A veteran of New York state politics for over a decade,
Robert Garcia succeeded Herman Badillo in 1978
to represent a South Bronx district in the U.S.
House. Eventually the chairman of two subcommittees,
Garcia focused on federal programs to attract businesses to
blighted urban areas. Garcia’s signal piece of legislation—designating federal “enterprise zones” to promote job growth
in depressed inner cities—highlighted a promising House
career that ended abruptly when Garcia became enmeshed
in the Wedtech scandal through his association with a
defense contractor in his district.
Robert Garcia was born January 9, 1933, in Bronx,
New York, to immigrants. His Puerto Rican father, Rafael
Garcia, worked in a sugar mill before moving to New York
City, where he founded an Assembly of God church in
an aging storefront.1 Garcia attended the local public
schools, graduating from Haaren High School in 1950,
and served overseas in the U.S. Army’s Third Infantry
from 1950 to 1953 during the Korean War, earning two
Bronze Stars.2 He attended City College of New York,
the Community College of New York, and the RCA
Institute in 1957, before becoming an engineer at two
large computer corporations, where he worked from
1957 to 1965. Garcia married the former Anita Theresa
Medina, and the couple raised sons Robert and Kenneth and daughter Rosalyn
before separating in 1974 and divorcing several years later.
In 1980 Garcia married the former Jane Lee, a longtime
resident of Puerto Rico who had served as a staffer in the
U.S. House in the late 1970s.3
Garcia first ran for political office in 1965 for the New
York state assembly in the 83rd District, which encompassed
Puerto Rican neighborhoods in and around Port Morris
and Mott Haven in the South Bronx. In the September 14,
1965, Democratic primary he defeated Domingo Ramos, Jr.,
with 65 percent of the vote.4 In the general election, Garcia faced Republican candidate Paul Spitaleri as well as two
lesser-known challengers from the Liberal and Conservative
Parties. Garcia prevailed handily with 74 percent of the
vote in the four-way contest.5 Since Garcia never had
the full support of the regular Democratic organization, he
faced a stiff primary challenge in 1966 from A. C. Acevedo,
whom he defeated by roughly 70 votes out of the nearly
3,000 cast.6 Garcia’s base of support drew on local labor
unions as well as on the Adlai E. Stevenson Independent
Reform Democratic Club. In the state assembly, Garcia
earned a reputation as an advocate for housing issues,
sponsoring a bill, later signed into law, that gave the New
York City buildings department the power to subpoena
recalcitrant slumlords.7
In early 1967, Garcia entered a special election to
represent portions of the South Bronx and Harlem in the
New York state senate. Like his assembly district, the area
was overwhelmingly Democratic. Its large Puerto Rican
population (one-third of the district) was matched by equal
numbers of African Americans and contingents of Irish
and Jewish voters. The seat was left vacant when senator-elect
Eugene Rodriguez was convicted and imprisoned
for grand larceny, perjury, and conspiracy to murder a
drug dealer. Rodriguez never claimed his seat because he
was on trial when the legislative session opened. In the
March 28, 1967, special election, Garcia—running as a
Reform Democrat with the support of the regular Bronx
Democratic organization—faced two weak candidates:
Republican lawyer Dominick A. Fusco and Conservative
Paul M. Patricola, a textile company employee. With little
active campaigning, Garcia’s name recognition and the
endorsement of the Citizen’s Union—which called him “a
progressive and constructive legislator”—propelled him to
an easy victory, with 73 percent of the vote. Garcia became
the first Puerto Rican to serve in the state senate.8
Serving over a decade in the New York state senate,
Garcia built a reputation as a legislative “workhorse,”
according to a number of his colleagues. From 1975 to
1978, he served as deputy minority leader in Albany (an
elected position). His legislative interests included prison
reform, public housing, and narcotics control—all of which
appealed to his inner-city constituents.9 He also struck up a
close relationship with U.S. Representative Herman Badillo,
who represented a swath of the South Bronx that overlapped
his senate and former assembly districts. Like Garcia,
Badillo styled himself as a reformer, and he had been
Bronx borough president before becoming the first person of
Puerto Rican heritage elected to a full voting seat in the U.S.
House in 1970.10
In 1977 Badillo resigned his House seat to become
deputy mayor of New York City. The district, which was
one of the most poverty-stricken and depressed in the
nation, stretched northward from the East River and
Mott Haven to Melrose, Morrisania, and West Farms in
its northeastern quadrant. It had a reputation for being
politically disorganized and had only 75,000 registered
voters, a sign of its waning community cohesion. Initially,
Garcia was among a field of seven candidates set to
compete in the February 14, 1978, special election to
fill the remainder of Badillo’s term in the 95th Congress
(1977–1979). Having failed to secure the Democratic
nomination, Garcia ran as a Republican, making clear his
intention to vote with the Democrats in Congress. His
principal opponent was Democratic and Conservative
nominee Louis Nine, a state assemblyman whose fortune
from his liquor and real estate businesses provided him
with ample personal resources to wage a campaign. Former
city councilman Ramon S. Velez (a longtime rival of
Badillo’s who still had great influence in South Bronx
antipoverty programs) ran as an Independent. Such party
labels, the New York Times explained, were “little more
than conveniences enabling rejected Democrats to obtain
lines on the voting machines.”11 Badillo campaigned
vigorously for Garcia, who also had the support of many
leading city politicians, including the New York city
council president, the city comptroller, and prominent African-American politicians such as Harlem Congressman
Charles Rangel.12 On a snowy Election Day with voter
turnout higher than expected, Garcia prevailed handily
over Nine and Velez, securing 55 percent of the vote versus
his opponents’ 25 and 16 percent of the vote, respectively.
The New York Times called Garcia’s majority “a victory for
Badillo” that “reaffirmed” his status as leader of the city’s
Puerto Rican community.13
Garcia was sworn into the House and resumed his prior
affiliation as a Democrat effective February 21, 1978. In a
district that experienced intense economic and demographic
instability, Garcia never faced serious electoral challenges. In
the fall 1978 elections for the full term in the 96th Congress
(1979–1981), he was unopposed in the Democratic primary
and in the general election. Redistricting after the 1980
Census intended to preserve the Puerto Rican-majority
district, adding areas in the Grand Concourse and blocks
east of the South Bronx. It did not substantively change the
constituency’s strong Democratic tilt. Garcia won his five
bids for re-election after 1978 with majorities of 89 percent
of the vote or more.14
Garcia was assigned seats on the Banking, Finance,
and Urban Affairs Committee and on the Post Office and
Civil Service Committee and remained on both panels for
the rest of his House career. He also temporarily served
on the Foreign Affairs Committee during the 98th and
99th Congresses (1983–1987). He was quickly awarded
the chairmanship of the Post Office and Civil Service
Committee’s Census and Population Subcommittee—an
important assignment for a Member from one of the nation’s
poorest districts—and led that panel from 1979 to 1987.
By the 100th Congress (1987–1989), he left to become
chairman of the Banking panel’s influential Subcommittee
on International Finance, Trade, and Monetary Policy.
In 1979 Garcia gained national attention by sponsoring
a bill to establish a national holiday in honor of slain civil
rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. The bill had been
pushed by African-American Members for a decade before
Garcia took it up, serving as floor manager during debate
on December 5, 1979. Opponents decried the millions
in wages that would be paid federal workers for a day of of leave. “Some have argued that it would be too expensive to
create another Federal holiday,” Garcia told his colleagues.
“This is, indeed, a concern. But when weighed against the
need to honor all that Dr. King struggled for, prayed for,
dreamed about, symbolized, and sought throughout his
life, I find that the scales of justice tilt decidedly in favor
of a new Federal holiday to honor Dr. King.” When
opponents in the House passed an amendment requiring
that the holiday be observed on a Sunday to avoid a federal
holiday during the workweek, Garcia withdrew the bill
from consideration, claiming such a designation would put
King’s holiday on a par with Leif Erickson Day and National
Peanut Day. “We’re not going to go with a commemorative
day,” Garcia said. “We’re not going to place Martin Luther
King into that situation.”15 The bill eventually passed the
House and Senate and was signed into law by President
Ronald W. Reagan in November 1983.16
Garcia was attuned to the interests of the larger
Hispanic community. From his seat on the Foreign Affairs
Committee, he weighed in on U.S.-Latin American policy.
Garcia consistently opposed U.S. military aid to the
Contras, insurgents who sought to overthrow Nicaragua’s
leftist government. Garcia was one of eight members of
the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) who voted in
February 1988 to stop arming the Contras; the measure
narrowly passed the House, 218 to 211. Caucus opposition
to the Reagan administration’s foreign policy in Latin
America, notes one scholar, represented a maturation of
Latino political power.17 From 1981 to 1984, during the
97th and 98th Congresses, Garcia served as chairman of
the CHC. He was the CHC’s second chairman as well
as its longest-serving chairman; he served for two terms,
partly because of his fundraising innovations.18
Garcia’s principal focus was steering federal dollars,
projects, and jobs into his economically distressed South
Bronx district. Shortly after he took office, a major political
publication described the district as “a sort of national
slum.” “Its many acres of abandoned and vandalized
buildings in the South Bronx have become the symbol
of contemporary urban decay,” noted a companion
publication.19 Unemployment was rampant, and crime was exceedingly high. Additionally, a transition from older
Jewish and Italian immigrants to younger Puerto Ricans
and African Americans fueled a decline in the district’s
population, which according to one estimate decreased by
half between 1972 and 1980.20 As a junior House Member,
Garcia described his district for political columnist David
Broder. “There are parts … that are absolutely devastated,
as bad as anything in Berlin in 1945.” But “you talk to
the people of the South Bronx and you’re going to find
many people who—in spite of the adversity, in spite of
the tremendous odds, in spite of everything—have been
able to raise families and bring forth young people who are
making a contribution.”
Garcia’s legislative strategy was to leverage the influence
of his seat on the Banking Committee to attract capital
and industry to his district. He told Broder, “All I need
are one or two successful projects. I think from that point
on we can take off on our own. I think we’d get enough
private money in so we wouldn’t have to worry about
the government’s help.”21 This philosophy of limited
government intervention to spark entrepreneurship had
bipartisan appeal because it did not require another round
of massive federal expenditures to solve the problem of
poverty in the South Bronx.
In 1980 Garcia teamed with Republican Jack Kemp
of Buffalo, New York, to co-author the Urban Jobs and
Enterprise Zone Act. Introducing the bill on the House
Floor on June 12, 1980, Garcia explained that it aimed
to ameliorate “the plight of the cities … largely due to
economic abandonment by businesses.” The bill, Garcia said,
sought “to begin the economic redevelopment of the slums
by creating new reasons for entrepreneurs to want to set up
businesses in them.”22 The Garcia–Kemp measure called for
the creation of urban “free enterprise zones” where businesses
would receive tax breaks for locating in economically
depressed inner cities, such as the Bronx, and for hiring local
residents. Payroll and capital gains taxes would be reduced
to stimulate hiring. Additionally, the bill would establish
duty-free foreign-trade zones for imports and exports
fabricated in enterprise zones. Though Kemp and Garcia
differed on many issues, both men, according to Garcia, agreed on the need for the “reestablishment of opportunity
producing incentives in areas where they no longer exist but
once did—and that it is proper for government to provide
incentives to attract businesses to areas which face severe
depression, unemployment, and poverty.”23 Garcia argued
that such a program would benefit federal and local tax
bases. “Our slums now produce little revenue either for their
residents—that is, wages—or for their governments—that
is, taxes,” he explained. “I believe that it makes a great deal
of sense to supplement existing programs with tax cuts to
the poor and to those in impoverished neighborhoods who
wish to become small business persons … to become active
producers of revenue.”24
For several Congresses the House refused to pass the
tax breaks that were necessary to implement the enterprise
zone project. Part of the problem in the Democratically
controlled House was that conservative Republicans,
including President Reagan, embraced the plan. Liberals
believed this was cover for efforts to redline funding for
longstanding urban renewal programs. Moreover, Ways
and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois, the
gatekeeper for tax-related bills, opposed the plan. But
many states adopted legislation that mirrored the proposed
federal enterprise zone bill. Garcia persevered on the
project until 1988, when a portion of his plan for innercity
economic development was enacted as part of a larger
housing bill. While that bill authorized the creation of
100 enterprise zones—to be designated by the Secretary of
Housing and Urban Development—it failed to provide tax
incentives for businesses. In the 101st Congress (1989–1991), with Kemp ensconced as President George H. W. Bush’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development,
Garcia, aided by Ways and Means Committee member and
fellow New York Representative Rangel, launched a new
effort to provide tax breaks to attract businesses.25
Garcia’s promising House career unraveled in 1988 and
1989 when he was implicated in the Wedtech scandal. A
small, Hispanic-owned defense contracting firm in Garcia’s
district that had received multimillion-dollar contracts,
Wedtech was investigated by the U.S. Justice Department
after it missed deadlines to produce military engines. Federal officials uncovered a massive bribery and extortion
scheme that ensnared executive and legislative branch
officials.26 That year Garcia faced his first substantive
primary challenge as an incumbent; two relatively obscure
competitors won a combined 40 percent of the vote.27 In
November 1988, Garcia and his wife, Jane, were charged
by investigators with accepting more than $80,000 from
Wedtech as well as numerous loans and gifts. On October
20, 1989, the Garcias were convicted on extortion and
conspiracy charges; they were acquitted of four counts of
bribery and illegal gratuities. On January 7, 1990, before
his sentencing and after the House Ethics Committee
had launched an inquiry into the case, Representative
Garcia resigned his seat. The Garcias were sentenced two
weeks later to three years in prison, which Garcia chose to begin serving before the conviction
was overturned on appeal. Garcia was tried a second time
and convicted again in 1991, but that conviction too was
overturned.28
He died on January 25, 2017, in San Juan, Puerto Rico.29
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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