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N.Y. Political Party Blamed High Rents on Jews

But rent is too damn high for us, too!

by
Marc Tracy
October 20, 2010
Jimmy McMillan of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party, Monday night.(Audrey C. Tiernan-Pool/Getty Image)
Jimmy McMillan of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party, Monday night.(Audrey C. Tiernan-Pool/Getty Image)

In the circus that was Monday night’s seven-way New York gubernatorial debate, the most amusing sideshow might have been Jimmy McMillan, who is running as the standard-bearer of the “Rent Is Too Damn High Party” (can you guess what its platform is?). Many believed he scored the quote of the night when, on the gay marriage question, he replied, “If you want to marry a shoe, I’ll marry you.”

But, as Vos Iz Neias? recalled, in 2005 McMillan had a specific idea of who was to blame for the rent being, well, too damn high:

There are over (25) Twenty Five Thousand Newly Rented Apartments, Available, Now Renting in the Williamsberg Section of Brooklyn, NY. as is all throughout the (5) Five Boro’s. But… they are only being Rented to the Jewish People.

So maybe gay-baiting Republican nominee Carl Paladino—who, incidentally, briefly departed the debate stage because he had to go to the bathroom—wouldn’t be the worst possible winner? (Besides, McMillan’s own rent is quite reasonable, to say the least.) Anyway, barring catastrophe, the next governor will be Andrew Cuomo of the Rent Is Fine The Way It Is Party, also known as the Democrats.

UPDATE: Here is the Party’s response.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.