WHEN HUGH CAREY CARRIED THE DAY: NEW YORK ONCE HAD
GREAT REPRESENTATIVES ON CAPITOL HILL
By BILL HAMMOND
The well-deserved praise being heaped on former Gov. Hugh Carey, who died Sunday at 92, raises a troubling question about New York City politics: What the heck went wrong with the city’s congressional delegation?
Once upon a time, representing New York in Washington was the mark of an up-and-coming leader quite possibly destined for bigger and better things.
Today, those once-coveted seats are devolving into dead-end jobs, more likely to produce late-night punch lines than household names.
No one better illustrates how things used to be than Carey, who served seven terms in the House as a representative from Brooklyn. No wallflower backbencher, he made his mark by tangling with President Lyndon Johnson to ensure that a major education funding bill included some support for religious-affiliated private schools.
The reputation and record Carey built up in Congress was enough to make him not just a credible candidate for governor, but an easy winner in both the Democratic primary and the general election of 1974.
He went on to prove himself as perhaps this state’s best chief executive of the 20th century, rescuing the city and state from bankruptcy so capably that biographers Seymour Lachman and Robert Polner fittingly dubbed him “The Man Who Saved New York.” But Carey’s rise was no fluke for the congressional delegation of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Also serving in the House when Carey first arrived was John Lindsay, who became nationally famous as the young, dashing Republican elected twice as the mayor of a Democratic metropolis.
Another of Carey’s D.C. colleagues was Ed Koch, who parlayed his congressional career into three terms as mayor — and helped Carey implement the fiscal reforms that steered the city from the fiscal brink.
Then there was Shirley Chisholm — a representative from Brooklyn who became the first African-American woman elected to Congress and the first to seek a major-party nomination for President.
Also part of the delegation of that illustrious era were Bella Abzug, the women’s rights leader, Herman Badillo, the pioneering Latino politician, and Elizabeth Holtzman, who played a prominent role in the Watergate investigation.
Fast-forward a couple of generations, and New York City’s star power in Washington has dimmed considerably.
“The delegation back in the ‘70s was seen as a wellspring, if you will, for mayoral candidates, Senate candidates and gubernatorial candidates,” says Bruce Gyory, a consultant who also teaches political science at the State University of New York at Albany. “You don’t tend to see people in the delegation right now that have the kind of star potential that Badillo had, that Lindsay had, that Carey and Koch had.”
The last congressman from the five boroughs to successfully seek higher office was current Sen. Chuck Schumer — and that was 13 years ago.
Today, we have Rep. Gregory Meeks of Queens, accused last week by the Office of Congressional Ethics with improperly accepting $40,000 from a local businessman.
And we have Rep. Charles Rangel of Harlem, a former up-and-comer who rose to become chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee — only to get caught violating the very tax code he was responsible for writing.
From 1997 to 2008, Staten Island was represented in Washington by Vito Fossella — until he was arrested for drunken driving and it came out that he had a 3-year-old child with a woman who was not his wife.
And from 1999 until two months ago, parts of Queens and Brooklyn were represented by Anthony Weiner — who actually looked like he had a shot at the big time when he came in a close second in the mayor primary of 2005. And then he was caught emailing photos of his you-know-what to young female strangers.
So what does the future hold?
The special election to fill Weiner’s seat features Assemblyman David Weprin, the handpicked candidate of Democratic bosses, whose major legislative achievement in Albany so far was a bill to authorize turning a piece of state land into a city park — until Gov. Cuomo vetoed it on the ground that the state didn’t actually own the land.
Weprin’s is facing former media executive Bob Turner, who buys into the Tea Party logic that the best answer to the nation’s burgeoning debt is more tax cuts.
It looks like the decline since Carey’s day won’t be turning around anytime soon.
