Herman Badillo was born in Puerto Rico and came to New York as an orphan at age 11, when he didn't speak a word of English. He died Wednesday in Manhattan, age 85.
Most of the epitaphs mark his "firsts": the first Puerto Rican to be elected borough president (The Bronx, 1965) and the first to be elected to Congress (1970).
Though Badillo never pulled off the other "first" he hoped for — the first Puerto Rican New Yorker elected mayor of New York — it sure wasn't for lack of trying.
He ran six times, the first five as a Democrat and the last as a Republican. In between, he helped get Rudy Giuliani elected.
How a liberal Latino Democrat became a Rudy Republican is a story itself. For Badillo, it was largely a matter of standards.
He recognized early on that achievement was the key to rising in society, and that too many government programs were holding back people like himself because they were untethered to either learning or results.
That was how this one-time champion of bilingual education came to see it as a disaster and ultimately embraced education reform. He once told a Manhattan Institute gathering he considered himself lucky he attended City College when it had standards.
Years later, Badillo helped end CUNY's open admissions and return the system to the standards that once again made a CUNY degree stand for something.
It's by no means Badillo's only contribution. But it speaks to the character of this good man that he made the fight at a time when it was a lonely position for a Latino politician.
Today students who don't even know his name have a brighter future because he did. Herman Badillo, RIP.
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