Aw, Kevin Powell Isn’t Running for Congress Anymore
Dave Chapelle was actually a no-show at this fundraiser.
One of the really nice things about living in New York’s 10th congressional district (Downtown Brooklyn, Fort Greene-Clinton Hill, Bed-Stuy, Brownsville, Canarsie) has been the opportunity, every two years, to vote against Season One Real World cast member Kevin Powell in the Democratic primary—in 2006, 2008, and 2010, he mounted unsuccessful campaigns to unseat 15-term congressman Edolphus Towns.
Last year, you may recall, he lost handily, shortly after Brooklyn Paper revealed that he owed more than $600,000 in unpaid taxes. Given the two-year election cycle, he’s been running for Congress more or less continuously for longer than I’ve lived in the neighborhood (before the 2008 general election, his people were already leaving spam comments about his 2010 candidacy. That was fun).
But this glorious age of Kevin Powell’s permanent unsuccessful candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives has come to a close, the Patch reveals, quoting a letter Powell sent to his supporters in which he announced his intention not to run for Congress in 2012. Farewell, Kevin: we’ll always have the frank discussions about race you facilitated on MTV in the early 1990s.
One reason Powell isn’t running, perhaps, is that the 2012 Democratic primary looks to be crowded with many actual politicians with local pull. Representative Towns may be vulnerable, and depending on how redistricting shakes out there may be a number of prominent elected officials at the local and state level taking their shot at national politics. Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, for instance, has already formed an exploratory committee.