Metro

Rangel proves to be a sore winner after beating Espaillat

Rep. Charles Rangel will never forgive Adriano Espaillat, whom he once privately described as a “punk,” according to sources in the congressman’s camp.

The sources said the 84-year-old lawmaker, who on Tuesday night turned back Espaillat’s second challenge in two years, was outraged that the ambitious state senator decided to take him on in 2012 while Rangel was bed-ridden in the hospital.

Rangel allies claimed that Espaillat had promised he would never run in a primary against Rangel.

But when reapportionment turned the 13th Congressional District from a center of black power into one with a majority of Latino residents, things changed quickly.

“My opponent last time waited until I was in Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital [to announced his candidacy],” Rangel recalled angrily Tuesday, referring to his bout with a spinal infection.

“I had no [opposing] candidate until there were new [district] lines. If he supported me for 18 years and took a look at the new lines, did he think all of a sudden he would be better than me? I don’t think so.”

Rangel confidantes said the congressman, first elected in 1970, felt he deserved more deference from his 59-year-old rival.

“If that punk Espaillat wants to take my seat, he’s gonna have to come and get it,” one Rangel insider recounted the congressman as saying.

A Korean War vet, Rangel campaigned with a walker in 2012, pulling out a narrow victory by less than 1,100 votes.

The second campaign has turned out to be even uglier than the first, with Rangel launching an ethnically charged attack that infuriated Espaillat.

“Just what the heck has he actually done besides saying he’s a Dominican?” Rangel demanded during a June 6 debate.

“If that punk Espaillat wants to take my seat, he’s gonna have to come and get it.”


Espaillat shot back that Rangel’s comments were a disgrace.

“I was hoping we’d have a discourse and a debate about the issues, then he injected ethnicity in it, and it was sort of like he flipped the conversation and then it was the Sharks versus the Jets,” said Espaillat.

Espaillat insiders conceded that relations between the two men are “tense.” But they also said there were two sides to the story.

“Mocking the standard-bearer of the Dominican community — mocking him as a child — is not helpful,” said one Espaillat ally.

Rangel leads Espaillat with 22,674 votes, or 47.4 percent, to Espaillat’s 20,846 votes, or 43.6 percent, in the unofficial voting-machine count with 980 absentee ballots uncounted.