
You see, the Harlem crowd does not have a good track record when it comes to endorsements of black candidates in prominent contests.
There was, for example, the fiasco of a quarter century ago when they backed Herman Denny Farrell against another Herman, surnamed Badillo, in the mayoral primary.
In one fell swoop, the Harlemites sabotaged the best chances for a Black/Latino alliance the city had ever seen. (And, in so doing, they also fired a wounding bullet into Al Vann and Vann's Brooklyn cohorts, who were lined up with Badillo.)
The outcome of that drama is well known, as Ed Koch sailed to victory and continued the race baiting rhetoric for which he was celebrated in certain corners at the time.
And while we're with the Harlem crowd and their endorsement history, how can we forget the recent presidential race, that saw the Harlemites siding (aggressively and till the very end) with Hillary Clinton against Barack Obama.
Which brings us back to the Councilmanic race in Bed-Stuy.
Among those slated to be present when Vann announces his candidacy this coming Saturday on Fulton Street is none other than Comptroller Bill Thompson.
And the list of others scheduled to be there is daunting. No doubt it's all intended to show the strength of incumbency. The expected attendees are (according to a note from Vann's campaign):
Governor David A. Paterson, State Senate Majority Leader Malcolm A. Smith, Speaker Christine C. Quinn, Borough President Marty Markowitz and "other local elected officials".
This all brings to mind a City Limits article (quoted previously in a BrooklynRon post) in which a former Councilmember confided the following to newcomers on the Council:
"You can do anything you want and you will be re-elected. You can fuck this up and you will be re-elected. You can do an excellent job and you will be reelected."
Bill Clinton's Global Initiative is a money box and a gathering spot for the biggest names in world finance and politics.
And with the next meeting scheduled for next week in New York City, one might reasonably expect that this would be a good time for Clinton to make good on promises to help Barack Obama win the Presidency.
But as many suspected from Clinton's body language recently -- when the ex-President and Obama met in Harlem and answered reporters' questions -- Clinton may have been very well been crossing his fingers behind his back as he spoke.
Yes, he said, he would help Obama campaign, as soon as time allowed.
But now with the announcement by the Global Initiative that John McCain will be the main speaker at the Initiative's big event next week -- Sept. 23-26 -- it would seem plain that Clinton is slighting Obama and helping McCain.
McCain will give the main address in person and Obama will speak by satellite.
"Senator John McCain will deliver the opening remarks live at the 'Integrated Solutions: water, food and energy' plenary session," says a press release from the Global Initiative.
Glossing over the fact that McCain will be getting a big boost while Obama will be shunted off the the side, the Initiative tries to suggest that both candidates will be equally involved.
"Both United States presidential candidates will have a role in the Annual Meeting," the Initiative said.
All along, of course -- ever since the very heated primary race between Clinton's wife, New York Senator Hillary Clinton, and Obama -- there has been serious tension between Obama and the former President.
There have been allegations of race baiting and more.
Many believe also that the Clintons want Obama to lose so that Hillary Clinton will be able to run again in four years against the Republicans.
Some have maintained furthermore that the Clintons, especially Bill, simply dislike Obama and very much like McCain.
Complicated guy, that Bill, as many photos of him seem to reveal.
It would be so interesting to know if Congressman Charles Rangel, the black Harlem Congressman who backed HIllary Clinton in the race against Obama and has been very close to both Clintons, is reacting in a private way to this news about the Global Initiative and the (apparent) slighting of Obama.
Then again, Rangel is beset with a slew of charges stemming from New York Times stories about having too many rent controlled apartments and so on, and his energies are largely going toward his political survival now.
A shame, in many ways, but this is politics and it's rough out there.
[The Global Initiative invites the richest folks around to their event and at the end of it the attended pledge money to charities.]
Heck. Any presidential candidate would want to be associated with that in a big way.
Okay, we can understand that many black officials from Harlem, including Congressman Charles Rangel and Governor David Paterson and a bunch of others, felt they had to be with Hillary Clinton.
After all, years ago Rangel had gotten Bill Clinton to set up his post-President office on W. 125th Street in Harlem. Also, Rangel was kind of a political godfather to Hillary C.
But what's with this Rev. James David Manning of Harlem [photo], who's been calling Obama the devil and a bastard and a pimp and sex deviant? And also going after everyone associated with Obama, especially Oprah Winfrey.
I mean, is it all part of an effort in Harlem to curry favor with the Clintons?
But the real fun (some, of course, may simply be frightened as opposed to amused) is in seeing the videos that the Reverend has posted, all of them weird anti-Obama rants, emanating from God knows where in Manning's mind.
Even those who were deeply offended by what they believed were race baiting tactics of Hillary and Bill Clinton during Hillary's campaign against Barack Obama would have to admit it.
Bill Clinton's speech on Wednesday night hit the ball out of the park.
Senator Clinton's speech the night before was powerful in its own right but the former President's address made one aware, once again, of the extraordinary intelligence and (let's admit it) superior education that lifted that man (and his many inner demons) to the heights of American politics.
They, the two Clintons, in their passion and rhetoric, left little room for doubting their commitment to the candidacy of Obama in the race against John McCain.
Don't get us wrong. There is doubt. We have written here, for instance, about Peggy Noonan who has virtually built a career (and a very successful one) at informing the world about the trickiness and narcisistic self-interest of Hillary Clinton.
There are those who believe that Hillary Clinton has her eyes on 2012 and would very much want to see Obama lose this race so that she can have a go at it again in that year. (Maureen Dowd of The New York Times has been in this category and has been expressing herself with wit and wisdom.)
But the New York delegation of Democrats, who must have been painfully stung by the polarization of the heated Hillary versus Barack primary race -- especially in Brooklyn where the districts of Congressmembers Yvette Clarke and Ed Towns went for Obama, even as Clarke and Towns stuck with Hillary -- are happy now that peace reigns on the surface.
That was a stroke of genius Wednesday, the way Hillary Clinton stopped the voting that pitted her against Obama, halting the tally as the country waited breathlessly to see how her New York State was going to vote, and then asking for a consensus backing of Barack.
This is indeed a critical juncture in what has been one of the most interesting, if also bitter, primary races in recent memory.
[The accompanying photo here -- of Sen. Hillary Clinton and [Brooklyn born] Gov. David Paterson -- is from the online New York Observer. See their article on The Morning After.]
It seems Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel [photo] is being snubbed by organizers of this week's Democratic National Convention in Denver.
It is said that Rangel very much wanted to be on the podium with the party's big names, but those in power apparently decided the Congressman wasn't needed.
The main problem, of course, is that Rangel was one of Senator Hillary Clinton's staunchest supporters during the campaign for the Democratic nomination, a campaign in which Hillary and her husband Bill were involved in heated back-and-forth accusations with Obama, including charges of race baiting.
Many blacks are resentful that Rangel and other Harlem politicians chose to stay with Hillary Clinton, even when it became clear that Obama was on course to become the nation's first serious African-American candidate for the presidency.
On the other hand, there are those who think Obama should have allowed Rangel to have a prominent role at the upcoming Convention, even out of self interest, given that Rangel is chair of the very powerful House Ways and Means Committee.
But Rangel has been weakened somewhat, at least superficially, by recent New York Times reports that he had several rent-controlled apartments at the Lenox Terrace apartment complex, at a time when many of his constituents are struggling to find affordable housing.
A miffed Rangel may not remain in Denver for the full four days of the Convention.
Let's get straight with something before descending in the murk and mire of Charlie Rangel's latest tribulation.
Congressman Rangel [photo, left] is likely one of the brightest, most courageous and thoughtful politicians to have graced the stage of public service over the past half century, not just in New York but in the country.
But, and here an alas would perhaps fit, we also have to say that he surely is among the slickest to strut that stage.
And while for a hustler or three-card monte player that last designation might be a compliment, it does not generally draw applause when applied to elected officials.
That's because even the most cynical will say, certainly when the microphones are on, that politics is meant to serve the hoi polloi, "the people," as they struggle and strive, facing here in New York City monthly housing costs that would cause apoplexy elsewhere.
Which is why the charge now being leveled against Rangel are making so many New Yorkers angry with him.
Rangel, the most powerful member of New York Congressional delegation -- he's the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee -- is said to have effectively pocketed as much as $30,000 a year in rent he did not have to pay for his units in Harlem's Lenox Terrace apartment complex [photo, right].
Lenox Terrace is the sprawling development in Central Harlem that has long been home to Rangel and other powerful Harlem politicians.
Another politician who has a rent regulated apartment there -- and who like Rangel is paying about half the market rent of several thousand a month -- is Gov. David Paterson.
Critics are saying that New York's rent regulation laws were not meant to allow powerful politicians to amass several units at bargain rents. There is also the question of whether the reduced rents may have violated restrictions on gifts to members of Congress.
It'll be interesting to watch this drama unfold. Rangel normally takes criticism in stride, deflecting it with the smoothness of a champion boxer; but he does seem somewhat awkwardly as he deals with these recent blows, showing an anxious bitterness toward The New York Times for having printed the story headlined, "For Rangel, Four Rent-Stabilized Apartments."
The grey eminence of Harlem had been surviving, or so it seemed, resentments over his steadfast backing of Hillary Clinton for President, even as so many black New Yorkers and other Americans saw Barack Obama as a beacon of hope. There are clearly many, especially blacks, who lost much respect for Rangel because of that, especially given the race-baiting strategy pursued by Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill.
But this latest affair regarding Lenox Terrace may prove to be a much bigger headache for the man who once said that he hasn't had a bad day since his heroic service in the army during the Korean conflict.
From his testiness with The New York Times, it does seem he is indeed having some bad days of late.
It's incredible when you think about it. Yvette Clarke and Ed Towns had signed onto Dennis Kucinich's resolution calling for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney, putative architect of the Iraq war.
Right on, hundreds of thousands of New York anti-war voters might say, especially in Park Slope, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn Heights and elsewhere in North and Central Brooklyn.
Give this reality, you'd think Dennis Kucinich would have had the backing of at least one member of the New York Congressional delegation, the elite club to which Clarke and Towns belong.
But no. They all -- yes ALL -- went into Hillary Clinton's camp.
Stupidly, I used to wonder what would make an elected official so dismissive of his or her political principles that he or she would want to impeach Cheny while at the same time backing someone like Hillary Clinton, who voted for the war and has been largely hawkish about it.
Is her power over these officials so great that their aura of independence in the eyes of their constituents means nothing to them?
Then an acquaintance of mine, someone more steeped in politics than I am, told me:
"It's not Hillary Clinton. It's Charlie Rangel."
Now that makes much sense. No one was as invested in the future of Hillary Clinton as much as the Harlem Congressman, no one besides Hillary and Bill and Chelsea Clinton, that is.
It was Rangel who pushed Hillary Clinton into the Senate and got ex-President Bill Clinton to set up an office in Harlem.
Not for nothing was Rangel once the White of the Democrats in the House of Representatives. And not for nothing did he go on to become chairman of the all-powerful Ways and Means Committee.
Still, the thoroughness of the unity behind Hillary Clinton astounds, making them seem like uniformed members of a marching band, trotting to the beat of a single drummer.
One has to say for Charlie Rangel that he very likely had misgivings along the way about his choice. He has said that he did not realize how much and how strongly Barack Obama's campaign would catch on (although "catch on," at this point, is clearly an understatement).
It seems that Rangel's connection to and affection for the Clintons overrode his otherwise very canny political instincts.
Did he not feel at all the trans-historical glee and hope and faith that penetrated the souls and minds of many young people and blacks and other disaffected ones?
Perhaps not.
It would have been a great sacrifice on his part, perhaps, to have walked away from the Clintons early on and embraced Obama. But it might be said also that his ultimate position in the minds of many progressive Americans, especially black Americans, would have been much higher than it otherwise will be, when the book on him is finally written.
Time for politicians to move on, yes, but always time for others to reflect.
There was Hillary Clinton, up there in the Bronx of all places, at Pelham Prep, where high-achieving students of color learn discipline of mind and body to stake a claim in the world beyond.
Young Aleatha WIlliams and her family had apparently known the erstwhile presidential candidate Clinton for some time and has taken to referring to the Senator as Aunt Hillary.
It's pretty disgusting to think that a scene like this, some weeks back, would have been the last thing on the Senator's mind, as she so aggressively was courting votes of (in her own words, more or less) hard-scrabbling white voters from West Virginia.
It was a strategy that deliberately and calculatedly put dark-hued folks (of the kind that predominate in so many neighborhoods of New York City, particularly Brooklyn and parts of the Bronx) way into the back of the back burner.
And just as it stings to know that race was used so coldly in this campaign, so it also pains to feel that this Aleatha Williams was used, taken advantage of, in a sense, in order to take the first steps of a political comeback, to win back voters in those very districts where countless women and men remain offended by the behavior of the Clintons, Hillary and Bill, in their campaign against Barack Obama.
Now we know that there were a good number of black elected officials, especially members of Congress, who stuck with Hillary Clinton through the long, tedious and sometimes embarrassing process of the campaign; but the strongest of them had the good sense and conscience to say, from time to time, that what they were hearing from Hillary and Bill was just "dumb," as Charlie Rangel of Harlem put it.
Of course, he couldn't say crass and racist.
It is supposed here that some of those black elected officials, especially those in heavily black districts, will pay a price for what they did, particularly when they neglected to speak out as the Clintons crossed the line of decency in their Karl Rove-like playing of the race card.
There are some black elected officials who, with considerable nerve, are still accusing Obama of being sexist and not doing enough to reach out to the strong Hillary supporters.
Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas is apparently one of those and she recently questioned Obama (in a session recently that Obama had with black Congressmembers) about what he was going to do to reach out.
According to notes taken by Brooklyn Congresswoman Yvette Clarke (who herself had been a staunch supporter of Clinton even though her district went for Obama), Obama said the following:
"If women take a moment to realize that on every issue important to women, John McCain is not in their corner, that would help them get over it.”
Rep. Diane Watson of California did not appreciate thos last three words and is said to have told Obama, "Don't use that terminology." (read an online account). Wow.
Relative to all this, we saw an interesting YouTube post showing the price Sheila Jackson Lee has begun to pay for her backing of Clinton. Her constituents are angry and resentful, and they booed her loud and long to show their feelings.
Is this, in greater or lesser degrees, what's in store for others, in Brooklyn and elsewhere, who took the same route?
[photo of Clinton was taken by AP at the Pelham Prep graduation.]
Clearly the flare-up between Bill Perkins, New York City's earliest Obama supporter, and Yvette Clarke, who backed Clinton even though her district favored Obama, was a sign of lingering tensions that will not easily die.
The two elected officials -- he a State Senator from Harlem, she a Congresswoman from Central Brooklyn -- went at each other verbally at a "Unity" press conference in front of a gaggle of journalists.
Yvette Clarke took the microphone as a reporter was asking why so many elected officials were missing from the supposed unity gathering, and Perkins began voicing an answer at the same time.
Clarke told Perkins to behave himself and Perkins went off on her. "Don't do that to me!" he said with strong irritation as Clarke backed away and dismissively, with a hand gesture, suggested that he take the microphone.
Others, including Tish James, Councilwoman of Brooklyn, stepped in to try to settle things down.
But the message was clear. Perkins and others (State Senator Eric Adams of Brooklyn, notably, and others) must see themselves as the "faithful few" who stayed with their principles and embraced Obama, while most of the others sough political expediency and supported Clinton even though in their heart of hearts they likely wanted Obama.
And now Clarke, Towns and Meeks -- released earlier this week by Hillary Clinton to do whatever they please -- are turning on a dime and announcing for Obama.
Will it work? Being politicians, they'll probably pull it off.
But, as the "Unity" event showed, there will be some fall-out.
There will clearly remain many New Yorkers, especially black New Yorkers, who will see their (Clarke, Towns and Meeks') steadfast backing of Hillary Clinton, even during her worst moments of race-laced attacks on Obama, as cheaply self-serving and unprincipled.
Perkins stood out in the city as Obama's voice in Harlem, where most of the elected officials had lined up behind the Harlem Dean of Democrats, Congressman Charles Rangel, Hillary Clinton's longtime friend and adviser.
(On Thursday, BrooklyRon had a post about how (according to Politico.com) politicians feared that Yvette Clarke, Ed Towns and Gregary Meeks might suffer political retribution in their communities for their support of Hillary Clinton.)
Regarding the elected officials who did not attend the "Unity" event at City Hall, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn was not there, nor were a number of Latinos, including Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, who had questioned Obama's appeal to Latinos and who last week expressed a desire for Obama to choose Clinton as his running mate.
A decent account of how it all went down between Perkins and Clarke is in the Time's City Room blog.
[Of course, this being June of 2008, you can see a video snippet of the disunity scene, by clicking the top image. The scene opens with Congressman Ed Towns averring that there is in fact unity among the politicans. Then you can hear State Senator Bill Perkins' voice answering, and then you can see Congresswoman Yvette Clarke stepping and saying, "Excuse me," to brush Perkins off.]
In the end, Congressman Charles Rangel had had enough of Hillary Clinton playing the spoiled brat and refusing to come out and endorse Barack Obama like every sane self-respecting Democrat was doing.
Clinton's pathological, narcissistic orneriness was starting to reflect badly on the Dean of Harlem, and it was only his chutzpah and slick wit that was keeping him from looking like a weak captive of the very woman whose political career he helped launch.
But looking much worse than Charlie Rangel, not just these past couple of days, but for the past several months, have been Yvette Clarke, Ed Towns and Gregory Meeks, who have stuck faithfully with Hillary Clinton through all the low-blow attacks on Obama, so much of it racially tinged, and have stuck with her despite the fact that their districts went decisively for Obama in the Feb. 5th New York State primary.
Rangel cited concern for their political well-being when he spoke to Hillary Clinton on Thursday and said they "could face viable primary challenges from pro-Obama candidates if they didn't move quickly to get behind the presumptive nominee," according to Politico.com.
Will they survive politically, those three Congressmembers, Clarke, Towns and Meeks? Probably
they will, politicians having survival traits of certain enduring
insects that we will not repeat here out of respect.
But as they stood with Charlie Rangel in Washington -- released finally and belatedly by their sulking leader HRC -- and announced they would support Barack Obama, the gathering of Democratic Congressmembers from New York yesterday looked sullen, even dejected.
Rangel himself has hinted at what perhaps might underlie such feelings. He has said recently that he never anticipated the strength that Barack Obama would show in the race for the Democratic nomination. We have sensed in that confession an implication that perhaps Rangel might have tilted in the direction of the Illinois Senator, had things been a little different, though we know the ties between Rangel and the Clintons are old and strong.
There must have been yesterday, especially among the African-American Congressmembers, a sense of loss, of an opportunity missed these past months, as they watched Obama march into history, as he ducked and withstood race-laced bullets fired by Geraldine Ferraro, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton herself.
Rangel can take heart in knowing that he stepped out and called HRC "dumb" when she was dumb; and of course he was the one who told her in the end that it was time to quit.
But there is still concern among many that the blood that's been shed in this campaign, while it clearly made Obama stronger, also weakened his chances of victory in November.
And in that there can be little comfort.
[Photo: By AP. Charles Rangel at microphone in Washington, announcing support of Obama as other New York Congressmembers stand with him.]
