The way the silver-haired Harlem Democrat sees it, he couldn’t have picked a better time to retire.
“I did not ever think about leaving. I have mixed feelings,” he told The Washington Times on a recent sunny afternoon on Capitol Hill. “But the way the political races have turned out, I can’t wait to get out of here.”
For 46 years Mr. Rangel has represented the same Harlem district where he grew up. He scaled the heights of congressional power, chaired the tax-writing House Committee on Ways and Means, plummeted in an ethics scandal that cost him the chairmanship and subjected him to the humiliation of censure on the House floor, and bounced back to win re-election to two more terms in the House.
The congressman, renowned for his genial disposition, didn’t try to hide his disgust with Donald Trump’s upset win of the White House, with the Republicans’ success in keeping control of both chambers of Congress or with the fellow Democrat — a bitter political rival — who is succeeding him in representing New York’s 13th Congressional District.