page_title: New York City: the 51st State
section_title: Primary election results
hierarchical_section_title: New York City: the 51st State / Primary election results
caption_attribution_description: Norman Mailer photographed by Carl Van VechtenNorman Mailer
context_page_description: New York City: the 51st State was the platform of the Norman Mailer–Jimmy Breslin candidacy in the 1969 New York City Democratic Mayoral Primary election. Mailer, a novelist, journalist, and filmmaker, and Breslin, an author and at the time a New York City newspaper columnist, proposed that the five New York City boroughs should secede from New York State, and become the 51st state of the U.S.
  Mailer topped the ticket as candidate for Mayor; his running mate, Breslin, sought the office of City Council President. Their platform featured placing city governmental control in the hands of the neighborhoods, and offered unique and creative – if impractical and even logistically impossible – solutions to air pollution, traffic congestion, school overcrowding, and crime.
  After a strong grassroots campaign, the ticket entered the primary on June 17, 1969 as decided underdogs. They finished second to last, garnering a citywide total of 41,288 votes, 5% of the total votes cast.
context_section_description: Perhaps the most significant outcome of the Mailer-Breslin campaign was that they did not finish last.  That dubious honor belonged to James H. Scheuer, who finished 1,878 votes behind Mailer.  Mailer garnered over 10,000 more votes than Scheuer in Manhattan, and also outpolled him on Staten Island.
  As the result of the fragmented, five-candidate field, the 1969 Democratic Primary made for one of the most unusual elections since the conglomeration of greater New York.  The incumbent Republican Mayor (John V. Lindsay) and a former Democratic incumbent (Robert F. Wagner, Jr.) both lost their parties' primaries. Mario Procaccino won with less than 33% of the vote against Mailer and three other opponents, which inspired the use of runoffs in future primaries.  The complete Democratic Primary results:
caption: Norman Mailer photographed by Carl Van Vechten in 1948
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