Harlem shake-up: How a Council upset returned Keith Wright from ‘the wilderness’

Moments before Yusef Salaam declared victory Tuesday night, in a primary upset for the Harlem history books, the electricity surging through the crowd wasn’t just for the candidate. It was also for Keith Wright.

The Manhattan Democratic Party leader not only recruited Salaam, but his son, Jordan Wright, worked as his campaign manager.

“I’m reminded of what Muhammad Ali said when he took on Sonny Liston,” the elder Wright told a spirited crowd gathered at Harlem Tavern for Salaam’s election night party. “He said, we’re going to shock the world.”

Salaam, a 49-year-old political novice, did indeed shock Harlem’s political establishment last week when he won nearly twice as many votes as veteran lawmaker Inez Dickens. Decades after he was wrongfully accused and imprisoned as one of the Central Park Five, Salaam is poised to become Harlem’s newest representative for the City Council.

And while his victory is partially a story of a new contender knocking out a heavyweight in Harlem’s political establishment, it’s also a comeback tale for Wright, 68, the man who mentored him.

“New York City politics is like one big, really interesting soap opera,” said Christina Greer, an associate political science professor at Fordham University. “Sometimes it takes years for one plot to move forward. And when it does, it’s worth the wait.”

The return of an outsider

Though Wright is the leader of the Manhattan Democratic Party, he’s clashed with Rep. Adriano Espaillat for ascendancy in parts of northern Manhattan. Espaillat defeated Wright in 2016 for an open congressional seat. He was the first Dominican American to go to Congress and was seen as the new local kingmaker.

Wright, in the intervening years, was relegated to an outsider status of sorts.

“You’ve got to remember — way back in 2022, no one was really even talking to us,” Wright told Gothamist a few days after election night. “We were in the wilderness.”

Espaillat threw his support behind Dickens in the 9th District, which mostly covers Central Harlem.

But with Salaam’s win, Wright and his son have shown that the family, once at the center of Harlem politics, still has a lot of juice.

Based on preliminary results, Salaam won just slightly more than 50% of the vote to Dickens’ 25%.

Dickens, throughout the race, held the advantage with a bounty of campaign funding and high-profile endorsements. Aside from Espaillat, she also had the backing of Mayor Eric Adams, the United Federation of Teachers and former Rep. Charles Rangel — one of the political architects known as the Gang of Four and credited with making Harlem the original bastion of Black politics.

“Even if he had eked out a victory over Assemblywoman Dickens in a close race, we would have all been surprised,” former Gov. David Paterson, who also endorsed Dickens, said in an interview. “But this was shocking. It was two to one.”

Wright said Salaam’s “authenticity” came through to voters who have long complained about not seeing their elected representatives enough in the community.

“Obviously a man of intelligence. Obviously a man of passion,” Wright said of his protegé on election night. “But you know what came across? The prodigal son that has returned.”

The new old guard

Wright said he asked Salaam to consider running for the Council seat in the summer of 2022, because of dissatisfaction within Harlem with then-Councilmember, Kristin Richardson Jordan. As one of only two socialist members of the Council, her two-year tenure was marked by a contentious development battle in the neighborhood. Though she defeated another longtime elected official in Harlem in 2021, her narrow victory over Bill Perkins was not widely considered a test case for what was to come — given the plurality of candidates in the field and a range of other factors, like the advent of ranked choice voting She dropped out of the race for re-election in May.

The most recent election between Salaam and two familiars of Harlem politics was seen as a stronger bellwether.

“I don’t even see it really as a changing of the guard, because I feel like these people, meaning Yusef, have been around forever. I’ve been around forever,” Jordan Wright, 28, said in an interview. “And I just feel like it’s a continuation of what we already have.”

The Wrights have been a political family in Harlem for generations — Bruce Wright, Keith’s father, served in Mayor John Lindsay’s administration and went on to be a long-serving state Supreme Court Justice.

But Salaam’s win is a victory for a younger cadre of political leaders which has long groaned under the weight of legacy names like Rangel and Paterson. Political experts blamed the lack of younger leaders for Harlem’s displacement as the center of Black politics in New York City and the U.S. That center has now shifted to Brooklyn with the ascendancy of Mayor Adams, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Attorney General Letitia James, among others.

I think I’m a hell of a good coach.

Keith Wright

“Could this be a sea change, and signal a dramatic change for a generation of new leaders? Potentially,” said Basil Smikle, a longtime Democratic strategist backed by Wright in his unsuccessful 2010 bid for the state Senate against the late Bill Perkins. “But for this moment in time, it could portend a monumental shift in how Harlem votes for its next generation of leadership.”

Aside from Salaam’s qualities, Wright says there was also an overestimation of his longtime rival’s influence.

“Espaillat is not particularly popular down in the Black community. He just isn’t,” Wright said. “So I knew that endorsement wasn’t going to take her too many places.”

A spokesperson for Espaillat did not immediately return a request for comment.

And while giving due to Salaam, Wright credits his own role in the upset victory.

“I’d be playing right now as a player, as an elected official,” the former Assemblymember said. “But I think I’m a hell of a good coach.”

‘The next Harlem political duo’

Conclusive results in the ranked choice race won’t be available for weeks. The next ballot count is on July 5th and could prove decisive for Salaam. With such a commanding lead, and a cross-endorsement from third-place candidate Al Taylor, a Dickens comeback seems virtually impossible.

So eyes have now turned to the future of Democratic politics in Harlem, which has long been shaped by the history of the Gang of Four — David Dinkins, Basil Paterson, Percy Sutton and Charles Rangel — and their protegés.

“Every once in a while, there is a situation that comes up that is unique and distinguishable and extraordinary, and I think that’s what happened here,” David Paterson said. “I can’t remember the last time I saw it happen.”

As Salaam made his way through the election night crowd on Tuesday, Wright hugged the candidate he helped recruit, and then gripped his son, Jordan, in a long embrace. The Wrights are now positioned to consolidate power and use their momentum to run like-minded candidates in any number of local races.

“Will Keith Wright stay on as a mentor to help [Salaam] actually get things done for Harlem?” Greer asked. “Or does he move on and start, one by one, taking the old guard out and putting in non-septuagenarians?”

Wright said he intends to “be there as long as he’ll have me.”

“You’ve got to live it to learn it,” he added. “Quite frankly, he hasn’t lived that yet. … And he’s going to need help when it comes time to govern.”

Former Gov. Paterson, the son of Basil Paterson, said Keith and Jordan Wright reminded him of himself and his father.

“The next Harlem political duo, huh?” Keith Wright chuckled at the characterization of him and his son. “Well, I'll tell you this: I take all my orders from him.”

Wright said the passing of the political torch in Harlem was necessary for its survival.

“Otherwise the community will perish,” he said. “My family’s been here for four generations in Harlem. I want to see it go on and thrive for four more generations.”

“And if I have to stay alive to do it, I will,” he said.

David Giambusso contributed reporting.