Norman Mailer for Mayor of New York, 1969As friends and family paid respects to Norman Mailer at his wake in Provincetown, Massachusetts, yesterday, we decided to dig up our part of one of Mailer’s most colorful personal stories: when he ran for mayor in 1969. “I am paying my debt to society,” he told Time that summer. “That is why I am running.” He ran alongside newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin, who ran for City Council president. They began their campaign at the urging of friends like Gloria Steinem and Jack Newfield, at a time when they saw the city as a wounded place in need of healing. Breslin recounted his experience of running, and how Mailer convinced him to do it, in a May 1969 New York cover story. Click below to read.
MAILER-BRESLIN: Seriously? [NYM, pdf]
in other news
The Mayoral Campaign Just Got More Fun: Welcome, Lenora FulaniLenora Fulani, the kooky campaigner who helped Bloomberg get elected in 2001 by drumming up 59,000 Independence Party votes for him, will announce the formation of an exploratory committee today for a mayoral run in 2009, reports the Post. Fulani is notable for her two campaigns for president of the United States, in 1988 and 1992, and her reported anti-Semitic comments (she’s never denied claiming that the “Jews sold their souls to acquire Israel” and are “mass murderers of people of color”). She’s also fanatically devoted to her mentor and campaign manager, the controversial Marxist psychotherapist Fred Newman, who will probably be along for the ride. All of which is to say: It’s a very, very good day for the tabloids.
Fulani Eyes Mayor Run [NYP]
in other news
Is Mayor Mike Supporting Mayor Marty?
How high are the ambitions of lame-duck Brooklyn beep Marty Markowitz? High enough that a real live mayor, Michael Bloomberg, will host a fund-raiser for him next week at his Upper East Side townhouse. It’s not an endorsement of an heir, City Hall hastens to add merely a boost from a friend. Still, this is our official signal to start taking the possibility of Mayor Marty, who already has a million-dollar war chest, seriously.
