Keith Wright is still fighting for Harlem

Keith Wright sat in his midtown Manhattan office, recalling the campaign just weeks earlier that helped his son Jordan win the Democratic primary for Harlem’s Assembly District 70. He admitted that the amount of work he put into the campaign nearly “killed” him. 

“I got the lashes on my back to prove it, believe me,” he said, laughing, in one of his not-so-uncommon references to slavery and racism. As he spoke in his deep, inviting stage announcer’s voice, he stared out the window, looking downtown, away from Harlem, the home he’s determined to restore to political potency with young, new blood like Jordan. 

Wright, who turned 69 in January, once held the same Assembly seat that his 29-year-old son is now poised to win. The elder Wright claims that he hesitated when Jordan first said he wanted a little of the same political action that his father is addicted to. “To be quite honest with you, I never wanted this life for my son,” he said. “I just know that the highs are highs and the lows are lows. And this is something he wanted to do. And of course, you know, when your son wants to do something, you got to support him.”

Jordan Wright insisted that he couldn’t have had a better ally in his foray into politics. “This is not like a situation where it's some guy who I just met at a school, when I got a job, that helped me out throughout parts of my career. This is my father,” the son said. “I will always talk to my dad. We'll have conversations about things that are going on. He can be anywhere he wants, but he's always going to be my father. He's always going to be someone that I seek guidance from.”

But Wright, county leader of the Manhattan Democratic Party, wasn’t just throwing his political might behind his own offspring. Months before Jordan ran, Wright worked to support Yusef Salaam’s successful run to represent New York City Council District 9, which covers Harlem as well as parts of East Harlem, Hamilton Heights and Manhattanville.

Wright said he sees his son Jordan and Salaam as Harlem’s bridge to the future, a line that the younger politicians have embraced. “I feel like there's an opportunity here for Harlem to really have a very bright future between the council member and myself. I'm looking forward to being that two-prong bridge of the next generation,” said Jordan Wright, who is expected to easily win the general election in November.

The elder Wright traveled to Georgia, where Salaam was living at the time, to recruit him for the race, and his son Jordan went to work as Salaam’s campaign manager. The elder Wright said he saw the 50-year-old Salaam – a member of the Central Park Five who was wrongly locked up in prison for seven years – as a viable candidate to run for the City Council, given his personal story and still relatively younger age. Salaam’s newcomer status to politics was used against him by his opponents, Assembly Members Inez Dickens and Al Taylor, who touted their considerable political experience. But Salaam ultimately prevailed in the race.

Salaam said he was glad he trusted Wright’s insights. “I didn't get the trip up of coming to politics and making mistakes, but got the opportunity to really hit the ground running, because my team really, really was put together in a really powerful way,” he said. “And you know, in many ways, it's still going forward. You know, the dream that Harlem is, is being realized through the work that we're doing right now.”

Recent losses

For Wright, these latest victories come after he has faced a number of political losses in recent years. 

He had backed Athena Moore when Cordell Cleare became a state senator. There was Brian Benjamin’s unsuccessful run for city comptroller. In the 2019 special election for public advocate, Wright supported Assembly Member Danny O’Donnell, who lost the race to Jumaane Williams. In 2021, Wright supported Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal for Manhattan borough president over Mark Levine. “Brad, I worked with him in the Legislature. He had been a district leader for many years. Mark never really worked in Harlem. He did a lot of work in Washington Heights,” Wright said, explaining his reasons for backing Holyman-Sigal, who ended up losing to Levine.

However, Wright’s most stinging loss was his own defeat by Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the 2016 Democratic primary for New York’s 13th Congressional District. According to Wright, the two men have not spoken since. “The last time I heard from Adriano was June 28, 2016,” said Wright, recalling the date of the primary loss.

After staring down three attempts to unseat him as county leader – once over concerns that his job working with lobbyists might conflict with his leadership role – Wright said he’s been “fine” not having an alliance with Espaillat. Instead, he’s moving forward with his son Jordan’s Assembly election campaign while continuing to work with Salaam and eventually others.

 “A lot of times you can help folks more than you can help yourself,” he said. “I may not be in elected office now, but I think I can add some things as a coach. And it’s been fun, but it’s been grueling.”

Black political power

Wright carries the endorsement of the generation that raised him, the generation of David Dinkins, Basil Paterson, Percy Sutton and Charles Rangel – better known as Harlem’s influential and powerful “Gang of Four.” “(Keith) had what I never had, and that was being raised by successful people, and especially successful politicians,” said Rangel, the retired member of Congress. Rangel himself was mentored by Wright’s father Bruce Wright, a jurist known for his early bail reforms who was mocked by police unions as “Cut 'Em Loose Bruce.”

The 94-year-old Rangel proudly recalled going to work for Bruce Wright’s law firm right out of law school in 1960. “Weaver, Evans, Wingate, and Wright, I might add, not only was an outstanding African American law firm, but all of them became judges,” Rangel said, adding that those were among the influencers that Keith Wright had growing up.Wright sees both Salaam’s win and Jordan Wright’s primary victory as critical to furthering a Harlem political resurgence – one which has been on the backburner since Black political power shifted to Brooklyn in the early 2000s. Hakeem Jeffries, born and raised in Crown Heights, was elected to the first of two terms in the Assembly in 2007 before going on to join Congress and becoming House Minority Leader. That same year, Eric Adams of Brownsville was elected to the first of four terms in the state Senate, before going on to serve as Brooklyn borough president from 2014 to 2021 and then moving on to City Hall as mayor. Letitia James, who grew up in Park Slope, served on the City Council from 2004 to 2013 and then as public advocate for four years before she was elected state Attorney General in 2019. 

Basil Smikle, the former executive director of the state Democratic Party who unsuccessfully ran against state Sen. Bill Perkins in 2010, said that he walked away from the race with one conclusion at the time: “Harlem needed a succession plan.”

 “This was at a time when Obama had been elected. Two years prior, Cory Booker had just been elected mayor of Newark. You had Adrian Fenty in D.C. There was this younger Black leadership in local, state and federal government,” he said. “So there was this question, ‘Where is Harlem now?’ Because Harlem leadership was aging.”

Last of his kind?

As it has aged, Harlem’s Black political leadership class has given way to Latino candidates and progressives who are independent of the old Harlem machine. Kristin Richardson Jordan, a democratic socialist closely allied with former Black Panther Charles Barron, served a two-year term in the City Council representing District 9, the same district that later elected Salaam.

Corey Ortega, a former Wright aide who is now one of his most vocal critics, said the emergence of progressive politics showed that Wright’s politics had started to become outdated. Since splitting with Wright, Ortega has allied himself with Espaillat, who has backed Latino candidates against Black incumbents. Ortega said the switch in candidates is in alignment with Harlem’s changing demographics. The NYU Furman Center found the Black population in Central Harlem fell from 77.35% in 2000 to 45.8% between 2018 and 2022, while the Hispanic population grew from 16.8% to 28.2% over the same time period.

Ortega, a 40-year-old Harlem native of Dominican descent, said Wright was the last of a generation “clinging” on to younger candidates emerging from Harlem to hold on to power. “Who else is left in Harlem? Denny Farrell is gone, rest his soul,” Ortega said, mentioning the county leader who handpicked Wright to succeed him after leading the Democratic committee for 28 years. Ortega also noted how former Assembly Member Inez Dickens and Rangel were retired and how the remaining members of the Gang of Four were deceased, leaving Wright alone. “He is the last of his kind,” Ortega said. “He is literally the last political Harlemite.” 

Espaillat said no communication with Wright was an exaggeration, but that the relationship was strained. “I mean, it could be better, but, you know, I wouldn't say that is atrocious or bad, per se, necessarily, you know?” he said in a telephone interview. “I think that we could coexist with any issues. I don't have a desire to be county leader. Never have.” The representative, who was uncontested in the last Democratic June primary and now is up for reelection in November noted that when he likely wins, a decade would soon have passed since he defeated Wright. 

“I think many people, including the community, have moved on,” he said. 

Some have tried to get Wright and Espaillat to bury the hatchet. “I have constantly done it,” Rangel said,” but added that the two can’t get over who started their beef. “If you ask Keith, he would say that he doesn't trust Espaillat because Espaillat is constantly running candidates against Black incumbents who are Dominican or Latino. And if you ask Espaillat, he would tell you that he cannot get the other Black leaders to carry his petitions.”

 “None of the Black leaders have carried his congressional petitions, except for my club, which is true,” Rangel said. “The Martin Luther King Democrats.”

“I think to a certain extent, it's true, but it probably goes much deeper than that,” said Wright, responding to Rangel’s comments about Espaillat’s nominating petitions. The courtesy of carrying the petitions evaporated with the grudge. “I don't dispute it,” Wright added. “We have to, now that I've been out of elective office, in order for a community to thrive, you have to have some unity. And right now we really don't have any unity.”

Harlem roots

Wright was born in a Bronx hospital on Jan. 3, 1955, a date that he dislikes because of its proximity to the holidays. “It's right after New Year’s. Everybody's tired and everybody's broke. So it's usually not a blowout situation. It's just a regular day,” he said. 

Wright’s father was a Princeton, New Jersey native, who attended Princeton High School and was accepted to Princeton University but subsequently rejected because he was Black. Wright suspects school administrators thought his father was white, based on reading his name off admissions papers, until he showed up in person to register for his courses. His father instead attended Lincoln University, the nation’s first degree-granting, historically Black college and university in Chester County, Pennsylvania, before serving in the Army in World War II. Wright described his father as a “pacifist” and “devout atheist,” who tried unsuccessfully deserting before returning home from the war to study law at New York Law School. 

Wright’s mother Constance, who went by “Connie,” was a lifelong Harlem resident who attended Hunter High School and later graduated from Hunter College in 1941 with a degree in statistics. She then contributed to the war effort by working for the U.S. Signal Corps at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, where she decoded enemy secrets. Afterward, she went to work as a grade school teacher and retired as an assistant school principal in the 1970s.

Wright’s parents married in 1944 and were among the first Black families to move into The Riverton Houses, a residential development in Harlem built by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in 1947 largely for Black tenants, while similar developments like Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village in Manhattan and Parkchester in the Bronx were for white tenants. 

Wright has a brother from his parents’ marriage, Geoffrey, who is six years his elder and is now a retired acting supreme court judge. His father would go on to have four other marriages and four more children. “We’re all very close,” said Wright, who still lives in the same rent stabilized apartment he grew up in at Riverton. Among his neighbors was Dinkins and his family. “Dave was a Riverton guy,” said Wright. “We used to play with his kids.”

Wright said his parents were quick to get the family involved in the Civil Rights Movement. His upbringing and personal experiences with racism would color his perceptions and influence some of his statements. “These are the principles upon which this country was founded upon. In capitalism, you have to have a pool of free labor. So the vestiges of that still live on to this day,” he said. “Look at our prison system.”

Activist upbringing

Wright said his parents had him on picket lines as a child. “I'll never forget I was eight years old. My mother woke me up early one morning, said, ‘Come on, let's go.’ We go to our church. It was a Saturday. We get on a bus and I fall asleep,” he recalled. “Of course, next thing you know, we were at the March on Washington. It was 1963.”

Wright was enrolled in the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, an exclusive pre-K-12th grade private school on Manhattan’s Central Park West on a scholarship. He said he was one of only a few Black students at the school at the time, a group that also included David Dinkins Jr. and Harry Belafonte. After Fieldston, Wright went on to get a bachelors in political science and history from Tufts University. He spent two years afterwards running a nonprofit college scholarship program before enrolling at Rutgers University to get a law degree in 1982. Wright also played basketball and football throughout high school and was a defensive end while at Tufts. 

Over the next few years, his career path would include working for a corporate and securities lawyer and the city’s Human Resources Administration in Bronx Family Court, a position he held until 1986 when he was laid off. That’s when David Dinkins, then the Manhattan borough president, offered him a job. “Dave paid me $25,000 a year to become the director of the Harlem office for the Manhattan borough president, and I loved every minute of it,” he said. “The greatest job in the world.” 

By then, Wright was also involved in Dinkins’ mayoral campaign and worked with his campaign manager BIll Lynch – the father of Stacy Lynch, who is now Gov. Kathy Hochul’s chief of staff. When Dinkins was elected mayor in 1990, Wright went to work in government relations for the New York City Transit Authority. In 1993, after Assembly Member Geraldine Daniels chose not to seek reelection, he was elected to the Assembly.

In the Assembly, he worked on strengthening worker’s rights, criminal justice reform, support for small business and the creation of affordable housing. During his time in office, he was appointed Assistant Majority Whip and also served as chair of the Black caucus and co-chair of the state Democratic Party.

Out of office

After serving for 14 years in the state Legislature, Wright made his fateful run for Congress. Soon after losing that race to Espaillat, he went to work for Davidoff Hutcher & Citron, a government relations firm. Wright, whose formal title at Davidoff is “director of strategic planning,” said that the firm is “a fantastic place,” though he has repeatedly had to defend against accusations of being a lobbyist. 

Lobbying would present a conflict of interest with his role as county leader. Wright said that he does not lobby the government; instead, he helps guide clients through the government process. “I advise my clients. We got a full time ethicist here to make sure I don't step over any lines, because I'm not trying to. I respect the rule of law,” he said. He works with Black engineering clients, as well as Harlem’s Victoria Hotel and National Black Theater. When asked for more specifics on what he does for those clients, Wright jokingly quoted the firm’s founder, “As Sid Davidoff always tells us, ‘if government worked, we'd be out of a job.’”

Wright recalled landing the position a couple of months after losing to Espaillat. He said he was “despondent and depressed” when invited to a rooftop party where his future boss began “bellowing ‘Keith! Keith! You’re going to work for me!” Davidoff, the former administrative assistant to Mayor John Lindsay for seven years, had not forgotten the son of Bruce Wright. “He was the prime motivating factor behind my father becoming a judge, between him and Percy Sutton, they had to implement the plan for the mayor,” Wright said, explaining how Davidoff and Sutton, who at the time was Manhattan Borough President, advised Lindsay on the criminal court appointment. “Appointing a Black judge at that point in 1970 was a big deal.”

Wright, who is married 36 years to his wife Susan, prefers to let her enjoy retirement from her position in special events for the Studio Museum of Harlem. “What am I going to do, sit home and watch Dr. Phil with her?” he asked. “I'm working. My father worked till he was 80 something.” 

His main focus will be to help young people like his son Jordan and Salam take the lead of Harlem’s political future. Looking back, there’s no return to politics for Wright, at least not completely. “You know, I'm in recovery right now,” he said. “But you just can't take yourself off and go cold turkey.”