Barney Frank is reminded of the ‘Republican Revolution’

Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Barney Frank traces the hyper-partisan atmosphere of the nation today to -- wait for it -- the rise of Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1994.

Gingrich was a driving force behind that year’s so-called Republican Revolution that seized control of both houses of Congress with the “Contract With America” after the first two years of President Clinton’s first term.

Some Republicans hope for a repeat of that experience in this November’s first midterm election for the Obama administration. Gingrich, of course, has been gone since 1998, although he rallied Republicans meeting in New Orleans on Thursday evening.

On NBC’s “Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” Frank also blamed the news media for only covering news that’s bad, as opposed to news that’s good.

And the House veteran admits that back in the angry Vietnam War protest days, the left was partisan and even violent but claims it did not have mainstream media cheering them on, as he says, is happening today.

Deja vu in fight to unseat Rangel

It’s no surprise that Charles B. Rangel, the gravelly voiced Democrat from Harlem, has attracted a primary challenger.

After all, when the House Ethics Committee admonishes you for accepting gifts from corporations for your junkets to your retreat in the Dominican Republic, you can expect to pay out of pocket.

And when your colleagues -- nervous about their own prospects in 2010 -- try to distance themselves by dumping you as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, you can pretty well expect that an opponent will seize the moment.

But how rich the irony! The man expected to throw his hat into the ring Monday is Adam Clayton Powell IV, the son of the man Rangel beat four decades ago, effectively ending the elder Powell’s political career. The similarities are eerie.

Elected in 1944, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. became the first black congressman from New York, one of only two blacks serving in Congress. His challenges were personal -- he overturned whites-only House facilities and forced colleagues to stop using the “N-word” on the House floor.

He left lasting legislative victories too; he launched a campaign against the poll tax used by Southern states to exclude blacks from the voting booth, and was instrumental in efforts to make lynching a federal crime.

For decades, Powell was the political king of Harlem, like Rangel a charismatic figure on the local scene. Then, as chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, Powell was accused of misusing committee funds and taking trips abroad at public expense (including travel to his retreat on the Bahamian isle of Bimini).

Nervous colleagues stripped him of his chairmanship. Sound familiar? Stripped of his House seat, Powell compared himself to Alfred Dreyfus, the French Jew wrongly accused of being a spy for Germany.

For his part, the 47-year-old Powell insists there is no historic retribution involved in his run. “It has nothing to do with revenge or anything like that,” he said. “The fact is, it is time to turn the page.”

Maybe, but don’t bet against Rangel, a Korean War veteran and the fourth-longest-serving member of Congress. At 79, after nearly 40 years of bringing home the bacon to a constituency often ignored by the rest of the country and funneling millions of campaign dollars to fellow Democrats, he has a lot of chits to call in.

For another, this particular namesake of the fabled Powell family comes with some baggage of his own.

The New York assemblyman was actually born Adam Clayton Powell Diago, the son of the congressman and his third wife, Yvette Diago, who won custody and raised the boy in her home country of Puerto Rico when the couple separated.

He changed his name when he moved to the United States to attend Howard University, a few years before he moved to New York and ran for City Council. Just to confuse matters, he already had a nephew by the name of Adam Clayton Powell IV.

Anyway, this Powell has a 2008 drunk driving conviction and a pretty low attendance record in Albany. Plus Rangel has already beaten him once before.

Top of the Ticket, The Times’ blog on national politics (https://latimes.com/ ticket), is a blend of commentary, analysis and news. These are excerpts from the last week.