Under ethics cloud and vulnerable, New York Rep. Charles Rangel is out campaigning

It was 7 a.m. a week before the Democratic primary here, and Joyce Johnson already had spent two hours in her chartreuse Volkswagen bug delivering “Joyce Johnson for Congress” leaflets to campaign workers.

A passerby peeked in the window and inquired, “Do you know where I can find Joyce Johnson?”

“I am Joyce Johnson,” she said.

Joyce Johnson is not exactly a household name in the 15th Congressional District in northern Manhattan, yet the 62-year-old community activist, who has never won an election, has the unlikely endorsement of the powerful New York Times — and at least a shot at taking down a hero of Harlem and one of the great lions of Congress, Rep. Charles B. Rangel.

This race, like a number of others across the country, finds the slam-dunk incumbent in trouble. But it’s not Republicans menacing Rangel. It’s Rangel himself.

The House Ethics Committee has lodged 13 charges against him, including misusing federal resources and failing to pay taxes on a villa in the Dominican Republic.

He had to give up the gavel of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. Comrades in Washington and New York have been uncharacteristically silent about Rangel’s future, while President Obama has spoken up, suggesting it may be time for the 20-term congressman, who turned 80 this spring, to wind down his career.

On the other hand, the 15th Congressional District is Rangel country, where voters recall all the favors he has done, all the hands he’s shaken, all the funerals he’s attended and the millions in federal dollars he has brought home to New York.

Shortly after Johnson sped up Broadway, Rangel arrived and bounded out of an aide-driven car wearing a well-cut black suit, an orange patterned tie and a pink silk pocket square.

As he greeted commuters at the 110th Street subway stop, a stately middle-aged businessman grabbed Rangel’s hand, clutched his shoulder, whispered, “Thanks,” and pledged his support in Tuesday’s election. Rangel turned to a reporter and explained: “I wrote a letter to his dad when he was ill. He died shortly after.”

Howard Friedman, an Upper West Side psychologist, also expressed loyalty, explaining that the congressman had garnered multiple federal grants for local health clinics, and that afternoon, in fact, had lassoed a senior bureaucrat from Washington to speak at a facility in the neighborhood. “Consistent, resolute, dependable” is how Friedman described Rangel.

For more than an hour, most of the commuters seemed to recognize Rangel and accepted his outstretched hand. A driver of the No. 104 bus idled at a green light and opened the door to hail, “Hey, good lookin’,” at the congressman, who bellowed back, “Don’t forget to vote!”

But Rangel’s ethics charges and upcoming trial, set to begin this fall, are too much for some to ignore.

“Good luck with the hearings,” lawyer Ricky Newman, 58, told Rangel. Newman later said he wouldn’t vote for the congressman in the primary as he had in years past: “I think [Rangel] just proves if you leave these guys in [office] long enough, they do the same sleazy stuff.”

Still, this being one of the most Democratic and liberal areas in the U.S., Newman also said that if Rangel beats back his four primary opponents, he’ll support him against a Republican in November. “I’d never vote GOP,” he said.

If this political drama of the embattled powerbroker wasn’t Shakespearean enough, Rangel is also facing in this primary the son of Adam Clayton Powell Jr., a political legend in Harlem in the 1960s who was unseated in 1970 by an ambitious Korean War hero named … Charlie Rangel. At the time Powell, a celebrated pastor, was also under a cloud for unethical conduct.

Adam Clayton Powell IV, who was 9 and living in Puerto Rico when his father died two years after losing to Rangel, first challenged Rangel in 1994 and lost by a wide margin, but was later elected to the state Assembly.

Powell has said this second attempt to unseat Rangel is not rooted in rancor over their last match, but rather an effort to give voice to Latinos, who constitute about 45% of the district. But there is little evidence that he has built a following.

Most estimates are that Rangel will hold on to his seat — and even successfully ride out his ethics trial.

More curious, given his age and loss of power in the Capitol, is why he didn’t walk away from the election — why he still wants to shake hands at dawn on Broadway or throw rhetorical punches at a slew of hapless and underfunded opponents.

Rangel, however, has chosen a last hurrah.

“The country has to do a whole lot of reshaping,” Rangel said during a break in campaigning last week, “and the president doesn’t have a whole lot going for him with the Republicans, and he has Democrats who won’t vote with the party. He may not know it, but he needs me, and so does New York.”

geraldine.baum@latimes.com