Anthony Weiner was easy to miss as he stood at the counter of a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop in the East Village on a gloomy Wednesday morning this week, wearing a Pure Hockey T-shirt and frayed Mets cap.

Following years of relative anonymity, however, Weiner is now courting redemption of sorts. His name has been a renewed subject of tabloid fodder as he indicates he is weighing a political comeback after he was forced to resign from Congress in 2011 for sharing sexually inappropriate online messages with several women, and was later imprisoned for sexting a minor.

Late last week, Weiner formally filed to explore a campaign for the New York City Council, where his political career began in the early 1990s before he ascended to the House for seven terms. He has not yet confirmed if he will ultimately choose to run for the Council seat covering such neighborhoods as the East Village and the Lower East Side, where several candidates are jockeying to succeed Carlina Rivera, a term-limited Democrat.

But Weiner, who lives in the East Village, suggested that he is now seriously considering moving forward with a bid, which would mark his second attempt at a comeback since he left office. In keeping with past campaigns, he has assembled a handbook of policy proposals called “25 Ideas for ‘25,” which he intends to release soon, and will probably invest some of his own money in a newly formed campaign account as he continues to feel out the response, which he says has been largely positive.

“I’m doing it basically one foot in front of the other,” Weiner, who is now 60, explained in a wide-ranging interview with Jewish Insider on Wednesday, in his first extensive comments on his newfound political ambitions. For the last several years, “I’ve scratched the itch in different ways,” he continued, working as the chief executive of a kitchen countertop company in his native borough of Brooklyn and now hosting a radio show on WABC, “but for the most part, living life as a civilian.”

From time to time, though, some “people would say, ‘You should run again,’” Weiner added. “My standard answer was, ‘Really? Remember how that worked out?’ But my general thing was, ‘No, I had 25 years doing it.’ As Ed Koch once famously said, ‘They didn’t vote for me, now they have to suffer’ — that kind of vibe. But more importantly, I’m like, there are other people who will come up.”

But he says that he is now open to a pivot, in part, because he believes that reckoning with his personal experiences could be channeled to productive use as a public servant rather than disqualifying him from civic life. He also feels that New York City politics is in need of a reset after last month’s election, when President-elect Donald Trump outperformed every GOP nominee in nearly three decades while drawing pronounced support from working-class voters who had long been a dependable part of the Democratic coalition.

“I kind of sensed this ennui that we saw in the results,” he said. “This general sense that there’s just not a great connection between what politicians are saying and doing in this city and the challenges that regular people are facing — it just seemed like this huge gulf had emerged.”

Even as he said he is tentative about launching a campaign, he sounded increasingly like a declared candidate as he spoke about his dissatisfaction with how, in his view, elected Democrats have chosen to vilify Trump while failing to address such quality-of-life issues as crime and homelessness, among other challenges. “We need more cops,” he said. “We need to get homeless people off the streets and we need to start caring for them better.”

“Trump didn’t make these f***ed-up pot laws,” Weiner added. “Trump didn’t make it hard to remove a homeless person from the street. Trump didn’t make these crazy scaffolding laws. Trump didn’t raise the age that forced a whole bunch of 19-year-olds into juvenile halls with 13-year-olds where they’re committing acts of violence. We did that.”

Weiner, who is Jewish and describes himself as a “hawkish Zionist,” also thinks that Democrats have done a poor job standing up to anti-Israel protests in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks, including in his Council district. “The line that’s getting crossed increasingly in a startling amount that I don’t think many of our public figures are acknowledging,” he cautioned, “is when that’s tipping into unchecked antisemitism.”

More broadly, Weiner lamented that the City Council, as he sees it, no longer acts as a “ballast” and a “place where problems go to get solved,” he said. “I want to show that someone can get in who’s got ideas and who doesn’t just parrot the same stuff — who’s willing to take some shots because they think, ultimately, the city needs a little element of fight back in it.”

In speaking with local activists and interacting with “regular citizens on the street,” Weiner claimed that voters have so far been “receptive” to his approach, even as he cautioned that he is “not naive” about his chances. “But I do sense in the people I’ve talked to, in the places I’ve gone, people’s eyes are wide open,” he told JI. “They’re like, ‘Finally, we have someone who’s going to come in here and try to shake things up.’”

“I’m 60 years old now. I’ve done this for a long time. I perhaps don’t have this live-or-die sensibility that I’ve got to figure out how I make every single person like me,” he said, sipping on a black iced coffee and nibbling on a pastry. “I’m much more at a place now where I just think it’s important I say what I believe and I fight for the things I care about, and I’m of the belief that New Yorkers are ready for something like that, so we’ll see.”

Despite his personal baggage, Weiner’s indiscretions may not prove insurmountable in the wake of Trump’s recent win as a convicted felon accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct. In addition to Weiner, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been mulling a comeback in the New York City mayoral race, three years after his resignation amid allegations of sexual harassment. Polling has shown that he would be a front-runner in an increasingly crowded primary that has drawn several candidates on the left.

Since his plans were publicized last month, Weiner has faced backlash from potential rivals for seeking the limelight again — criticism that he dismisses as predictable. “My opponents, of course, don’t want me to run,” he told JI. “I would not want me to run either.”

The scandal-scarred former congressman, who was once seen as a rising Democratic star with an eye on the mayor’s office, recognizes that he has been here before. His first attempt at a political comeback, in the 2013 mayoral race, ended disastrously, when he admitted to sending explicit messages even after he had left Congress, using the alias Carlos Danger. He refused to drop out of the race and won only 5% of the vote.

Three years later, federal authorities revealed they were looking into Weiner’s illicit online exchanges with a 15-year-old girl. He served 18 months in prison and was released in 2019. The scandal also led to a renewed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails during her presidential bid, as Weiner’s wife at the time, Huma Abedin, was a top advisor to the campaign. 

The inquiry, which took place near the end of the campaign, has been credited with derailing Clinton and landing Trump his first victory, though Weiner rejects such accusations.

“People want to do this butterfly effect thing,” he said. “If you want to blame me for James Comey,” he added, referring to the former FBI director who launched the investigation, “that’s rich.” Still, he acknowledged, “the blast radius of my acting out and my problems and my activities, it was wide.”

One major reason he has reservations about taking the plunge back into New York City politics, he told JI, is he is mindful that campaigns can be all-consuming, and wants to be cautious about the internal balance he has sought to maintain in therapy as a recovering addict.

“I struggle, and this enduring question that has always come up, whether it be in rehab or therapy or anywhere, is whether my chosen career path is a contributor to these issues I have or is it a reflection of them? Where does the snake stop eating its tail?” said Weiner, an avid hockey player who once viewed politics as a kind of contact sport. “One of the reasons I’m doing this race one step at a time is the notion that every day I have to check and see, and I’m not immune to the sense that maybe this very profession is a problem for me.”

He suggested he had not made up his mind on the answer — even as he clarified that his “stuff,” as he called it, “is and always has been about me.”

“I practice a program of recovery now, but I have slips,” he told JI. “It’s a constant thing.” He said he has been “very sensitive to that, and it’s one of the things that I’m thinking about as I decide whether I want to do this.”

In the meantime, Weiner said he has assembled a small team of volunteers as he engages with voters and prepares to participate in a candidate forum on Thursday featuring several primary rivals, including Harvey Epstein, Sarah Batchu and Andrea Gordillo.

He is optimistic that his moderate views on policing and other key issues will find acceptance — even in a deeply progressive Council district. “I think there’s some value in showing that,” he told JI. “Maybe I’m wrong, but I do believe that progressives don’t like crime. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t think progressives like antisemitism, either. Maybe I’m wrong.”

“It could be that progressives think it’s a good idea to have illegal pot shops in every corner, but I don’t think so,” he added. “This whole idea that you can’t take these positions and have them resonate with voters? Let’s find out.”

He is eager to roll out his new policies, which he views as common-sense solutions to issues ranging from education to sidewalk scaffolding. Seated in the coffee shop not far from his apartment in the East Village on Wednesday, he floated one of the more frivolous ideas that he said “didn’t make the book” he recently compiled.

“If you sell iced coffee in the city, the ice cubes have to be made of coffee,” he ventured to JI. “It’s a good one, right? Think about it.”

Speaking to a more serious challenge addressed in his policy book, Weiner also raised concerns about rising antisemitism across the city. He referenced a viral incident at Cooper Union in his district last year, where anti-Israel protesters were seen banging on the door of a library with Jewish students fearing for their safety inside.

“I can’t imagine a scenario where a local elected official or a local community leader doesn’t get off their couch at that moment, walk down the block and stand there” and speak out, he said. “This was an important part of my identity as a congressman, as a councilman, in the past — being someone who stands up for Klal Yisrael (every Jew),” he explained. “I’m very animated by this stuff.”

He believes that his political experience, however far removed, will make him an “asset” on the City Council — if he chooses to run. “I think voters are ready for something different,” he said. “They’re ready for someone to grab them by the lapels and say, ‘I’m not going to say the same shit to you. I’m going to honor the idea that we know things have to change here.’”

Weiner, once the youngest member elected to serve in the City Council, seems personally invested in his neighborhood as he eyes a comeback campaign. 

Minutes before meeting at a different coffee shop that he had recommended after weeks of emailing to arrange an interview with JI, Weiner texted that he had a separate spot in mind. “I’ll meet you there but don’t order,” he wrote. “There is a little place on the same block I want to support.”

Still, it was hard to discern if the audible was the calculated move of a veteran politico rediscovering his chops or if he was simply concerned for the local business with few customers — or perhaps both.

“Being Anthony Weiner is both a blessing and a curse,” he said. “One of the blessings is I don’t have to tell people who I am and introduce myself. They know.”