Feature

Four Donkeys on a Trail

Except he gets there too early. The ballpark is deserted when Weiner rolls up. But from the stadium steps, he can see a ferry approaching from Manhattan. Weiner’s off to the terminal, where he spends fifteen minutes intercepting ferry passengers. That crowd dissipated, Weiner jumps back in the car. He passed a Western Beef on the way here; there must be people in the supermarket! Then, 30 minutes later, it’s back to the ballpark/opera house.

Weiner is about to bound through the stadium gates when a security guard, looking very Reno 911 in shorts and badge, blocks his path. No passing out literature in the ballpark, the guard tells the congressman. “Isn’t this a city facility?” Weiner parries, before giving in: Okay, he’ll just talk to people. Which the guard doesn’t realize is a losing compromise. Literature, shmiterature: The only way to hurt Weiner is to stop him from talking.

Anthony Weiner, tied for last in the polls, is learning that there's a fine line between cracking jokes and becoming one.

Weiner is the mayoral candidate who genuinely seems to enjoy people, and he has a quip for every moment. The congressman is a prolific proposer of new government policies, but tonight is purely for shtick. A black woman complains that, unlike free concerts in every other city park, she wasn’t allowed to bring in food. “Girlfriend, you gotta elect me mayor so I can change that!” Weiner says. A 6-year-old boy asks if Weiner is a school principal. “No, but I make a lot of rules!” Weiner says. “Tell your mom you met me and I seem like a nice fella.”

He strides down the stadium aisle to the seats behind home plate, which are shielded from the field by a net; the orchestra is set up behind second base. “Folks, we have a few safety announcements about tonight’s opera!” he yells to the patrons. “There’s a lot of foul balls in this concert!”

Two women are sitting behind Weiner, watching him tummel. “Who does he look like?” asks the first. “That guy on M*A*S*H! What’s his name? Corporal Klinger!”

“Jamie Farr!” cackles her companion. “You’re right!”

Charging back up the aisle, Weiner talks about education with a vice-principal from his alma mater, Brooklyn Tech; encounters two women who are clients of Weiner’s lawyer father; hollers “My mishpocheh!” when he sees the driver’s license of another man named Weiner. “Help me get through college!” hollers Matt, a beer vendor. “I go to Mount Saint Vincent, and I’m gonna be a teacher.”

“Dude, you don’t know how much I want a beer right now,” Weiner says, laughing and starting to walk away. Then he stops. “You’re going to be a teacher? Call me up when I’m mayor and you got a job!” Then Weiner buys a Miller Genuine Draft.

As he dashes around the five boroughs, Weiner is seeing that there’s a fine line between cracking jokes and becoming one. Unless he climbs out of a tie for last place in the polls soon, his challenge is to build name recognition and positive feeling for a possible 2009 run. The risk is that Weiner will be remembered as an also-ran whose greatest contribution this time around was comic relief.

“The four of us Democrats are going through the same things, and we’re all trying to beat Bloomberg, so we have that bond, but we’re trying to beat one another, too,” Weiner says, slowing down for one minute. “So the four people who understand best what this is like are not friends. It’s actually a lonely thing, running for mayor.”

Out past left field, the sun is setting gold and orange into New York Harbor. A tenor is gliding into a gorgeous aria. But Anthony Weiner’s beer bottle is empty. He’s off to Rockaway, searching for more hands to shake.