Running against the Machine: A Grass Roots Race for the New York Mayoralty
An anthology documenting the 1969 Mailer–Breslin campaign for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of New York and City Council President — articles, debates, interviews, position papers, speeches, and columns. Edited by Peter Manso (Doubleday, late August 1969), with a one-paragraph preface by Mailer.
Running against the Machine: A Grass Roots Race for the New York Mayoralty, by Norman Mailer, Jimmy Breslin, Peter Maas, Gloria Steinem, and others, edited by Peter Manso (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, late August 1969; simultaneously in softcover; miscellany, 313 pp., $6.95), gathers the articles, debates, interviews, position papers, speeches, and columns of the 1969 Mailer–Breslin campaign for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of New York (Mailer) and President of the City Council (Breslin). It carries a one-paragraph preface dated 22 July, ending with a dedication “to the hard-working staff and the enthusiastic volunteers of the Mailer-Breslin Campaign.”
The book is the documentary record of the campaign chronicled piece by piece across 69.6–69.79; many of those campaign items are reprinted or excerpted here (Lennon notes 69.7, 69.10, 69.24, 69.26, 69.31, 69.41, 69.46, 69.51, 69.65, 69.70, 69.75, 69.77, and 69.79 among them). Mailer’s central campaign idea — turning New York City into the 51st state, with radical neighborhood decentralization — runs through it.
Related pages
- 1969 | The Mailer–Breslin Mayoral Campaign (1969)
- Why Are We in New York? | A Letter from Norman Mailer to the Voting Democrats of New York
- Jimmy Breslin | Peter Manso | Gloria Steinem
- On Accepting the Pulitzer Prize (69.26)