early and awkward

Mayoral Candidate Jimmy McMillan Has Some Choice Words for the Board of Elections

And you thought Jimmy McMillan was upset about the rent — wait until you really hear him get going. Yesterday, it was reported that the Board of Elections had stripped McMillan’s party name, Rent Is Too Damn High Party, of the word “damn.” Their reasoning was that it was just too long, and McMillan had failed to remedy the problem himself. This is causing McMillan a fair amount of distress and bewilderment, and it’s understandable. In 2005, he ran for mayor under the full name without an issue, and suddenly it’s too long? It’s not as if “damn” is an inconsequential part of the name, either. “The ‘damn’ is what gives the party the hype it has,” he told us. “But once you take the ‘damn’ out, you lose the power.” Shortly after he met with the board to plead his case yesterday, we called McMillan to see what was going on. Barely had we said “hi” before he launched into this expletive-laden tirade (click for audio):

I had a hell of a day, man. I would love to put on my website that the Board of Elections can suck my dick, I would love to do that, but I got little children going to my website, I can’t do it, the motherfuckers. I would love to, before every one of them go to bed at night, suckin’ my damn dick. That’s what I’d love to put on my website. Every fuckin’ one of them, you know.


He added, “I’ll put it on my website, fuck the motherfuckers, man.” It was at this point we decided to stop Mr. McMillan and get him to speak on the record. Turns out he already had been. “You’re saying that everything you just said can be on the record?” we confirmed. “Everything I just said. Suck my fuckin’ dick, the fuckin’ board, every fuckin’ one of them.” Oh … so it’s going to be that type of phone call.

McMillan went on to explain his confusion with the board’s demands — he had thought he was supposed to remove “the” from the beginning of the party name, to fix a discrepancy with another candidate on his ticket — and expound on his theories for why the board had plotted to bring him down. It’s their moral and religious distaste for the word “damn,” he said. Another theory? “Because the word is out that I’m anti-Semitic,” he said — because he once investigated housing practices in south Williamsburg that favor Jews — charges he considers baseless. Later on, he seemed to demonstrate his approval of Jews, in a roundabout sort of way, while slamming the board’s general counsel, Steven H. Richman. “He’s Jewish, and committing such a lying act, [then] he’s not Jewish. He’s a punk-ass motherfucker, that’s what he is. He ain’t Jewish.”

McMillan says he doesn’t have the money to challenge the board’s decision in court. He’s just going to have to keep campaigning under a castrated name. He’s going to spread the word now not only about the rent being too damn high, but also about the corruption of the board. And he’s going to stay motivated. “I’m going to go to the bathroom,” he told us before hanging up, “and write the commissioner’s name on every sheet of toilet paper and wipe my ass with it. So when I shit, I can think about him.”

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Mayoral Candidate Jimmy McMillan Has Some Choice Words for the Board of Elections