Former Rep. Charles B. Rangel, a New York Democrat who helped found the Congressional Black Caucus and went on to a storied four-decade-plus career in the House, died on Monday. He was 94.
The news, announced by his family and subsequently by the City College of New York and media outlets, did not specify a cause of death.
Rangel served 23 terms in Congress, starting in 1971, and was, at the time of his retirement in 2017, the longest-serving member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, the House’s oldest committee, and served as its chairman from 2007 to 2010.
Censure and decline
Rangel’s influence declined after he was censured by the full House in December 2010 over ethics violations, but he still used his perch afterward as the ranking member of the panel’s Trade Subcommittee to push for more open markets and an extension of a 2000 law that helps African countries by lowering U.S. tariffs on their exports.
Rangel stepped aside as Ways and Means chairman in the 111th Congress (2009-10) as the House Ethics Committee pursued 13 charges against him on a variety of matters, including using a rent-stabilized Harlem apartment for a campaign office, under-reporting rental income on a vacation property in the Dominican Republic, failing to disclose personal assets and using congressional letterhead as part of a fundraising campaign.
In 2010, the House (while still under Democratic control) voted for an official censure of Rangel, the first such action against a House member in 27 years. Rangel maintained that he had not intentionally abused his office for personal gain and contended that the charges against him were politically motivated.
“I truly feel good,” he told colleagues at the time of his censure, according to a Wall Street Journal report. “A lot of it has to do with the fact that I know in my heart that I am not going to be judged by this Congress, but I am going to be judged by my life.”
Still stung by the long-running ethics probe, Rangel filed suit in 2013 to overturn the censure and claimed “numerous, flagrant, knowing and intentional violations” of his due process rights. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously dismissed Rangel’s lawsuit in May 2015. “Rangel must vindicate his reputation in the one court that can hear his claim: the court of public opinion,” wrote Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson.
Redistricting heading into the 2012 election changed the group of voters judging him. Rangel long represented Harlem, but he ran in 2012 in a district that also included a chunk of the Bronx that he had never represented. The racial makeup of his constituents shifted from nearly three-quarters Black when he was first elected to a Hispanic majority.
He narrowly defeated now-Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who was then a state senator, in the 2012 Democratic primary, which was decided by fewer than 1,100 votes. Espaillat, seeking to become the first member of Congress born in the Dominican Republic, did not concede for two weeks.
During a primary 2014 rematch, Rangel sought to make his Washington experience an asset and tried to quell concerns about his tenure by saying his 23rd term would be his last. He jabbed at Espaillat’s record in Albany and was widely criticized for saying during a debate, “What the heck has he done, besides saying he’s a Dominican?”
Responding to critics who said he was too old, Rangel said: “If you had a racehorse that won 43 races, brings in the money, but the horse is old and experienced and knows the track, what would you do? Would you send him to the glue factory? Hell, no!”
Rangel’s outreach with his newest constituents, along with endorsements from former President Bill Clinton and then-New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, paid off. Rangel’s lead of about 1,800 votes after election day was enough to make up for any gains Espaillat could get if absentee and affidavit ballots were counted, and The Associated Press declared the veteran congressman the winner of the Democratic primary. There was no Republican candidate for the seat.
Espaillat went on to win the seat in 2016 after Rangel announced his retirement.
Sharp-tongued, policy-focused
Rangel was a frequent guest on cable news shows, delivering both policy diatribes and zingers in his unmistakable raspy voice, even after his censure. “If you’re familiar with the Bible and you’re familiar with Matthew and you’re familiar with the Torah … the other side of whatever good they say, that’s the new Republican program,” he said at a May 2012 news conference. “The hell with the poor, the vulnerable, the sick; if they’re naked, find clothes somewhere. If you’re in trouble, then you just have to pray and work your way out of it.”
Rangel long defied easy classification on policy matters. He took an interest in safety-net and economic-growth programs for low-income communities. He wrote the 1993 “empowerment zones” law that provided tax credits for businesses that moved into blighted areas, as well as the 1986 tax credit for developers of low-income housing. Rangel was a critic of the 1996 law adding work requirements to the welfare program.
But business lobbyists and many Republicans knew a different Rangel. As Ways and Means chairman, he worked with the top Republican at the time, Jim McCrery of Louisiana, to advance legislation providing small-business tax breaks, relief for Hurricane Katrina victims, taxpayer identity protections and a ban on genetic discrimination by health insurers.
Rangel struck several other important agreements later in the 110th Congress (2007-2008). He negotiated with the George W. Bush administration on a trade framework that strengthened labor and environmental standards, allowing a free-trade deal with Peru to become law. He paired a minimum-wage increase with tax breaks and pushed an economic stimulus package through Congress that provided tax rebates to individuals and investment incentives to businesses.
Rangel voted for trade pacts with Panama and South Korea in 2011, and he was a lead Democratic sponsor on a 2012 extension of trade preferences for Africa-produced garments made from third-country fabrics.
Quite a few of his constituents were of Caribbean descent, and Rangel promoted economic development in that region. He irked Brazil in 2011 by trying to extend a tariff on imported ethanol; his hope was to steer more business to ethanol processing plants in Caribbean nations with a partial exemption from the tariff. The tariff expired.
Beginning in 1993, Rangel was the lead sponsor of a bill aimed at ending an embargo on Cuba. His efforts won new meaning when President Barack Obama in December 2014 announced his plan to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba and ease restrictions on travel and trade.
Rangel grew up in Harlem, where he was raised by his seamstress mother and her family. He dropped out of high school at 16, joined the Army and was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star in the Korean War, surviving firefights that killed much of his unit. The experience provided the title of his autobiography: “And I Haven’t Had a Bad Day Since.” After returning home, he finished high school and then college, landing an internship with the local district attorney.
After four years in the state Assembly, he set his sights on the U.S. House and ousted the incumbent in his district, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., in the 1970 Democratic primary. He won his first general election with 87 percent of the vote and amassed even larger wins for most of his career.
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