What the Dickens?
Challenger looks to shake up Harlem’s political status quo
VINCE MORGAN’s green eyes are blazing with intensity; he takes a gulp of black coffee, shifts his 6-foot-4 frame and utters four simple words that reflect the journey of a lifetime: “I have been blessed.”
The onetime high school dropout will need all the blessings he can get as he takes on the entrenched Harlem political establishment as the underdog in a Democratic primary bid to oust incumbent City Councilwoman Inez Dickens.
But the 44-year-old Morgan — who was born to a single mother and raised poor by his grandmother on Chicago’s South Side — has a long history of beating big odds.
“I went back and studied and stayed out of trouble and got my GED, which in the ’hood is called a Ghetto Education Diploma,” Morgan says during a two-hour interview at Café Latte on Lenox Ave.
He went on to Howard University, the University of Illinois and Columbia before becoming a business leader, community development banker, political player and grassroots activist in Harlem, where he moved 13 years ago.
Morgan served as chairman of the 125th St. Business Improvement District from 2007 to 2010, and says he helped pump millions of dollars in small-business loans and affordable housing investments into northern Manhattan during a stint at TD Bank, from 2006 to 2011.
Morgan, who earned a master’s degree in public administration from Columbia in 2006, led community activists in prodding the school to honor its promises to hire minority and female contractors and employees as part of its $6.8 billion, 17-acre, Manhattanville expansion of its campus.
His pressure paid off. State economic development officials in February agreed to review Columbia’s hiring practices.
When Morgan was 13, his mother let him in on a family secret. His biological father is former Tennessee state Sen. John Ford, who was one of the most powerful men in that state until he was convicted of taking $55,000 in bribes and packed off to federal prison in 2008.
“It took 10 years for him to acknowledge he had an adult child, and coming to terms with it has not been easy for him,” Morgan said of his father, who was released from prison in 2012.
He has since established a rapport with his relatives from the fabled Memphis political dynasty. His cousin is former Rep. Harold Ford Jr., who briefly mulled a Senate run in New York.
This is not the first time Morgan has tried to follow in the Ford footsteps. After working for Rep. Charles Rangel from 2001 to 2004, and managing his reelection campaign in 2002, he challenged the longtime congressman in the 2010 Democratic primary — and was handily defeated.
Morgan briefly tossed his hat in the ring for a rematch in 2012, then withdrew to back state Sen. Adriano Espaillat, who was also vanquished by the lion of Harlem in a much closer race. Espaillat returned the favor earlier this month, endorsing Morgan in his challenge to Dickens.
The Democratic primary for the 9th City Council District — which runs from Central Park North to 155th St. between Fifth Ave. on the east and Morningside Ave. and St. Nicholas Ave. on the west — is in many ways another rematch between Morgan’s insurgency and Rangel’s machine. Rangel has often called Dickens his “political wife” and is expected to stump for his 63-year-old ally as she vies for a third term.
“Her record — or nonrecord — speaks for itself,” Morgan says. “Inez has not been present for the majority of people who live in the community and feel disaffected from their elected leadership.”
Saying she has championed affordable housing, delivered more than $9 million to some 200 groups in her district and helped low-income families buy their homes, Dickens offers a tough rebuttal that hints at the spirited campaign ahead:
“Records matter; rhetoric does not,” she told The News. “Vince Morgan has done little in this community, but run several failed political campaigns. . . .I confidently match my record against his rhetoric.”
Morgan says the new racially, ethnically and economically diverse Harlem is facing a crisis that must be addressed by a new generation of leadership.
“Economic development is moving so fast, it’s leaving people behind,” he said. “Harlem is on the precipice right now because of the massive development going on all around us — and unless we get this right, the community and its people will be left in the dust.”