Ed Towns emerged from North Carolina’s tobacco fields, mastered the sometimes turbulent politics of urban Brooklyn, and rose to chair the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform during a 30-year career in the U.S. House. Much of Towns’s low-key legislative style kept him focused on local concerns rather than cultivating a national presence which his senior status might have allowed. “I should jump out and push and get in front of the camera,” he once acknowledged, “but that’s just not my nature.”1Edolphus (Ed) Towns was born on July 21, 1934, in Chadbourn, North Carolina, to Versie and Dolphus Towns. His father was a tobacco sharecropper. Towns attended the local public schools before graduating in 1956 from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro. Towns served in the U.S. Army for two years before moving to New York City where he taught at Medgar Evers College, Fordham University, and in the city’s public schools. From 1965 to 1975 Towns served as director of the Metropolitan Hospital and then assistant administrator at Beth Israel Hospital. Towns earned a master’s degree in social work in 1973 from Adelphi University in Garden City, New York. Towns married the former Gwendolyn Forbes in 1960, and they have two children, Darryl and Deidra.2Active in the Brooklyn Democratic organization, Towns won election as Democratic Party state committeeman for New York’s 40th assembly district (Brooklyn) in 1972. He became the first African American appointed as deputy borough president for Brooklyn in 1976, a position that Towns used to connect with the various social and political organizations in the borough.3 In 1982 when Democratic Representative Frederick W. Richmond resigned after being indicted on felony charges, Towns moved quickly to fill the vacancy. Redistricting that year had created a new Democratic district composed primarily of African-American and Hispanic voters in Northern Brooklyn and Bedford-Stuyvesant. Towns garnered the support of Brooklyn Democratic leader Meade H. Esposito and Democratic reformer Al Vann. “I expect to be the consensus candidate,” Towns predicted. Two other candidates split the Hispanic vote, and Towns won the primary by a plurality.4 He easily won the general election.5Subsequent re-districting made Towns’s district more Democratic. Bedford-Stuyvesant remained the heart of the district while portions of Brooklyn fell away and Brooklyn Heights was added.6 The 2000 Census led to parts of south-central Brooklyn and Canarsie being absorbed into his district. Towns’s constituency was described as one of the state’s most diverse and solidly Democratic, comprising black, Hispanic, Caribbean, and Jewish voters.7 Towns’s winning margins in the general elections hovered at 85 percent or more in his 14 re-election bids.8Nevertheless, Towns often faced challengers in the Democratic primaries. As the 1998 race neared, for instance, Brooklyn Democratic Chairman Clarence Norman actively tried to recruit a challenger to Towns and former Democratic mayor David Dinkin