A week after Mayor Bloomberg's narrower-than-expected victory, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn/Queens) has come out of the woodwork claiming that he could have defeated the incumbent. The Congressman — who abandoned his short-lived Mayoral campaign in May — claims that in order to win, Bloomberg would have needed to spend at least $150 million (about $50 million more than the Mayor's record-breaking campaign expenditures).
"They were afraid of me," said Weiner, who is known as a defender of supermodels, an avid hockey player, and a former roommate of The Daily Show's Jon Stewart. "I saw a way to beat Mike Bloomberg, but it was a narrow path."
Weiner told the Times that he dropped out of the Mayoral race to focus on healthcare. If he had continued to run a "full-fledged, full-throated Weiner-style campaign,” he claims that Bloomberg would have attacked him every time he missed a hearing or a vote. “I would have to absent myself from my Washington responsibilities, which were really big and would have been really noticeable if I had not done them,” said Weiner, who was one Congress' most vocal advocates for a public option. "If I had sat here in D.C., not gotten much done or moved the ball on what I said I would, maybe I would say my time was better spent becoming mayor."
That said, skeptics think Weiner bailed out over concerns that after his second-place finish in the 2005 Democratic primary, a Mayoral loss "would be devastating to his ambitions." But in the wake of Democratic challenger Bill Thompson's better-than-anticipated showing, many Democrats continue to wonder what would have happened if Weiner — who is already being named as a frontrunner in the 2013 race — hadn't dropped out.
