Norman Mailer And Jimmy Breslin Ran To Win In 1969; They Didn't

NEW YORK, NY – Years had passed, decades, and the literary giant Norman Mailer was sitting in the room where it had all started. The room where it happened was on the top floor of his brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. It wasn't just the spectacular views of the East River and Manhattan beyond that made the room have a bit of a feel of being at sea. The room was filled with rope ladders extended over shelves with hundreds of books, many written by Norman himself.

Looking back through the lens of memory, he still thought that, overall, it had been a good idea.

"Should we have done some things differently," he asks, preparing to answer his own question. "Obviously! It was a race we shoulda run. Since we didn't, I'd say, yeah. We made some mistakes.

"But running was definitely not one of them."

Monday, June 17 marks 50 years since Mailer was told by the voters of New York in no uncertain terms that they did not want him to be mayor of New York. At the same time – though, a little less brutally – they also told the great newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin, that they would prefer he not be the city council president.

***

It was March 31, 1969 that things had really become serious.

Mailer and Breslin were joined in Mailer's brownstone by around 40 people including many luminaries from New York's media world. There was Pete Hamill from the Post. Jack Newfield and Joe Flaherty from the Village Voice. There were activists like Flo Kennedy. There was Gloria Steinem who was writing for New York Magazine.

She'd come up with the idea of having Mailer run and, when he thought that he needed someone on the ticket who'd do a better job of relating to the city's working people, she thought of Breslin.

"I wanted her to run with us," Breslin recalled years later. "She would have definitely classed up the ticket."

Steinem had no interest in running herself and rebuffed them on that, saying that she would be far more helpful behind the scenes.

There was a lot of talk abut what their issues would be.

"Norman had a lot of ideas," Breslin remembered. "But they were all over the place. He wanted a monorail that would go around Manhattan with come east-west connections. That was genius. Keep all the cars out except the ones that really need to be here."

Mailer also said that he thought that birth control should be illegal.

"And pot, too," Breslin remembered. "He thought if it was legal, the cigarette companies would take control and ruin it."

The one thing everyone agreed on was making New York City the 51st State.

"It was a joke then and it sill," Breslin said. "The city pays all this money up to Albany where they have barely a brain among them and we get next to nothing back. It doesn't make any sense."

There was concern that while they would get attention, people wouldn't take Mailer and Breslin seriously.

Collection of Colin Miner

"It was a problem," Breslin said. "We were absolutely serious. Norman really thought that he would win. He said one time that God had chosen him to run. There was some crazy stuff coming out of him.

"We were serious about running. He really thought we'd win, or at least he'd win. I was serious about running. The city was such a mess. We wanted to talk about stuff. But, win? Woulda been nice."

***

On May 1, they made their campaign official.

Breslin, who was referring to himself as "James" for the campaign, was almost one hour late – something he would blame on traffic from Queens and later concede that he "probably should have had more rest the night before."

Once there, he quickly set the mixed tone that would define their campaign.

After dismissing the competition as "bums and nuts," Breslin talked about the need for New York to be its own state.

"It's insanity that we let a bunch of lobster fishermen from Montauk and a bunch of jerks from Niagara Falls tell us how to run our schools," he said.

New York was in a tough place in 1969. Short of the Mets getting their championship season. The stage was already being set for the financial crisis that would almost pull the city into bankruptcy 6-years-later.

John Lindsay, the Republican incumbent, was running for a second term. John Marchi from Staten Island was challenging him for the nomination. Former Mayor Robert Wagner was seeking another term. Bronx Borough President Herman Badillo, who many considered a strong contender, along with Mario Procaccino – a conservative Democrat – were also in the race.

There was a lot of hit and miss.

While the 51st State campaign drew a lot of interest as a policy proposal, there were other moments that did not.

"I'm the guy who made lists every of people I wasn't speaking to," Breslin remembers. "There were times in the campaign, my more colorful self overshadowed the guy who wanted to talk about the city."

Mailer was more unpredictable.

He talked about wanting to end fluoridation, he told people that if snow covered the city – something that made Lindsay very unpopular when the city left neighborhoods unplowed – he would get rid of it by urinating on it.

"If you and Breslin go ape on the same evening, who will run the city?" a reporter asked Mailer. He said not to worry, if they went ape, it wasn't likely going to happen on the same evening.

They were also hurt by the very thing that should have brought them votes – their popularity, their intelligence.

Breslin had published his first novel, the wildly popular The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, which he'd sold to Hollywood. And Mailer was reportedly receiving $1 million to write a book about the moon launch later that summer.

Their popularity made it hard to get donations because people assumed they'd be able to pay for the campaign themselves.

That feeling was hammered home when – just four days after they had announced – Mailer won the Pulitzer Prize for The Armies of the Night, his book about the march on the Pentagon.

The award only brought Mailer $1,000, but people saw the prize and that's what they focused on.

"We could be our own worst enemies," Breslin remembered. "Even without trying."

That was on full display two nights after Mailer won the Pulitzer.

The campaign was having a fundraiser at The Village Gate. Mailer took to the stage with a glass of whiskey in his hand and started berating the supporters who had shown up, calling them "a bunch of spoiled pigs."

If someone interrupted him, Mailer would tell them to "go f--- yourself."

It got so bad that Breslin and Jack Newfield, the Village Voice reporter who was helping run the campaign, fled the fundraiser.

"I know I was crazy," Breslin told Newfield. "But you got me running with Ezra Pound."

The next morning, they got some good news. The Post was the only paper that covered the fundraiser and left out most of the details.

In the end, it wouldn't matter.

Mailer finished fourth in a field of five, getting 41,136 votes or just five percent.

Breslin got more votes – 75,480 – but still finished second to last, just above a young assemblyman from Harlem, Charles Rangel.

While Breslin would make light of the loss, saying that he regretted having taken part in something that led to bars being closed, he also had good things to say about the campaign.

"It's like I said, we had good ideas but we would shoot ourselves in the foot," Breslin said. "The thing did give me a better understanding of politics and campaigning. Most of the politicians were crooks then and are crooks now."

Mailer, for his part, said that there was one thing that probably would have made sense to do differently.

The problem was that he would never have any part of it.

“In hindsight, there is probably a case that we should have switched places,” Mailer would say years later. “But there was no way that I was going to do it. And, when you think about it, what if Jimmy had won?

“I saved the city by taking the top spot."