The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/Jimmy Breslin’s Run to Win: Difference between revisions

{{byline|last=Peppard|first=Victor|url=http://prmlr.us/mr13pep|abstract=The Mailer-Breslin campaign for the leadership of New York City in 1969 is enhanced with Breslin’s own words on the campaign, written in his inimitable style. In the short space of three pages of the May 5, 1969 edition of ''New York Magazine'', Jimmy Breslin tells a good story with a bevy of characters who were involved in the race. One of them was not actually a part of the campaign, for his wife Rosalie wanted nothing to do with something she thought was a cheap publicity stunt on her husband's part. Some of the others were subject to Breslin's brilliant stingers, such as former mayor Robert Wagner who he describes as “a dumpy little man” who led the city during its decline. Breslin’s recounting of the turbulent campaign provides salient insights to the tenor of the times.}}

IN WRITING ABOUT THE MAILER-BRESLIN CAMPAIGN for the leadership of New York City in 1969 in the ''Mailer Review'' of 2018, my principle sources were Mailer’s son, John Buffalo, and his manager, Joe Flaherty. Both of them did justice to Jimmy Breslin’s participation in the race, so this is not meant to “correct the record,” but rather to enhance it with Breslin’s own words, written in his inimitable style. In the short space of three pages of the May 5, 1969 edition of ''New York Magazine'', the cover of which features these two stalwarts of American letters, briefly but famously acting as politicians, Jimmy Breslin tells a good story with a bevy of characters who were involved in the race. One of them was not actually a part of the campaign, for his wife Rosalie wanted nothing to do with something she thought was a cheap publicity stunt on her husband’s part. Some of the others were subject to Breslin’s brilliant stingers, such as former mayor Robert Wagner, whom he describes as “a dumpy little man” who led the city during its decline. On Mario Procaccino he had this to say: “Mario for waiter, yes. For mayor? Good Lord.” Breslin tried to convince Rosalie that, with people like this running for mayor, he just had to run himself, but she was unmoved.