Relying on Celebrity and Machismo to Upend a Political Season How much male menopausal testosterone and T.M.I. can one city take? A couple of months ago, New Yorkers were tooling along in a not terribly exciting, responsible family van of a political season. Then in roared the once-disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, singing his me-me-me love songs. And now here comes the once-disgraced former governor Eliot Spitzer laying down his heavy bass lines. Just like that, our campaign season became a motorcycle hurtling at full throttle down the Bronx River Parkway. Forget class size, stop-and-frisk policing and the possibility of financial Armageddon next year. We have a new question to ask of our leading candidates: Did you clear this electoral race with your psychotherapist? Mr. Weiner leapt the first hurdle, as two polls recently showed enough Democrats liking his act - or at least recognizing his name from Twitter posts - to propel him into the upper tier of mayoral candidates. Mr. Spitzer no doubt counts on the same celebritological phenomenon to propel him to the front of a far less crowded race for comptroller. Mr. Spitzer's entry could upend more than one race, and not necessarily to his advantage. The prospect of a Mayor Weiner/Comptroller Spitzer ticket might trigger a synergistic feedback loop in which too much weird testosterone and narcissism repel the electorate altogether. Their indiscretions to the side, Mr. Spitzer and Mr. Weiner are not conjoined political twins. Whatever his spittle-flying, expletive-punctuated performance as governor was like, Mr. Spitzer offered a strong turn as attorney general. He was prescient about the profound excesses of the financial sector and eloquent on the lack of shareholder democracy. And he displayed perhaps career-wrecking courage in taking on Maurice R. Greenberg and American International Group. Mr. Weiner likes to make similar claims for himself: He's the guy who speaks loudly when others fall silent. But, judged legislatively, his Congressional career resembles a sauce that has undergone too much reduction: he had little to show after 12 years. As my colleagues have noted, he steered precisely one bill to enactment, for a family friend, and he claimed a guest-starring role on the MSNBC liberal fantasy show known as "I Love You, Single-Payer." Mr. Spitzer has also chosen a less complicated electoral target than the one sought by Mr. Weiner. One of the curiosities of this political season is that more prominent Democrats are running for public advocate, a toothless dog of a post, than are competing for comptroller, arguably the second-most powerful position in New York. Until this week, Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president and a fellow with a fine staff and a record of taking on meaty policy questions, was on the glide path into the comptroller's office. Many prominent unions and politicians had endorsed him, and he could have been forgiven if he was perhaps planning an August week on the Cape. Now Mr. Stringer finds himself in a two-month cage fight with a former governor who once delighted in calling himself a "steamroller," a word that came preceded by a colorful expletive. Where did Mr. Stringer leave his nunchakus? Still, as the mayoral candidate Sal F. Albanese noted in an e-mail, electoral politics is at its healthiest when unaccompanied by coronations. "We have had one person running for comptroller," said Mr. Albanese, whose tenure on the City Council displayed a marked willingness to buck the status quo. Even if he is the smartest guy in the world, it is bad for democracy and bad for New Yorkers to elect anyone without a real race. Mr. Spitzer in fact might prove himself that most disorienting character in politics: the fellow who has little to lose. A comptroller with a serrated edge might be less likely than past comptrollers to turn that office into a full employment program for Democratic district leaders. And he might not need to be roused from a slumber to investigate a true scandal, like CityTime, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's ham-handed attempt at a new payroll system. The project ran hundreds of millions of dollars over budget, with missing money and criminal charges. Yet William C. Thompson Jr., then the comptroller and now a mayoral candidate, never met with the director of the city payroll agency, nor did he direct his large staff to audit that program. When asked in 2011 by The New York Times about the comptroller's lack of interest, an aide to Mr. Thompson offered a languorous shrug. "Should he have raised his voice more, and more publicly?" the aide said. This was a peripheral issue. Safe to say Mr. Spitzer is likely to get more hot and bothered.