Let us reflect this morning on where the anti-incumbent tide stopped. It may be sweeping the land, from Alaska to the East Coast. But there is one landfall where it stopped, the 15^th Congressional District in New York, where Congressman Charles Rangel just won what amounts to re-election in November by one of the widest margins, if not the widest margin, in a contested race in the state. It’s been more than two years now since the efforts began to use charges of scandal to try to dislodge Mr. Rangel from the House. The “charges” against him by the House ethics committee have been made public in great detail and chewed over endlessly in the public prints. But none of it seems to have disaffected the voters in the 15^th Congressional District, where, in the primary, Mr. Rangel just won more than twice the vote of his closest opponent.

The Ethics Committee may be upset over Mr. Rangel’s use of a rent-controlled apartment for a campaign office. It may take a dim view of the fact that the chairman of the tax-writing committee on Ways and Means failed to make an accurate filing of his own tax returns. It may be scandalized that Mr. Rangel used congressional letterhead to write to David Rockefeller to encourage him to give money to City College for a center to educate minority students for careers in public administration. The newspapers may be in a swivet about all of the above. But Mr. Rangel’s colleagues in the political leadership in town — from the mayor to the former district attorney — have stuck with the congressman. And so, it seems, did the people of his district.

“The anti-incumbent tide stopped in Harlem,” is the way Politico.com reported the result. Early this morning it was reporting that Mr. Rangel led his nearest opponent, Adam Clayton Powell IV, by 51% to 23%, with nearly all the precincts having reported. Five rivals came at him from within the Democratic Party — with Mr. Powell focusing relentlessly on the ethics charges — and it looks like they failed to drive Mr. Rangel’s victory margin below 50%. Given the registration numbers in the district for the Republican and other parties, the congressman’s re-election in November is nearly certain. “It will suggest that the world at large is less concerned than some with the ethics case,” Politico quoted Mayor Dinkins as saying last night.

Mr. Rangel himself was humble, grateful, and reinvigorated, declaring he would go back to Washington “stronger than I’ve ever been.” He will go back stronger than the Democrats who turned on him over “ethics” issues — if that’s what they are (we dissent). Those issues, in any event, are just dwarfed by the policy questions that face Harlem and the rest of the country. We are on the brink of some of the most important tax decisions in the history of America. We’d like to think that if there is a lesson in the ethics saga for Mr. Rangel, it is that his friends are not in the White House or even the Democratic leadership on the Hill. At this point he doesn’t owe them a thing. We’d like to think Mr. Rangel will now feel freer than ever to go his own way in the great policy struggles that lie ahead, in which this city’s interests are clearly with a tax regime that will provide all Americans not subsidies but incentives to get back to work.