Andrew Marantz: Chirlane McCray, Prospective First Lady of New York City: The New Yorker In 2010, two years before deploying Carlos Danger as his nom de sext, Anthony Weiner, a congressman at the time, married Hillary Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin. The officiant, Hillary's husband, reportedly joked that although a Jewish-Muslim marriage might prove difficult, Abedin's decision to marry a politician could be worse, because it is "easy to distrust them, whatever their religion." Chirlane McCray, like Abedin a candidate for First Lady of New York City, said of Dangergate, "I cannot imagine going through something like that." But then, McCray differs from the "good wife" archetype in most ways. McCray, who is married to Bill de Blasio, the city's public advocate, has deep-set eyes and wears her hair in cornrows. Resting between campaign events in a Lower East Side Starbucks the other day, she wore a yellow batik dress and an onyx ring. Her husband is pitching himself as the true progressive in the Democratic mayoral race. His positions on taxes, early-childhood education, and police oversight place him far to the left of Weiner and Christine Quinn, the City Council speaker; he ranks third or fourth in most polls. "I'm surprised that so many people - Democrats - run for office but don't really have an interest in changing anything," McCray said. McCray has a long-standing interest in changing things. When she was ten, in 1964, hers was the second black family to move to Longmeadow, Massachusetts, a suburb of Springfield. Her neighbors circulated a petition, she said, asking that they be kept out. "People talk about racism in the South, but the North could be just as bad," she said. She wrote poetry as a way of coping. What kind of poetry? Angry. She enrolled at Wellesley in 1972 and joined the Combahee River Collective, a group of radical black feminist lesbians. She had always identified as gay. It was never a question. It was part of who I was. After college, she moved to New York to work at Redbook, and, in 1979, she wrote an essay for Essence called "I Am a Lesbian." She said, "There were no visible women of color in the movement then. I said, "If no one else will speak up, I will." " She eventually moved on to city politics, and in 1991, while working as a speechwriter for Mayor David Dinkins, she met de Blasio, who was at that time a deputy mayor's aide at City Hall. "The way Bill describes it, I walked in with my African dress and my nose ring, and he heard choirs singing," McCray said. I did not have that experience. He asked her to lunch. Lunches became dinners. Eventually, I showed him the Essence article. He was troubled, but I told him, "We shouldn't let this stand between us." " They were married in Prospect Park, moved to a row house in Park Slope, and gave their son and daughter Italian first names and Ghanaian middle names. Some of McCray's lesbian-separatist friends refused to accept her new life, but, she said, most got used to it. "There are some people who identify as one thing or another," she said, "but for the rest of us there's a lot of gray area." De Blasio, who resembles an affable egret, entered the Starbucks and kissed McCray. He had been arrested that morning while protesting the closing of a Brooklyn hospital, and had spent the past several hours in jail. He nibbled on a chocolate-chip brownie. "The police were very courteous, but they don't provide refreshments," he said. You want some, honey? "I'll dabble," McCray said. They drove to Seventy-second Street and Broadway to meet voters, and were joined there by their eighteen-year-old daughter, Chiara. An older woman with a Shih Tzu clutched McCray's hands and said, "He will be mayor. I know it. Maybe not this time, but someday. De Blasio walked over, and the woman said, "If you ban the hansom cabs in Central Park, what'll happen to those horses?" "We have a plan to put them out to pasture, Ma'am," de Blasio said. It's no good to ban them just to kill them, you know. "Absolutely," he said. We're all here together on this earth. An hour later, McCray and de Blasio attended a fund-raiser at 78 Below, a basement bar on Columbus Avenue. Alec Baldwin entered, wearing a gray suit and an expression of tight-lipped remove, and kissed McCray on the cheek. De Blasio approached, and Baldwin said, "Don't kiss me, Bill." On the sidewalk after the event, Baldwin mused about de Blasio's candidacy: "What Chirlane and Bill bring is the image of . . ." He trailed off, squinting. How do I put this? It's that image of a modern New York. And I'm not just talking about the interracial thing. Later, McCray reflected on her role as a candidate's wife. "It has taken some getting used to," she said. I don't naturally enjoy speaking in public. Hypothetically, if McCray were put in a situation similar to Weiner's latest episode, how would she handle it? "It is important not to enable bad behavior, whatever shape or form it takes," she said. I think that's part of being a healthy couple. What more can I say?" ♦