By Shola Lynch
On a hot Saturday afternoon deep in the heart of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Kevin Powell, candidate for the 10th Congressional District, was the opening act for the youngsters participating in a basketball tournament. The roughly 15 boys – and the one girl – had warmed up so they glistened with sweat. The kids already had rolled up the sleeves of their matching T-shirts, and were ready to start the game. Nonetheless, the 10-to-12 year-olds listened with rapt attention to Powell’s 10-minute discussion about what it means to be a man – and a woman. “Responsibility,” he stressed was the key.
As he finished up, the adults congregated around him. And then the inevitable question came up. Although exasperated by it, Powell kept his cool when a man enthusiastically inquired, “Aren’t you that guy from the ‘Real World’?” He proudly added, “I work in reality TV, too.” Powell replied, “Sorry about that, brother.” But then he added, “Well, we all have to make a living.”
Powell burst on to the pop-culture scene in 1992 in the first season of MTV’s reality show the “Real World,” cast as the angry black guy. Since then, he has been making a living as a journalist, author, entrepreneur, activist, or public speaker. In the last several years, Powell has put one more addition to his resume– Congressional candidate.
His myriad roles and personal connections, mostly outside of the district, have helped him raise $152,771 to challenge Edolphus Towns, a 27-year incumbent, in the September 14 primary election. Facing serious competition for one of the few times in his tenure, Towns has raised more than a million dollars almost equally divided among individuals, primarily from Brooklyn, and political action committees.
In the diverse district, which spans from Brooklyn Height to Brownsville, Powell has been running for the Democratic nomination against Towns since 2006. Although he withdrew from the race that year– because, he said, he wanted to assist in clean-up and humanitarian efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which had hit the Gulf Coast the previous year. In the next primary, in 2008, Towns won handily with 24,405 votes to Powell’s 11,558 by spending $1,568,247 – or $64.26 per vote, nearly ten times what Powell did. Now the two are going head-to-head again in the upcoming 2010 Democratic primary, one taking place amid a national backlash against incumbents.
Kevin Powell’s campaign office on DeKalb Avenue in Clinton Hill sits next door to a barbershop that promises to “bring life back to your image.” In the converted storefront window hangs a large “Powell for Congress” banner. With the volunteers already dispatched for the day on a summer morning, it was just Dan Campanelli, the campaign manager (who has recently stepped down) and Gene Johnson, the deputy campaign manager, quietly working away, with the window box air-conditioner buzzing in the background. They periodically checked their cell phones while they waited for their candidate.
Campanelli, 30, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, explained how he got into politics. “Kevin was an incredibly compelling candidate in ’08,” he said. He was a breath of fresh air, so I volunteered. I owe Kevin a lot in terms becoming active. He just draws people in.”
Gene Johnson, in his late 30’s, also dressed casually, expressed a similar sentiment. “I didn’t know he was a celebrity,” he said. “I just saw him as a hard- working guy who was humbly asking for my vote. That’s why I got involved.” He, too, started out volunteering and grew with the Powell for Congress campaign over the years, and the election cycles.
Powell’s fundraising shows a similar charisma and devotion. His career from reality television star to congressional candidate has spanned 18 years. Along the way, he’s met a lot of people, and many of them have been supporting his campaign.
Large contributions, which are donations of $200 or more, have to be itemized and reported to the Federal Election Committee. Powell’s list was comprised mostly of celebrities, entrepreneurs, teachers, academics, and non-profit directors. It’s a “Who’s Who” among the maximum $2,400 contributors— the Brooklyn-born-and-bred comedian, Chris Rock, and his wife, Malaak Compton-Rock; hip-hop fashion designer Marc Ecko; actor and author Hill Harper; and football player Julius Pepper of the Chicago Bears, just to name a few. Others such as Doug Herzog, president of MTV Networks; Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree; and Shelly Serdahely, the executive director of Men Stopping Violence, have donated $1,000 or more to the campaign. This impressive list of contacts stretches through Georgia, California, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, and all around the tri-state area. Only 9 out of Powell’s 110 big donors live in his Brooklyn district.
But it also costs money to raise these funds. According to the campaign’s 2010 itemized disbursement filings, Powell spends a large portion of his funds on travel outside of Brooklyn – planes, train, hotels, and cars.
Unfazed by the number of donations from outside the district, Campanelli said, “You pull money from wherever you can get it. This is a grassroots campaign. I think we need the resources.” After pausing, he added, “I don’t think it really matters.”
Later that Saturday, Powell responded in a similar way. He said, “We have support from Brooklyn, and donations from all over the country. Running against a 27-year incumbent, we just need the money.” He also pointed out that most of their Brooklyn donations are small dollar contributions, which are not itemized. Although more than half of the funds raised by Powell to date are from large contributions, 34 percent come from contributions less than two hundred dollars and, as Powell put it, “are mainly from people in the community.”
Having had a similar campaign fund-raising strategy in 2008, Powell only won the neighborhoods covering the Brooklyn Heights and Boerum Hill areas. Towns won all the remaining districts.
At 44, Powell, is the oldest member of his campaign team, and he admitted that he made mistakes in the 2008 race, but has learned from them. “Nothing prepares you for doing this except doing it,” said Powell about campaigning. He said, “I was a deer in the headlights” even though he has been working on campaigns since 1984, when Jesse Jackson ran for president. “I was blown away by that campaign and Jesse Jackson, who was the first black running for president,” said Powell. “At the time,” he admitted, I didn’t know about Shirley Chisholm,” who ran for the Democratic nomination for president 12 years before Jackson, and was the first black woman elected to Congress in 1968, representing part of the district now covered by Towns, and coveted by Powell.
Although Powell had volunteered on campaigns, been a community organizer, and worked on voter-education programs, he didn’t have some of the essentials for electoral success like the prime voter list. This time, for instance, Powell said, “I know where the votes are because we have the list.” There are 85,000 of them in the district of 650,000 people. They are the already-registered Democrats who have a track record of coming out to vote in primaries, which generally attract less than a quarter of qualified voters. With the list, Powell can target them directly. He added, “I’m also not wasting any time on high-priced consultants, who try and change you.”
Powell has transformed himself over the years from the brash hip-hop poet with a flat top in the early 90’s. Whether wrangling funds on the phone, speaking with his staff, or potential voters, he was soft-spoken and had a calm demeanor. He also sported a more conservative look. Powell had a clean-shaven head, and was wearing loafers, khakis, and a button down oxford shirt. He wore a wristband that said in big bold letters — “Stop Violence Against Women.”
It is a reminder that in the past he has struggled with a bad temper and violent outbursts, often directed at women. There were several incidents, particularly in college, including pulling a knife on a woman during an argument, which got him expelled from Rutgers University. Powell is transparent about his indiscretions and has written about them in a book, titled “Who’s Gonna Take the Weight? Manhood, Race, and Power in America,” and is a sought-after speaker on the topic at colleges across the country.
Cardelia Utley, a community activist in Bedford-Stuyvesant, said that Powell’s mistakes make him an attractive candidate. Explaining why she’s supporting him, she said, “It’s deep.” Implying that she was over coming her past, too, the 48-year-old described them as “kindred spirits.” “It is as if,” she said, “I don’t like where I come from but like where I’m going.” Plus, she said, she had seen him in action, “and I like what I see.”
Bedford-Stuyvesant, along with Fort Greene, and the Downtown and Brooklyn Heights neighborhoods, are what Powell’s campaign manager described as “sweet spots,” where people already know him. As Campanelli put it, “Name recognition is something that we definitely use to our advantage,” and something that “our current Congressperson doesn’t have.” Instead, he said, “Towns has a base of folks he moves to the polls – the traditional Democratic Party system.”
Ironically, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, whose well-known slogan was “Unbought & Unbossed,” mentored Towns and encouraged him to get into politics. Unlike her protégé, she was never a corporate or lobbyist favorite, but the times were also different. In the 1970’s and ‘80’s, she didn’t have to raise more than a million dollars to run for office. According to her autobiography, also titled “Unbought & Unbossed,” she financed her first campaign for Congress with her savings as a schoolteacher and administrator, along with very small contributions from supporters. Even in 1972 dollars, it was far cry from the more than $1.2 million Towns has raised to-date.
Towns has raised funds are from more traditional sources than Powell’s. At 76, he is running for Congress for the 15th time. His large donors come from all over the country and they are savvy contributors. According to Towns’ summer Federal Election Commission filing, several donors doubled the maximum allowance for an individual by giving the $2400 maximum for the primary, and then again for the general election, which is not until November. Towns’ campaign has raised over half a million dollars through these large donor individuals.
As Chairman of The Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Towns oversees investigations of waste and fraud that currently include the overall financial viability of the Post Office and the estimated billions in Medicaid and Medicare abuses. According to OpenSecrets.org, a non-profit website that tracks money in U.S. politics and its influence on candidates, Towns has raised the most money through corporations like the Scooter Store, which manufactures motorized wheelchairs that are partially covered by Medicaid, healthcare providers such as Wycoff Heights Medical Center, and four postal workers’ associations that contribute to his $658,825 total collected from political action committees.
Interestingly, Powell has raised $14,667 more than Towns in smaller, unitemized contributions, which Powell’s campaign attributed to money given by voters in the district.
How the numbers will translate into votes won’t be clear until after the primary on September 14. In the diverse district that includes Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Heights, Brownsville, Canarsie, East New York and Ocean Hill, as well as parts of Fort Greene, Prospect Heights and Williamsburg, Powell claims in person, in the press, and in a recent campaign video posted on his website that Towns is out of touch with voters.
As The Brooklyn Paper reported in July, Towns’ campaign “scoffed” at he idea. His spokesperson Julian Phillips said, “You can’t be invisible for 25 years in a district and expect to be elected again and again — that’s just insanity,” and pointed to Towns’ support of a $60-million renovation of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, support of health care reform, and gun control.”
In early August, Towns took his challenger to the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn for fraud. Instead of challenging Powell’s more than 8,000 signatures on his nominating petitions through the election commission, which is standard procedure, the Congressman sued in Kings County Supreme Court of the State of New York to keep his challenger off the ballot in September. Towns’ spokesperson, Andrew Moesel, dismissed the idea in an email, “We believe Mr. Powell has committed serious fraud on his petitions, such as forging signatures and lying about facts regarding his residency.” Moesel, from Sheinkopf Communications, further wrote, “Mr. Powell is a self-promoter who is more interested in building his own reputation than serving the constituents in Brooklyn. He has cut corners at every turn in his campaign and voters can only believe that he would do the same in Washington.” But Moesel slipped by referring to Brooklyn’s 10th Congressional District as the 15th, which is the embattled Charlie Rangel’s district, and writing “the voters of the 15th District deserved better.”
Comparing the dean of Harlem politics, who has held office for 40 years and is the midst of fighting serious ethic violations, to the long-time incumbent Towns is a connection that Powell has been determined to make in the press, and also did so in a July Huffington Post essay titled, “Is Congressman Towns Afraid of Kevin Powell?”
While Powell won the court case, and will be on the ballot on September 14, the Daily News has recently reported he has another battle on his hands. He owes between $615,000 and $1.3 million in back taxes. In response, Powell said in a lengthy statement recounting his financial hard-knocks, “I feel very strongly they actually make me uniquely qualified to serve the people of Brooklyn’s 10th Congressional district. For their experiences are my experiences.”
Now it is up to the voters to decide.
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