Harlem Assembly Member Adam Clayton Powell IV is planning to open an exploratory committee “in a week or two” to test the waters for a possible run against embattled Rep. Charlie Rangel, Powell told City Hall.
“A lot of people have been talking to me for a few weeks,” Powell said. “It’s no secret that I’ve always been interested.”
Powell first ran against Rangel in 1994, hoping to reclaim the seat his father, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., had held for decades before losing to Rangel in 1970. The younger Powell, who launched his last bid while a member of the Council, raised money for a possible run against Rangel in 2004, but never pulled the trigger.
The news that Powell is mulling a run against Rangel comes on the heels of bank manager Vince Morgan’s announcement of his own plans to run in next year’s primary for the Harlem seat.
Powell has had a checkered political career. The scion of one of New York’s most prominent political families, Powell was accused of rape by two women in 2004, but never formally charged. In 2008, after being pulled over for drunk driving on the West Side Highway, officers discovered a passed out woman in Powell’s backseat. His poor attendance record in the Assembly and meager legislative output has earned him derision from some of his colleagues, who accuse him of being an indifferent politician.
But Powell is well-loved in his district and, in a neighborhood where one of the main boulevards is named for his father, enjoys stratospheric name recognition.
“I believe I would make a formidable candidate,” Powell said. “I’m only in my 40s. Forty-seven-years-old. Because you need someone who can stay there—assuming the voters will continue to re-elect them—that can stay there for 20 years to gain seniority, like my father, who was a congressman, and like Charlie Rangel has been able to do.”
Powell said he is more motivated by Rangel’s advancing age (he turned 79 in June), rather than the recent controversy surrounding the congressman’s personal finances.
The House voted last week to allow Rangel to keep his powerful Ways and Means Committee chairmanship, despite heavy pressure from Republicans that he relinquish the leadership post. A wide-ranging ethics investigation is still ongoing.
Whether Rangel succumbs to mounting scrutiny, or decides that he is ready to retire, Powell said that competition for his seat will be intense.
“It’s around the corner,” he said. “Something’s going to happen really soon.”
