It's unfortunate but we may be about to see another liberal lion go down. He may well pull through but it looks a lot tougher than in the past. At 81 he seeks one more term in his Harlem district he's led since 1970. This one though again may be tough.
What's so tough this time? He has some theories:
"In an interview, Rangel said he has given much thought to why he’s facing such a stiff challenge. Part of it, he said, is what he called unfair scrutiny of his personal finances, which culminated in his being censured before the House in 2010 and stripped of the chairmanship of the powerful, tax-writing Ways and Means Committee."
"Republicans who were intent on tarnishing his record, he said, were also at fault. And he pointed his finger at the famously aggressive New York tabloid media culture, which he said has been particularly aggressive in going after him."
“I’ve been beat up pretty badly. Pretty badly,” he said. “Yet at the end of the day, everyone says I’m doing a pretty good job.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76255_Page2.html#ixzz1urO2EF5a
Yet all this was around in 2010. Really it's yesterday's news. After all the ethics charges and the tax stuff was new in 2010 yet he won in a landslide:
"This year looks different, thanks to a redistricting process that’s forcing him to introduce himself to thousands of new voters and an opponent far more formidable than his 2010 foes. And he arrives at the challenge on the heels of a back injury and serious viral infection that kept him away from Congress for months and in a noticeably weakened state."
"This spring, New York legislators placed the longtime congressman in a newly drawn district, nearly one-third of which Rangel hasn’t served before. Most ominous for Rangel: Latinos make up a majority of voters in his new district — 55 percent, a jump of nearly 10 percentage points — and that created a big opening for his lead primary opponent, state Sen. Adriano Espaillat, who is Dominican-American."
This is the real problem-redistricting. What this has actually done here in Harlem is put him and Espaillat in an uncomfortable turf war with an ethnic undercurrent. Fact is that Rangel's district was always majority Black until now. With a majority now Latino this could bode ill. Mr. Espaillat has not been shy about referring to Rangel's age either.
“Locally, Congressman Rangel has been here since 1970,” Espaillat said in an interview. “The Mets had won a championship the year before; [Richard] Nixon was president; we had landed on the moon; and Joe Namath was wearing panty hose and throwing touchdown passes.”
In all fairness to Espaillat, he had initially not wanted to oppose Rangel-he tried to fight the redistricting as well. It's a way of driving a wedge between two Democratic constituents-Latinos and Blacks.
What you can't but notice is that this is happening everywhere. This same thing happened to Barney Frank where his district this year changed and he would now have to reintroduce himself after years as a House stalwart to brand new constiutents many of a more conservative cast. We saw Kucinich go down to defeat in an Ohio primary to Marcy Kaptur. Is this part of the Republican attack on voting rights along with the voter id laws, etc? Well we can't but notice that no Republicans are being redsitricted to less advantageous districts.
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