When Tiny Tim ran to be the mayor of New York City
If Zohran Mamdani’s recent triumph to become the new mayor of New York City is anything to go by, putting your name forward for the candidacy is no half-hearted matter; you’ve got to be all in.
Check out his Instagram, slowly ticking towards almost 12million followers, and you’ll see the Mayor never has a dull day, here, there, and everywhere, shaking hands with important heads of this or that, exerting his influence over things as unpredictable as the weather crisis and as serious as immigration policy.
Now contrast that sharp, sophisticated image with the slumped shoulders of the bummed-out, long-haired, slightly drunk American musician Herbert Khaury, also known as Tiny Tim, sinking his sorrows over a free drink.
“My campaign fizzled as flat as this beer,” he shrugged over a cold drink with a New York Daily News reporter in 1989, of course, talking about the five weeks he spent trying to become the next mayor of New York.
Back in those days, we didn’t have interactive websites, QR codes, or Super Bowl adverts in order to raise awareness and persuade the general public to listen to the next best album on the block, so instead, artists, and indeed their managers, had to get creative about how they might get their name out there across a swamped, oversaturated industry. Becoming the next mayor of New York was, of course, Tim’s manager’s idea, “And I just went along with it, but it never seemed to catch fire,” the musician shrugged.
Tim entered the race for publicity, so what a burn, then, when nobody really noticed or cared. In proof of this, there is very little evidence on the internet archives of what exactly he did for five weeks. Save for a picture of a badge posted on Instagram in 2021, we are left only able to hazard a guess as to what Tim’s political initiatives could have been.
The badge, at least, was trendy, with his long hair and nose overly-drawn to the point of caricature, paired with a catchy slogan, reading in all caps: “Tiny Tim for Mayor, as unique as the city itself”. God bless the man who made a mockery of himself and, still, nobody batted an eyelid, which reads a little more tragically once you realise that this marketing ploy was a desperate attempt to hold onto, or even revive, his former fame.
When this didn’t work, Tiny Tim threw himself once more into the gritty world of politics, signing on as running mate for perennial presidential candidate comedian Paul Paulson in 1992. Despite being a satirical move, this went a little better for the musician, as during the Republican primaries, Paulsen received 10,984 votes nationwide, finishing second to George Bush in the North Dakota primary. Just imagine what could’ve been…
The high-pitched vocalist and odd personality might have fared better in 2026, given that we have an absolute doughnut running the US government, so a ukulele-wielding mayor can’t really be so out of pocket; better luck next time, Tiny Tim!
