The Candidate From Vibe

Congressional challenger Kevin Powell of central Brooklyn is hoping to get elected to office, in part, on the strength of his association with famous people: He likes Barack Obama, and celebrities like him.

“Chuck D e-mailed me today,” Powell told The Observer, referring to the outspoken rapper made famous in the late 1980s and early ’90s with songs like “Fight the Power” and “911 is a Joke.” “He was driving in Montreal, Canada, and he said, ‘Kevin, I’m with you. Anything I can do for you, let me know.’”

Powell is attempting this year to unseat a 13-term incumbent, Representative Ed Towns, a Baptist minister who supported Hillary Clinton in the primary and whose absence from the campaign trail in 2006 (and so far this year) can make it hard to notice there’s an election happening.

He is trying to generate support for his cause not only by calling on the famous contacts made as a hip-hop journalist but, more significantly, by tapping into the network of activists and ordinary voters in the majority African-American district who supported Barack Obama in the Democratic nomination fight.

The strategy is no more unusual, or controversial, than the candidate himself.

Powell, 42, appeared in the first episode of MTV’s long-running reality show, The Real World, in 1992. By 1994, he was a rising star in the world of hip-hop journalism, writing a critically acclaimed story on Tupac Shakur featured on the cover of Vibe magazine, asking whether he was “Crazy or Just Misunderstood.” In 1995 he scored an exclusive interview with Shakur, who was imprisoned in Rikers Island at the time.

In 1996, he was fired from the magazine and decided to refocus his life and career. He has since spoken out regularly about domestic violence—an issue that implicates Mr. Powell, who has admitted to several episodes of violence against women in the past and, according to a 2006 column by Errol Louis in the Daily News, refers to himself as a “recovering misogynist”—and organized conferences discussing race and social justice.

Hardly the stuff on which a cookie-cutter candidacy is built.

Hence the nontraditional attractions:

Anyone who pays $2,300 for Powell’s July 9 fund-raiser is “guaranteed” to have a photo taken with comedian Dave Chappelle, and actor Chris Rock is lined up to do something similar. Visitors to Powell’s campaign Web site are currently greeted with a message from Afeni Shakur, who says, “Like my son, Kevin feel the struggle of single mothers.” And already, Mr. Powell’s campaign has advertised a mixtape they created featuring excerpts of his campaign speeches remixed on top of songs by Tupac, Talib Kweli, Mobb Deep and Kanye West. (“Yes, we need to say it; racism is alive and well in America,” Powell says, against the backdrop of the staccato drumbeat from 50 Cent’s “In Da Club.”)

Powell objects to the notion that the central role of celebrities in his campaign is diluting the seriousness of his candidacy.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to meet a lot of people in my life and some of them happen to be famous,” Powell said in a telephone interview last night. “It’s natural for me. I come out of the entertainment industry.”

He said, “I also happen to be a longtime community organizer. I’m merging the two worlds. It’s very natural for me to do that.”

Still, his efforts to capitalize on a network of Obama supporters in the 10th Congressional District, which includes East New York, Brownsville and Clinton Hill, have been complicated by preexisting loyalties among officials.

He shares a campaign office with the independent group Brooklyn for Barack, and has tapped as his finance director Arthur Leopold, a member of Obama’s national finance committee.

But of the elected officials in central Brooklyn who enthusiastically supported Obama during the Democratic primary, the only one so far to have endorsed Powell is Councilman Charles Barron, a former black panther who ran against Towns two years ago. (The Obama campaign itself has, to date, offered no official expression of support for Powell either.)

“Towns is my guy,” said State Senator Eric Adams, an Obama supporter. “I haven’t even looked at [Powell’s] Web site, if he has one.”

Then there’s the question of how influential the Obama infrastructure in the district, which Obama carried handily, actually is. According to political consultant Jerry Skurnik, about 34 percent of the district’s registered Democrats voted in the Feb. 5 presidential primary, up from previous primaries, but on par with the rest of the city this year.

The whole effort is, in other words, one big, high-profile experiment in how to run for Congress against a well-entrenched incumbent.

Not that Powell is in it for the notoriety.

“I saw a quote from someone saying, ‘Oh, he just wants 15 more minutes of fame,’” Powell said. “I mean, if I wanted to be on television, I could be on television. I’ve turned down a lot of stuff that was frivolous. I have no desire to be on television. If I wanted to be wealthy, I’m sure there’s a lot of things I could plug myself into. I just want to help people. That’s the bottom line.”

apaybarah@observer.com