Anthony Weiner met me for breakfast. He ordered a third chance of toast, two eggs, a corned beef hash and a politics.
But before you break the bread with a cozy soup and burger Near Astor Place, he made a prediction – I think I'll call him “stigma” in the heading or first line of this column.
It felt like some provocation, some defensive mechanisms. Get a punch. Rip the band aid. After all, he has a lot of self-harm.
Summary: In 2011, then lawmakers tweeted a close-up photo of their legs wearing underwear. He resigned from the office. In 2013 he ran for mayor and his victory seemed inevitable at first glance… It becomes clear that he was sexting with a woman who wasn't his wife under the name of Carlos' danger. to. He finished fifth in the Democratic primary. Then in 2017 he pleaded guilty to sexting with an underrated teen.
Weiner went to prison for 15 months, then worked in a half-hearted house.
This post didn't stir up catalogs of Punny Phallic headlines such as “Weiner Exposed” and “Stroking Gun.”
But now he is seriously measuring the run for city councils representing District 2, including Greenwich Village, Lower East Side, East Village, Flatiron, Union Square, Gramercy, Murray Hill and Kip Bay.
I simply wanted to know: why hell is 60 years old and he does it again? Is he some kind of masochistic?
“I'm struggling with addiction and I know what it is. I'll manage it,” Weiner told me. “I don't think I've ever had a sincere argument that my acting and my struggles led me to be a bad lawmaker. I was really good at my job.”
Weiner claims he didn't miss it in his exile. “I couldn't believe it [a return] It was possible. ”
But things happened In this city he began to see a place for himself. In June, an unharmed 30-year-old man caused a stinging noise on East 14th Avenue. This has been looking like a Third World Bazaar for many years, but has killed a New Yorker and injured two others.
Weiner said officials troubled him with a statement filled with “Gobbledygook and no solution.” Soon after, state legislator Harvey Epstein, who will be his opponent in the upcoming primary, sent his district a notice of a recycling event.
“I couldn't imagine being a councillor or a councillor, and that's my response,” Weiner said. “I walk around that block every day with my son. I didn't seem to be anything that the citizens want to see or hear now.”
As a resident of the district, I have to agree with the man.
He is a lifelong Demo, accusing local Dem of speaking with the bumper sticker slogan.
“Now, DEM's political conversations are not serious enough about the need to solve problems,” Weiner says. “Dem is seen as not solving them and I want to change that.”
To do this, we have to change the views of those who remember him as a punchline.
Winer Voters claim they are still approaching him to get back into the game. Just like a cue, an older Brooklyn woman made a beeline for our table and was noisy to meet him.
I don't think she was a plant.
But there are still many skeptics and others who are tired of the idea of his return. And of course there is curiosity. (Tell anyone who shared the meal with Antony Weiner, and many questions continue.)
He adopted the voice of a skeptical New Yorker. “We ask him to climb under the counter and go round with a ball? He has to go to work in the soup kitchen for 20 years, then he can come back? ?”
Returning to first person, Weiner said, “I love this city and it's part of my identity. If there's a choice [me] As a district's excellent councillor, you can be an elected office, fighting for the right thing. Then I don't see a real, compelling argument that I won't do it. ”
He paid the society in debt, he emphasized.
Since leaving prison, he has run a countertop company. He is raising a 13 year old son, Jordan and ex-wife Huma Abedin; He is WABC Radio's token Lib.
He said he went recovery A meeting to manage his “personal demon.” He walks through town with his rescue dog Billy.
He's not on app dates. “But I sometimes go to the date.”
Weiner filed for divorce in 2017 and vows to his ex, who is currently working for Alex Soros. “Huma said, 'This is like what you were born with,” he recalls. “She's an encouragement.”
He told me to call for comment.
Despite the fact that it is difficult for people who have had his shocking mistakes to believe that he encourages him to live a public life, his friend, his recovery told his friend The sponsor and his relatives are behind him. His mother was his first donor “pushing 90.”
Missing from his corner this time is his longtime leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer.
“Chuck and [his wife] Iris, to give people space. I'm a lot of people fixing it. I have gone through them systematically. I owe him the correction. I'm owing his family…” Weiner said before being kicked out.
So who in politics is still talking to him? “Lots of people,” he doesn't want to call me. He admits he is more of an outsider.
“You guys hate me,” he said of the post.. “The left hates me, the right hates me.”
Weiner last ran a campaign where his party was still lord by Obama and Clinton over a decade ago.
But the growing covid on the left, social media and the iliberalism on the left have created a reorganization. This is not so interested in voters' personal indiscretions and not so much in the candidate's ability to get things done.
We have already witnessed an unlikely revival of President Trump. Andrew Cuomo forced from the office in the #MeToo scandal ((Above all), he dominates the mayoral race polls, despite his lack of entry. Weiner can create three regiments.
But he is hesitant to bite this “story” as he calls it.
“Cuomo said he didn't do anything wrong and Trump denounced the criminal justice system,” he said. “I pleaded guilty to indecency. I accepted the responsibility. I went to prison, I went to a house along the way.”
He believes people should vote for him “despite his journey, but for it.” He values ”Charse.”
He wants to talk about the issues: disability, crime, fare avoidance, protection of Jewish university students,
“People in Greenwich Village feel that they're not safe wearing kippers,” Weiner said. “The lines are intersecting.”
When I asked for the check, he wondered if I had received enough scandal questions from my editor. I laughed, but My big question was repeated why he does this again, why there is in the world.
“I'm really good at this. I'm good at coming up with ideas. I'm good at fighting to pass those ideas on it.”
He has a lot to prove to people. It is still unclear whether they can forgive them. But it's hard to imagine that everyone has forgotten.
