Initially, Charlie Rangel wanted nothing to do with the Bronx.

The 82-year-old legislative icon, a symbol of black political power and one-time student at DeWitt Clinton High School on Mosholu Parkway, was comfortable with upper Manhattan as his district and Harlem as his base. The Bronx seemed like foreign territory, not, as it has become, an extension of the district he had loved and fostered as a Congressman for the last 42 years.

“I had a fierce identification with Harlem,” he said in a recent interview, just weeks after edging out a primary victory in the 13th Congressional District, which now includes the northwest Bronx. “As a kid, I always thought if anybody didn’t live in Manhattan, they didn’t live in the City.”

He fought the idea that the Bronx would become part of his district. But after a judge drew new Congressional lines earlier this year (after the state legislature failed to agree on lines) based on the 2010 Census, it didn’t matter. The Bronx would come to him.

Once he started reaching out to Bronx politicians, however, the unease started to melt away.

“I am very pleased to say all of my apprehensions about leaving Harlem,” he said, “were shattered because I went up there and my name was so well known, there were groups waiting to welcome me to the Bronx.”

Rangel talks about taking on the Bronx as if he’s being married into a new family. He said he went to senior centers and other places with fellow Congressman Jose Serrano (Rangel calls him “Joe”) during the campaign and found that people wanted him to be a part of that family.

“’We may only make up one-fifth of the district,’” he said Bronx residents told him, “’but we want all of your heart.’ They make up these things that are so beautifully said and so all of the awkwardness that I had thought about was just shattered.”

Fending Off a Challenge

As it turns out, the Bronx wanted Rangel’s closest challenger, State Senator Adriano Espaillat, even more than Rangel.

Although he lost the election by a mere 1,086 votes (a little more than 2 percent), Espaillat, vying to become the first Dominican-born member of Congress, won the Bronx by 233 votes (out of 5,386 votes in the borough). Less than 9 percent of registered Bronx voters showed up at the June 26 primary.

After uncovering some irregularities in the tallying of votes after an election night that ended with him conceding to Rangel, Espaillat filed a lawsuit claiming election fraud and asking for a re-vote. He pulled the lawsuit two days before the hearing, saying the vote difference was too great to make up. (Espaillat also needed to file petitions to run for re-election to his state senate seat, which he couldn’t do while still technically running for Congress.) The Board of Elections finally certified Rangel’s victory a day later on July 10.

Rangel said he was surprised how close the race ended up being.

After re-districting, Rangel’s new district became 55 percent Hispanic. Rangel thought he had spent enough time and energy working with and cultivating Dominican and other Hispanic leaders. But the opportunity to elect one of their own appeared to outweigh the good will he had sown.

“I started getting calls from [Dominican leaders] saying ‘Charlie, we love you, and we might not like this guy [Espaillat], but this is our chance,’” Rangel said.

Ascending to Power

Rangel started as an upstart himself, unseating another African-American legend from Harlem, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. in a contentious primary in 1970. (Rangel’s district office is now in the Adam Clayton Powell state building on 125th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard.)

Before being elected, Rangel grew up in Harlem, but spent time in the Bronx during his adolescence. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School, but dropped out to join the Army and won numerous awards for his bravery during the Korean War. Rangel later finished high school, graduated from New York University and earned a law degree at St. John’s.

He entered politics as an Assemblyman representing Harlem in 1966, won re-election 1968 and then challenged and defeated Powell who was embroiled in an ethics scandal and had exiled himself to Bimini, an island in the Bahamas.

Rangel went on to form the Black Caucus in Congress and rose to prominence in the highly influential Ways and Means Committee, which sets the country’s tax laws. In the late 1980s, Rangel was credited with precipitating an end to South African apartheid after spearheading legislation, known as the Rangel Amendment, which encouraged several Fortune 500 companies to leave the country.

In 2007, he became the first African-American chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. But his run was short-lived. He stepped down from his chairmanship in 2010 amid an ethics investigation. After signing a plea agreement, the Congressional Ethics Committee found Rangel guilty of bringing dishonor to the House for improper solicitation of charitable donations and failure to accurately report some of his income. He was officially admonished by the House for his transgressions.

Rangel isn’t eager to discuss this, but in a recent New York Times, Rangel said he was pressured into signing the plea agreement by party leadership and that his lawyer is pushing to have it expunged from the record after new documents surfaced alleging significant misconduct by the Ethics Committees lawyers who were prosecuting Rangel.

Helping the Bronx

The ethics censure and recent health problems — he missed three months of votes earlier this year with back problems — have diminished Rangel’s considerable influence. But even so, political insiders say no one in New York is better at getting things done in Washington than Rangel.

Basil Smikle, Jr., a political consultant who grew up in the Bronx, said Rangel has deep connections in Washington, New York, and nationally, which he can use to help his district, which now includes the Bronx.

“Smart representatives know how to marshal resources back to the community,” Smikle said. “And Charlie has that more than any member. That’s why it’s always very hard to unseat him.”

Rangel admits things have changed in Washington. He won’t be able to bring back the millions of dollars in funding he used to.

“But he has the ability to get the attention of key Washington figures,” says Patrick Jenkins, a political consultant and part-time spokesman for the Bronx Democratic party. “There’s not anyone better to do that for Bronx residents.”

Rangel, who is almost certainly going to win the general election in November, says he will most likely open a district office in the Bronx and start talking with elected officials and community leaders about how he can help out his new family members in the northern borough.

In his warm, gravelly voice that sounds like chocolate being raked over hot coals, he said, “Now there has to be a rebuilding of the confidence that someone like me is making certain that all parts of the community, whether they’re from the Carribean Islands, Central America, Mexico, South America, that they all feel comfortable and that they all feel like they can achieve their political ambitions.”

Editor’s note: A version of this article originally appeared in the July 26-Aug. 22 print edition of the Norwood News.