Anthony Weiner walked in mostly unnoticed, quickly taking his place in a barber’s chair, an unlikely prop on his latest reclamation tour.
He offered some brief instructions — part it on the left, leave it a bit longer here — before attending to business: a sit-down interview at the famed Astor Place Hairstylists in Manhattan conducted by one of the shop’s owners.
Mr. Weiner, a former Democratic congressman, is in search of a public reset. His career and personal life imploded after he admitted to sending sexually explicit photos of himself to women, and was eventually convicted after he repeated the behavior with a 15-year-old girl.
Now, after a year and a half in prison, and much longer in public exile, Mr. Weiner is weighing a political comeback. He has been talking to constituents and says he may try to run in a Democratic primary for the New York City Council, where he served in the 1990s before being elected to Congress in 1998.
To do so successfully would mean persuading voters to give him yet another chance, and if that meant sitting down for a haircut and an interview on Wednesday morning, Mr. Weiner was more than willing.
“But on top, be careful,” he told Yakov Chulpayev, who has cut hair here since 1993. “I’ve got less working there now than I used to have.”
Mr. Weiner was interviewed by Jonathan Trichter, a former banker who ran for state comptroller as a Republican in 2018. Mr. Trichter said he wanted to discuss with Mr. Weiner how hard it is to run a small business in New York City.
“If the devil ascended to Manhattan and said he would get rid of onerous fees, congestion pricing and certain taxes, New Yorkers would put him on the City Council,” Mr. Trichter said.
But first they had to discuss Mr. Weiner’s transgressions and whether they disqualified him — a timely question in an era when President-elect Donald J. Trump can win despite a felony conviction.
Mr. Weiner, who now hosts a radio show on WABC, used the language of addiction and recovery to describe how he has tried to make amends, and said that an important step of that process was service.
If people want to talk about his past, they are welcome, he said, adding that he does not see himself in the vein of Mr. Trump or others convicted of misdeeds who say that the justice system was unfair or that the culture was too quick to judge them.
“I got removed from society. That happened,” he said. “I was removed from society for 18 months and five days, and for years I have lived as a civilian in this neighborhood. Maybe this campaign will be an opportunity for me to engage those people, even if they do not like what I did.”
His seven-term career in Congress ended in 2011, when he resigned after admitting to sexting online. An attempt at a comeback run for New York mayor fell apart in 2013 when he was caught again sending explicit photos to women under the name Carlos Danger.
Then in 2016, his behavior veered into criminal territory. Federal officials opened an investigation into his exchange of sexually explicit photos with a 15-year-old girl.
The inquiry had broad implications: Because Mr. Weiner’s wife at the time, Huma Abedin, was vice chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, investigators reopened an investigation into Ms. Clinton’s emails — a development that some Democrats blame for her loss to Mr. Trump.
“I know Anthony and it was disappointing when he blew up, but you could make a good argument he cost Hillary the election,” said the real estate magnate Jeffrey Gural, who owns the Astor Place building and helped Mr. Trichter buy and save the barbershop in 2020 after it almost closed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“If Hillary had won, we would not have had Trump,” Mr. Gural said. That is crazy.”
In 2017, Mr. Weiner pleaded guilty to transferring obscene material to a minor, which is a felony. Ms. Abedin asked for a divorce, and is now engaged to the billionaire Alex Soros.
Mr. Weiner’s potential candidacy in the Second Council District, which includes parts of Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side, has been met with derision from the declared candidates in the race, who are seeking to succeed the term-limited incumbent, Carlina Rivera.
One candidate in the primary, Sarah Batchu, said Mr. Trump’s victory had led other tainted politicians to think they could run again.
“Everyone deserves a second chance, but this guy has had third, fourth and fifth chances,” she said. “We have one shot to get the city back and work to help its constituents.”
Andrea Gordillo, another candidate, said that “families in Lower Manhattan deserve better than failed New York and Washington politicians using our moment of need for their own political comeback.”
“With the threats of the next Trump presidency here, we need fierce, progressive leadership to stand up for our values and protect our community,” she added.
Mr. Weiner’s desire to return to public office — as well as his affinity for Astor Place Hairstylists — is well understood by another New York politician, former Mayor Bill de Blasio.
During the pandemic, Mr. de Blasio sought to help the barbershop’s owners find a way to save the business. He was a steady customer, having first visited as a New York University student.
He still goes there, now adding a dye job to the chore of cutting his hair. Two Italian barbers speak to Mr. de Blasio in their native tongue as they work, he said.
The coloring, he said, has improved his self-esteem. “I was looking in the mirror and I thought to myself: I do not like what I see. I literally felt it did not represent me.”
Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, is familiar with the desire to keep seeking elected office. He unsuccessfully ran for president while mayor. He ended a bid for Congress in 2020 well before the primary. He had hoped to work for Vice President Kamala Harris, if she had won the presidential election.
Public service is a calling, he said, but remaining in the public eye can be draining and can change a person.
”Some folks are addicted to political life,” said Mr. de Blasio, who gave $100 in the spring to the campaign of Ms. Batchu, a former aide. “It’s a funny lack of peace that can drive you back to it.”
For his part, Mr. Weiner, freshly shorn and sipping an iced coffee yards from the Astor Place cube sculpture, said that one hesitation he had about running was a fear that the ego-quenching drive of a campaign could hurt the balance he has now found. Still, he said, he is leaning toward joining the race.
The conversation outside lasted about 30 minutes. Then Mr. Weiner had to get home to walk his dog — an example of normalcy, followed by another.
Virtually no one stopped to talk to him, and few seemed to recognize him. The only exceptions: two lost Italian tourists in need of directions.
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