Is Bill Perkins starting to hear footsteps? At his marathon anti-charter-school hearing yesterday, the Harlem state senator showed a surprisingly thin skin about his political future — grilling SUNY officials about reports that a charter operator they’d licensed was looking to back a challenge for his seat this fall.
“Is it corrupt for a charter school to be involved in politics?” he intoned. (Of course, he could ask the same question about his allies, the teachers unions — were he so inclined.)
A challenger would have fertile territory. Perkins’ War on Charters can’t be broadly popular in his district, where the charter movement has blossomed — and where demand for seats outstrips supply by thousands of students every year.
Perkins might also lack the energetic support of broad swaths of the Harlem political establishment, which he’s antagonized on numerous occasions.
Councilman Robert Jackson says he supports Perkins for re-election “like a brother” but acknowledges that some Harlem elected officials may be looking to back someone else — citing the senator’s lack of support for Gov. Paterson earlier this year and rumors that he was thinking about challenging Rep. Charles Rangel.
Indeed, Harlem Assemblyman Keith Wright — the chairman of the Manhattan Democratic Party — pointedly declined to throw his weight behind Perkins.
“I don’t know yet,” he said when asked if he’d back Perkins for re-election. “He has not asked.”
But Perkins’ problem goes far beyond Harlem’s political inside baseball. The neighborhood itself is changing — and not in Perkins’ direction.
Over the last decade, Harlem has seen a constant influx of both black and white middle-class families. According to the Census, Central Harlem’s population grew by 17,000 people between 2000 and 2008 — more than half of the growth white. Greater Harlem, which is roughly Perkins’ Senate district, is now only 40 percent black.
Meanwhile, some neighborhood brownstones are selling for close to $1 million or more. Yet Perkins has for years positioned himself as the most truculent opponent of anything that smacks of gentrification, from Columbia’s expansion into West Harlem to the rezoning of 125th Street.
His charter-bashing seems designed to exploit anxieties about these changes. In a February newsletter to constituents prominently featuring the image of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he accused the charter movement of being based upon “a segregationist premise” and wondered why “the big push for charters exists only in low-income communities of color.”
In this view, for instance, a charter moving into space shared by a failing zoned school is an attempt by “outsiders” to push out “community”-supported schools.
Ironies abound, of course. Kids in Harlem charters, the great majority of whom qualify for the federal school-lunch program, can hardly be classified as upscale newcomers — and it’s unclear why the parents lining up to get them seats shouldn’t be considered valid expressions of “community” sentiment.
And, unfortunately for Perkins, his likeliest opponents identify closely with both the Harlem establishment and the incoming black middle class.
At the top of the speculative list are political consultants Basil Smikle and Rodney Capel — both young, at 38, and both supporters of charter schools.
Capel, who’s worked for Sen. Chuck Schumer and Council Speaker Christine Quinn, is the son of James Capel, Rangel’s chief of staff. Smikle’s worked for then-Sen. Hillary Clinton.
Smikle also has an independent streak: He told The Los Angeles Times last month that he found the summit of black leaders convened in February to decide what to do about the Paterson scandals “old-school and somewhat insulting,” adding, “The electorate does not live in a world where they blindly abide by decisions made in smoke-filled backrooms.”
Another possible foe is Larry Blackmon, a deputy parks commissioner.
None has thrown his hat into the ring yet — but would likely have to in the next few weeks.
To be sure, Perkins would still be formidable. He has name recognition (he was first elected to the City Council in 1998) and a base with many of the neighborhood’s longtime residents, and he’s known to be active in constituent services.
But Harlem politics these days are nothing if not uncertain: Just witness the decline of the legendary Gang of Four — Rangel, David Dinkins, Percy Sutton and Basil Paterson — that ruled Harlem politics for a generation.
In just the last few months, Sutton passed away, Rangel lost his powerful Ways and Means chairmanship — and Gov. Paterson, Basil’s son, was forced to withdraw from the 2010 race in disgrace.
Harlemites new and old may well decide it’s time for a fresh face.
If so, Perkins is in trouble.