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Anthony Weiner Wants To Be NYC's 1st Crotch Shot Mayor

Jen Chung

Published Apr 10, 2013

Modified Apr 10, 2013

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Jen Chung

Published Apr 10, 2013

Modified Apr 10, 2013

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Have you ever wanted to read 9,000 words about how Anthony Weiner feels bad about Tweeting a photograph of his crotch to a female follower (lying, at first, that he was hacked) and sexting all those other ladies, because he's got a really awesome wife and a new baby and basically totally screwed up his great dream to be mayor of New York? And yet he's still playing around with the idea of running for mayor this year anyway? Then here's the NY Times Magazine article for you!

Last month, Weiner, who resigned from Congress in June 2011, spent about $100,000 on political polling and research and this Times Magazine feature seems like the next obvious move towards announcing something, because "it’s now or maybe never for me."

How would he ultimately decide whether to run?

He pondered the question for an uncomfortably long time. “I don’t know,” he said. “It won’t be something as pedestrian as ‘Do I think I’ll win?’ It will be something more like ‘Does it feel like I should be involved in this debate? Someone should be out there saying A, B or C.’ ”

About the current field, he said cautiously: “I know them all. I like them all.” Then he took a tiny jab at the City Council speaker, Christine Quinn, for supporting Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s effort to extend term limits. “The term-limits thing, as an issue, was a deal breaker for me. But, I think the polls are right: Chris Quinn is leading, and then someone will get into a runoff with her. I don’t like runoffs, and I don’t think we should have them so you don’t have these divisive primaries anymore.”

As for that polling, he says, "People are generally prepared to get over it, but they don’t know if they’re prepared to vote for me. And there’s a healthy number of people who will never get over it.... It’s a little complicated because I always attracted a fairly substantial amount of people who didn’t like me anyway... I am a bit of a polarizing case."

Yeah, it's one thing to consider to vote for the city's first female (and lesbian!) mayor or NYC's first Asian mayor or our first mayor who would have beat Bloomberg in 2009 if you'd bothered voting or the first mayor to have to reaffirm his wife's sexuality or the first mayor to have to a really brilliant, meme-able holiday card. But is the Big Apple ready for a guy who sent a photo of his big dick (at least, Jon Stewart thinks it's big) and other photos of him grabbing his crotch to fangirls?

Some other quotes from the article:

Weiner on why he fell into the social media hole: "I wasn’t really thinking. What does this mean that I’m doing this? Is this risky behavior? Is this smart behavior? To me, it was just another way to feed this notion that I want to be liked and admired."
His brother Jason, a chef and restaurateur, on Weiner's evolution following the scandal: "I wouldn’t stand for other people saying this about him, but there was definitely a douchiness about him that I just don’t really see anymore."
Jon Stewart, his old college friend and roommate, explained all the jokes, "I may have been impeached by some sort of comedy board if I hadn’t made all those Weiner jokes."
Wife Huma Abedin on how Weiner finally stopped lying about his Twitter account being hacked: "Anthony said: ‘I have something to tell you. I can’t lie to you anymore. It’s true. It’s me. The picture is me. I sent it. Yes, these stories about the other women are true.’ And it was every emotion that one would imagine: rage and anger and shock. But more than anything else, in the immediate, it was disbelief. The thing that I consciously remember saying over and over and over again is: ‘I don’t understand. What is going on? What’s happening to our lives?’"
On running again: "I want to ask people to give me a second chance. I do want to have that conversation with people whom I let down and with people who put their faith in me and who wanted to support me. I think to some degree I do want to say to them, ‘Give me another chance.’"

Weiner will need to decide by June 10 about whether he'll run for mayor.

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Jen Chung

Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.

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