Here's Breakfast, with a Serving of Speakers

By Frank Lombardi

Veteran political consultant and lobbyist Bill Lynch knows a thing or two about helping a client eat a rival's lunch. He's now turned his attention to breakfast.

About to mark his 70th birthday on Sunday , Lynch last week launched the first of what he envisions as a monthly series of "Uptown Power Breakfasts," aimed largely at up-and-coming professionals.

The so-called "rumpled genius" - who helped David Dinkins become the city's first (and still only) African-American mayor - said he wants a younger generation "to get a sense of the history" of Harlem and the city "from people who have been there."

Lynch's inaugural power breakfast featured Leonard Riggio, the Bronx-born founder and chairman of the Barnes & Noble book chain. Several dozen invitation-only guests paid a nominal $20 each to attend the networking breakfast at the Chocolat restaurant on Frederick Douglass Blvd. at W. 120th St.

Lynch said he's lining up diverse guests for future breakfasts from fields including politics, business, culture, entertainment and religion.

He's bypassing the dog days of August and is scheduling his second breakfast for Sept. 22, which will feature the Rev. Michael Walrond, Jr., who has gained attention in Harlem by building the congregation of the First Corinthian Baptist Church, at Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. and W. 116th St., from 400 to more than 4,000 members in four years.

"He's going to be a star, and some people think he is already," Lynch said of Walrond, 40, a native of Freeport, L.I., who is a graduate of Morehouse College and Duke University's School of Divinity.

Other future guests, Lynch said, will include Rep. Charles Rangel, a longtime Lynch client who has figured prominently in Harlem's political history for more than 40 years. Lynch said the younger generation generally "has no sense of the history" that Harlem and the city have gone through, including politics.

Guests at the power breakfasts, which will be held at various uptown restaurants, can gain perspective by hearing about that history from those who helped make it, he said.

"One of the things I want to have a big discussion about is passing the torch," he noted. "Has the torch been dropped? Has the younger generation not picked it up?"