Wiener Weiner Mayor, Wiener!

The Post interviews a bunch of Weiner backers who go there:

Voters in Anthony Weiner’s congressional district yesterday roasted the dropout Democrat over his decision to quit the mayoral race rather than take on Fernando Ferrer in a runoff.

“Get back in there,” fumed Johanna Cassidy, a bartender at the Austin Ale House in Kew Gardens. “He can’t just sit down and give up. Stop acting like a wiener!”

Of course Weiner’s supporters were just being principled:

Cassidy of Rego Park said she backed Weiner because he looked like a “regular guy” and because she wanted somebody who would take on Mayor Bloomberg “so I could smoke and have a drink at the same time.”

And let us not forget what’s most fun about this story, the Post-friendly adolescent humor:

The outrage prompted a stream of not-so-good-natured wisecracks that played off the 41-year-old congressman’s name.

“It was wrong! His name should be Oscar Meyer,” said Lou Valentine, 67, a Democrat.

Weiner maintained that it would be unwise and wasteful to go through with the runoff:

Weiner defended his decision to withdraw even though city elections officials say they are legally obligated to stage a runoff in two weeks, costing taxpayers as much as $12 million.

“It’s preposterous,” Weiner said of a runoff. “If the Board of Elections has to go through the kabuki dance on an election that cost us all $10 million that would be a shame.”

Weiner said his lawyers are busy trying to help avoid “a wasteful expenditure of money.”

“It’s not going to happen. Even my mother is not going to vote for me if there is a runoff,” quipped Weiner, who insisted he made the decision to quit on his own.

Nixon In China, Putin In Bayonne

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in town for that big UN shindig, took time out to attend the groundbreaking for another big Sept. 11 memorial. This one, in Bayonne, NJ, features a 100-foot-tall bronze slab with a dripping teardrop in the middle.

Once championed by Jersey City, the controversial project was abandoned by the municipality after its main booster died in office.

One thing is for sure — Russians love, love, love stuff that more than a little resembles female genitalia:

“This monument will always give vivid embodiment to our unity,” Mr. Putin said through an interpreter. “Certainly, this is going to be a splendid memorial.”

How splendid remains a matter of debate.

Zurab Tsereteli, 71, the artist who designed the memorial, a massive 106-foot bronze-plated slab featuring a cracked fissure and a 40-foot tall nickel teardrop, called it “To the Struggle Against World Terrorism,” and intended it as a gift to the United States.

His earlier works of art, though, have often been met with scorn in Russia. An architecture critic there once derided Mr. Tsereteli as a “genius of kitsch.”

His 150-foot statue depicting Peter the Great at the helm of a ship was removed from St. Petersburg following protests.

His 9/11 memorial will circulate cooled water that will condense and then drip, as if the tear itself is weeping. The names of everyone killed in the attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11 will be inscribed at the base, along with the names of those who died in the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Officials said they planned to dedicate it next Sept. 11.

Who’s Laughing Now?

A Rockland County resident had his car stolen, set on fire and dumped in the Bronx River only to have the Department of Sanitation issue him a ticket for abandoning a vehicle. He’d be laughing — ha ha, very funny — if only it wasn’t his misfortune:

Gerard O’Connor’s car was stolen, dumped near the Bronx River and set ablaze.
But then insult was added to injury: The Sanitation Police sent O’Connor a $250 ticket for abandoning a wrecked car on the street – and a judge upheld the fine.

“It would be funny if it wasn’t happening to me. I didn’t laugh,” said O’Connor, 39, a former NYPD sergeant who lives in Rockland County. “I thought it was a mistake, and I though they were going to correct it.”

Real nice!

All of which brings up a larger issue — you can abandon an entire vehicle in the Bronx River for only $250? That’s a bargain!

No Fun!

If you subscribe to the idea that Anthony Weiner ran for mayor in order to raise his profile for a future run, then his ostensibly noble decision to concede defeat to Fernando Ferrer and avoid a runoff (which is unclear will happen under state law) may seem smart. If you buy the notion that Bloomberg is unbeatable, then it is doubly smart. If you even think that it’s a brilliant move to say you want to avoid a runoff and then just have to participate in a runoff, then it’s triply smart. But at least for now, it appears that Ferrer is the Democratic candidate who will face Michael Bloomberg in the general election:

Representative Anthony D. Weiner conceded the 2005 Democratic mayoral nomination yesterday to Fernando Ferrer, the top vote-getter in the race, in hopes of averting a potentially destructive runoff election and strengthening Mr. Ferrer’s hand as he begins the final eight-week campaign against Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Mr. Weiner’s decision, made after a long night of strategizing with aides and his mentor, Senator Charles E. Schumer, came as a surprise to New York Democrats, not least Mr. Ferrer, who was said to be ecstatic. Mr. Ferrer lost a bruising mayoral runoff to Mark Green in 2001, and faced an uncertain bout against the scrappy Mr. Weiner; yesterday, he embraced a nomination that had eluded him in two previous runs for mayor.

In a surprising development, however, city elections officials announced that they were required under state law to hold a runoff despite Mr. Weiner’s withdrawal – at a cost to taxpayers of at least $10 million to pay for sending 6,030 voting machines to 1,409 polling stations and running the special election on Sept. 27. Mr. Ferrer will also stand to collect more than $421,000 in public campaign funds if a runoff is held.

Campaign lawyers for Mr. Ferrer and Mr. Weiner began looking for loopholes yesterday to avert a runoff, which is required when no mayoral primary candidate wins 40 percent of the vote. According to unofficial results, Mr. Ferrer won 39.949 percent of the vote, about 250 shy of 40 percent, in an election that drew just 15 percent of registered Democrats. Some 8,000 absentee ballots remain to be counted, but it is unclear if those votes will help or hurt him.

Mr. Weiner said he would not participate in a runoff even if one were held, calling it “a waste,” and Mr. Ferrer’s camp said they hoped to have the problem solved quickly so he could turn his sights on Mr. Bloomberg, beginning with a unity rally with Mr. Weiner and dozens of other Democrats on the steps of City Hall this afternoon.

. . .

Mr. Weiner explained his decision yesterday by saying that, his competitive spirit aside, Democrats needed to unite quickly if they were to overcome the unlimited campaign spending of “billionaire Republican Mike Bloomberg.”

“It was a difficult decision – it’s in my DNA to keep fighting,” said Mr. Weiner, standing on the bottom step of his childhood home in Park Slope, where he was known as a sports fanatic. “But I believe it is the right thing to do.”

New Jersey Transit To Groups Of Three: Drop Dead

Redesigned double-decker New Jersey Transit trains will eliminate the dreaded middle seat, leaving only rows of two on either side of the aisle:

New Jersey Transit officials offered commuters a glimpse of their train-riding future here on Wednesday and it was not drab, rigid or strictly horizontal. But what clearly was most appealing to all who beheld it was that it would eliminate the chance of spending more than an hour a day pressed between two strangers.

“The middle seat is gone,” cheered Maxine Marshall, who commutes from Plainfield, N.J., to work for a trust company in Jersey City.

. . .

“That dreaded middle seat is the bane of commuters’ existence,” said [New Jersey state commissioner of transportation and New Jersey Transit chairman] Mr. [Jack] Lettiere, who was on hand for the unveiling. “It becomes a place where people pile things to keep others from sitting there. It’s not what the customer wants.”

The new trains, set to debut in late 2006 will have 225 more seats.