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…
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