WASHINGTON – Embattled Rep. Charles Rangel has a challenger on his hands.
A fellow Harlem Democrat – and former Rangel employee – has launched a campaign to take the seat in 2010 that the lawmaker has held for nearly 40 years.
“It’s time to think about what comes after Charlie – we need a change,” declared Vincent Morgan, who works as a community banker at TD Bank.
Morgan, who served as campaign director for Rangel in 2002, said he believes he can defeat the veteran lawmaker, who has faced only four primary challenges since 1970, the most recent in 2004.
But it would be a major uphill battle to unseat Rangel, who remains popular and still has the backing of the Harlem political machine. Just getting on the ballot will be tough for Morgan, who would have to collect 5,000 signatures.
Morgan told The Post that the timing of his campaign effort – in a year when the powerful Ways and Means Committee chairman is mired in a wide-ranging ethics investigation and is fending off demands for him to step down – is a “coincidence.”
“It’s not about trying to tear Charlie down,” Morgan said.
Still, Morgan said that if the ethics committee finds that Rangel has committed major breaches, the lawmaker should “take responsibility for it” and possibly give him his congressional seat if the findings are serious enough.
Rangel supporter and Manhattan Democratic Chairman Keith Wright said Morgan will have a rough road taking on Rangel.
“Hes an absolute icon,” Wright, a longtime Assemblyman, said of Rangel.
Wright said that voters are well aware of the power that Rangel has amassed in the four decades he has spent representing the 15th district, and believes they won’t want to throw that away.
If Rangel goes, “We will never see another Ways and Means chairman from this community in the next 50 or 60 years,” Wright said.
Rangel’s position at the helm of that committee is already in jeopardy, though, as a growing chorus of lawmakers and political activists call for him to step down until the ethics committee decides his fate.
Wright said that Rangel’s ethical troubles, ranging from failing to pay taxes to dramatically underreporting his income, haven’t made a dent in his public support.
Rangel won his election last year with more than 89 percent of the vote, even though the ethics investigation had been announced months prior to the election.
He is also a prolific fund raiser, although he is spending an increasing percentage of his coffers on attorneys and accountants to help him keep his job as chairman as a congressman.
This summer, Rangel had almost $1 million on hand between his campaign account and his leadership committee account. Morgan said he hopes to raise $2 million in the 13 months until the election.
Morgan said he knows he faces a rough fight, but that some Democrats in high places have indicated that they will help him do it.
“I’ve gotten a lot of phone calls from interesting places,” Morgan said.
Rangel’s office had no comment.