Jimmy Breslin’s Run to Win

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.