MESSAGE
| DATE | 2005-08-30 |
| FROM | From: "Steve Milo"
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Weiner Biography: This is not a endorsement
|
Ever since I saw him giving a public speech (with Hillary Clinton) about how much he thinks Bush and the current administration is incompetent I knew right there I wouldnt be voting for him.
There are times and places to voice ones own pure political opinions, as far as I am concerned Weiner is a miserable politician. He has access to information that the general public does not. He had an opportunity to educate and inform the public and blew it.
He will not be a good choice for the City.
And I will not sink to the level of voting for him just because he is a fellow Jew.
Steve M
> A Scrappy Congressman, Ready for His Next Risk
> By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD and IAN URBINA
> In late August 1988, at the age of only 23, Anthony D. Weiner arrived at
> a crossroads.
>
> As an intern in the Capitol Hill office of a congressman, Charles E.
> Schumer, he knew he wanted to be a congressman himself - an intention
> hatched in college - but he did not know where to start. Should he move
> to Florida, go to law school and then run for office there, counting on
> support from New Yorkers who had moved there and calculating that new
> House seats would be created there after the 1990 census? Or should he
> roll the dice and dive into the tumult of Brooklyn politics, hoping that
> a seat would eventually open up?
>
> He turned to Mr. Schumer, who moved him to his Brooklyn office, setting
> the stage for Mr. Weiner's rise from scrappy aide to city councilman to
> four-term congressman who is once again betting against the house in a
> long-shot bid for mayor.
>
> "He was afraid of losing," recalled Mr. Schumer, now New York's senior
> senator. "I told him, 'Go back there.' This was three years before he
> ran. He said, 'But there is nothing open.' But I told him there are
> always openings that come up."
>
> Now 40, Mr. Weiner has learned to take a gamble and trust his own good
> luck. But he is not the sort to leave anything to chance; he has given
> that luck every nudge he can, cultivating mentors like Mr. Schumer,
> staking out a stance on every possible issue and carefully studying the
> political tides - even when they seem turned against him.
>
> In the race for the Democratic mayoral nomination, Mr. Weiner
> (pronounced WEE-ner) has moved from fourth place into a close three-way
> race for second, behind Fernando Ferrer, according to the polls. His
> aggressive, quick-witted performance in two televised debates has lent
> him the aura of the up-and-comer, a dark horse with momentum.
>
> He has stumbled at times. Although his campaign has raised a respectable
> $2.7 million, he has returned thousands of dollars after rivals raised
> questions about the donors. Rivals have accused him of using
> Congressional campaign money and resources in the mayoral race. And
> compared with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg or even Mr. Ferrer, he remains
> a relative unknown, struggling to gain notice as he juggles his job in
> Congress with his mayoral bid. His failure to devote his full attention
> to the campaign has fed speculation that this year's effort is merely a
> dry run for 2009, a chance to heighten his visibility and build the base
> needed for a citywide campaign.
>
> But Mr. Weiner says he is committed to winning and will prove skeptics
> wrong, reaching out, his strategists say, to white, middle-class voters
> outside Manhattan who have always helped propel winning mayoral
> campaigns.
>
> He never fails to point out that this is what Edward I. Koch did in the
> multicandidate primary of 1977.
>
> Mr. Weiner has kept those voters in his sights, proposing an income tax
> increase on people earning more than $1 million a year and a 10 percent
> tax cut for those earning $150,000 or less.
>
> He has promised to improve ailing public schools and champion
> neighborhoods outside Manhattan, and to cut the budget by 5 percent a
> year, every year - a vow that he says distinguishes him from what he
> calls "Democratic orthodoxy." He has also sought leverage among Jewish
> voters - he is the only Jew among the Democrats running for mayor - with
> proposals like tax breaks for large families, something that he noted
> might be particularly helpful in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods.
>
> Whether playing goalie on an amateur hockey team, an unlikely task for a
> man of his wispy frame, or running for mayor against a field of
> better-known Democrats and a Republican incumbent with money to burn,
> Mr. Weiner thrives on taking calculated risks and vanquishing doubters,
> and takes pride in his reputation as something of a wunderkind and a
> policy maven.
>
> He has drawn praise from some Democratic leaders for a long and varied
> list of proposals, like taxing some state properties or having the city
> take over some of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's oversight
> of subways. Opponents, though, have dismissed his ideas as a wish list
> that would require unlikely concessions from the power brokers in
> Albany.
>
> In the most recent debate, the City Council speaker, Gifford Miller,
> called Mr. Weiner's tax-cutting plan a "gimmick" and accused him of
> making pie-in-the-sky promises and proposals. In April, after Mr. Weiner
> questioned Mr. Bloomberg's ability to get more money from Washington,
> the mayor's office ridiculed a pitch the congressman once made for $4
> million to study the threat posed by asteroids.
>
> Mr. Weiner, who likes to flash an eclectic knowledge of everything from
> the Asian longhorned beetle to the intricacies of trade negotiations,
> would have people believe that his quests arise from a passion for
> issues. But he is no ideologue, and seems to love the game of politics
> for itself. His competitive streak is never far below the surface, on or
> off the political rink.
>
> "I hate to lose," he said late one recent night, sweaty and stewing on a
> bench at Chelsea Piers after his hockey team, the Falcons, lost 5-4 in a
> seesawing game.
>
> He tempers that intensity, and a tendency to sound like a know-it-all,
> with generous doses of wisecracking and self-deprecation. Recently,
> announcing a proposal that the city forge closer ties with "faith-based"
> organizations, he made a reference to Nehemiah, an ancient governor of
> Judea.
>
> "It's worth noting that at this point in the election he was trailing by
> 15 points," Mr. Weiner deadpanned.
>
> People counted him out, he often notes, in his first runs for both City
> Council and Congress, at least until Mr. Schumer endorsed him. That
> lifeline appears unlikely in the mayoral campaign, as Mr. Schumer says
> he does not plan to make any endorsements in the primary, and has been
> notably charitable to the mayor in public statements. (The senator's
> wife, Iris Weinshall, is Mr. Bloomberg's transportation secretary.)
>
> Although Mr. Weiner once vowed never to run for anything else if elected
> to Congress - "I wasn't expected to win, so it was a pretty easy deal to
> make," he said - he sees the mayor's job as a logical next step. He is
> motivated, he says, by the chance to replace Mr. Bloomberg, whom he sees
> as removed from the lives of everyday New Yorkers and insufficiently
> tough in prying aid out his fellow Republicans in Washington.
>
> "On the plane flying back and forth, I viewed kind of my mission in
> Washington as being one of the people who defended the city," Mr. Weiner
> said. "And I realized that when I looked at an issue, that was the lens
> I was looking at it through. I think there is a natural evolution from
> that to say, 'Why don't you do it in the city for all five boroughs?' "
>
> Arguing for Arguing's Sake
>
> One thing about Mr. Weiner is undebatable: he can debate. Friend and foe
> alike agree that he excels at articulating a point and pressing an
> argument.
>
> He learned it at home, he said, "in the rough-and-tumble world of Park
> Slope," Brooklyn, where he and his two brothers - one older, one younger
> - would sit around the breakfast table and spar over whatever came to
> hand.
>
> "The boys argued about nearly everything," said his father, Morton
> Weiner, a lawyer. "One would come downstairs and say, 'Good morning.'
> And the other would say, 'What's good about it?' And someone else would
> say, 'Yeah, and how do you know it's morning?' "
>
> Mr. Weiner does not remember his parents as being passionately
> political, though he did roller skate down Seventh Avenue in Brooklyn,
> helping his older brother, Seth, hand out literature for George
> McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign.
>
> Their mother, Frances, was a schoolteacher, and both parents, he said,
> gave him a zest for knowledge. But Mr. Weiner never excelled at studies,
> and at times makes light of his academic record, making joking
> references in conversation to his time at Oxford, which he did not
> attend, and not mentioning the college he did attend - the State
> University of New York College at Plattsburgh - in the biographies on
> his campaign and Congressional Web sites.
>
> He said he failed the admission test for Stuyvesant High School, widely
> considered the best in the city system, by just one point, and attended
> Brooklyn Technical High School instead.
>
> At Plattsburgh, he aimed at first to become a television weatherman. But
> when the meteorology courses proved too difficult, he said, he
> gravitated toward politics, immersing himself in political-science
> courses and student government.
>
> Elected to the student senate as a junior, Mr. Weiner wasted little time
> before courting controversy. Though he had chosen Plattsburgh, near the
> Canadian border, for its hockey facilities, he argued that some of the
> money spent on the team should go toward other sports - a provocative
> stance on a campus full of diehard hockey fans. He also protested the
> placement of a Christmas tree in the lobby of the political science
> department, arguing that it infringed on church-state separation. He
> succeeded in both efforts.
>
> "Student government was definitely Anthony's element," said Harvey
> Schantz, a political science professor who was the faculty adviser to
> the student government in 1984, when Mr. Weiner held office. Senate
> meetings typically started around 10 on Monday evenings, Professor
> Schantz said, and debate often lasted several hours. "Anthony would
> follow people to their mailboxes after the meeting was over just to keep
> the argument going," Professor Schantz said. "He wore people down."
>
> A Brooklyn native himself, Professor Schantz said he was immediately
> impressed with Mr. Weiner, who took the bold step of enrolling as a
> freshman in Professor Schantz's advanced course on public opinion and
> voting behavior.
>
> Mr. Weiner eventually nicknamed the professor "coach," turning to him
> regularly for academic and political advice, especially during weekly
> one-on-one basketball games.
>
> But the crystallizing moment for Mr. Weiner came during a trip to Albany
> early in his senior year for a mock State Assembly meeting, in which
> college students drafted bills and debated issues. Mr. Weiner went home
> with several victory gavels, after being voted best floor speaker and
> majority leader.
>
> "It was like one of those things where you say, 'So this is what I'm
> supposed to do,' " he said.
>
> The debate topics did not matter. "It doesn't matter to me to this day,"
> he said. "I could probably argue both sides of just about any issue."
>
> When a congressman visited campus to lecture about interest groups and
> politics, Mr. Weiner was the only student to schedule a private meeting
> with him, Professor Schantz said. And when, in his final semester, Mr.
> Weiner was offered the chance to work in Mr. Schumer's Washington
> office, he jumped at the opportunity.
>
> "When I saw him next he was back on campus visiting during his
> internship, and I could tell he had gone through his final
> transformation," said Professor Schantz, recalling that Mr. Weiner
> looked unusually comfortable in a suit and trench coat for someone his
> age.
>
> "It was clear that he had found in Schumer another mentor."
>
> Finding His Place
>
> The job was rudimentary: affixing labels on envelopes, answering phones.
> But it allowed him to watch Representative Schumer at work.
>
> "I saw him as the hub of this very big impressive machine, making calls
> and figuring out how to navigate things," Mr. Weiner said. "He was
> trying to get on the Budget Committee in the beginning of 1985. His
> third term was just starting. I remember it was very competitive of him
> to get on the Budget Committee. He was trying very hard to do it. Phones
> were going and deals were being struck, and he was running around like a
> whirling dervish."
>
> Sent to the Brooklyn office after Mr. Schumer urged him to take a chance
> on New York politics, Mr. Weiner represented the congressman at events
> and in community meetings, building a network of contacts that helped
> his prospects when he decided to run for City Council in 1991.
>
> Mr. Weiner saw his opening in a district in central Brooklyn that had
> just been redrawn and attracted a free-for-all of six candidates. There,
> he earned his reputation as a dogged campaigner, knocking on seemingly
> every door, relentlessly shaking hands at subway stops and wearing out
> the cheap suit he had bought for the race.
>
> When he won, he was 27 - at that point, the youngest person ever elected
> to the City Council.
>
> His colleagues on the Council remember him more for his mouth than for
> his legislative achievements. He proved a constant irritant to Mayor
> David N. Dinkins, whom Mr. Weiner took to task over his handling of the
> violence in Crown Heights.
>
> Mr. Weiner later battled Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani over restrictions on
> food cart vendors, and other matters.
>
> "What I really remember is, he could argue an issue really well," said
> Peter F. Vallone, the former Council speaker, who is supporting a rival
> of Mr. Weiner's, Speaker Gifford Miller. "He was very articulate and
> tenacious."
>
> After Mr. Schumer entered the Senate race in 1998, Mr. Weiner set his
> sights on his mentor's House seat, facing off against tough competition
> principally from Councilman Noach Dear, the perceived favorite of
> Orthodox Jews in the district, and Assemblywoman Melinda R. Katz, who
> had the backing of the Queens political establishment. But Mr. Weiner,
> as Mr. Schumer's protégé, seemed to have the edge, and the congressman's
> endorsement late in the race helped push him to a 500-vote victory in
> the Democratic primary.
>
> In Congress, representing a largely middle-class district straddling the
> Brooklyn-Queens border, he has been outspoken in his advocacy for
> Israel, the need for federal financing of local police forces, and
> controlling the Asian longhorned beetle, which has ravaged trees in the
> Northeast.
>
> Like many other Democrats in Congress, he voted in favor of the Iraq war
> resolution in 2002 - but against an $87 million appropriation for war
> costs the following year - and for the U.S.A. Patriot Act.
>
> As a member of the minority party, however, he does not have a long list
> of significant legislative achievements. At the suggestion that he may
> be frustrated in Congress, Mr. Weiner bristled.
>
> "I frankly in some degree have found my voice as a member of the
> minority party with Bush in the White House," he said. "When you are the
> 200th person following the president's coalition, like I was to some
> degree in my first term under Clinton, to some degree you're a foot
> soldier. When you're a third-termer or a fourth-termer in the minority
> party, it's much more entrepreneurial. You kind of have to think a
> little bit about how you're going to approach
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