Audrey Silk kandidaatburgemeester New York
De Libertarische Partij van New York heeft Audrey Silk, voorzitster van NYCCLASH en pro-rokersactiviste met sterke banden met Forces, kandidaat gesteld voor het burgemeestersschap van New York.
Hoewel ze naar verwachting weinig kans op verkiezing heeft zal haar invloed in de verkiezingsstrijd groot zijn: geen van de andere kandidaten durfde zich tot nou toe uit te spreken over het rookverbod in New York, maar nu zullen ze daartoe uitgedaagd worden en stelling moeten kiezen….
Retired cop Audrey Silk puffed on a Parliament in her Cape Cod-style home in Marine Park and said she is running for mayor because Michael Bloomberg is a “Puritan who has taken the gusto out of New York City.”
“How many of those do you smoke every day?” I ask.
“I hate that question,” she said in a mind-your-own-business voice.
Silk knows she’s the longest of long shots as the candidate of the Libertarian Party, which was burned in 1994 when it chose radio talk show host Howard Stern to run for governor against George Pataki. Stern left party officials high and dry by quitting before the election.
“He was only running for the publicity it gave to a book he had just published,” said Jim Lesczynski, who is the Libertarian candidate for public advocate. Lesczynski said he is not a smoker, but has become a “political smoker” to protest the smoking ban.
But Silk says she is in the race to stay. For her, the smoking ban is personal and so is the mayor, whose voice drives her nuts – “It’s like nails in my head.” She has a poster in her living room of the mayor that shows him with his pants at his ankles and the line “Bloomberg Butt Out!!”
