A well-dressed man at the West 72nd Street subway entrance stopped to take one of the fliers Christine Quinn was handing out.
"You don't seem quite as evil as they make you out to be," he said, smiling at her.
Quinn looked a bit startled, then replied, "I'm really not."
This should be the moment for Christine Callaghan Quinn, and she is back in the lead, after being knocked off last month by a resurgent Anthony Weiner. The coppery 47-year-old speaker of the New York City Council wants to be seen as a member of the fighting Irish, "a big pushy broad," as she puts it, who pushes for New York.
The slight Weiner has never done anything in politics but, even at this nadir, his bellicose intensity can still get him cheers from some crowds. The sturdy Quinn has accomplished a lot — herding loony council members and helping Mayor Michael Bloomberg — but she has a hard time exciting voters, even women.
"You never see Chris swaying people in church back and forth," said one top Democrat.
In trying to be all things, to go left without losing Bloomberg and to go right without losing the Democratic base, Quinn has gotten lost a little. New Yorkers want someone who looks as if they believe in one thing, even if they're catering to many people.
Over a yogurt-and-berry breakfast at a Midtown hotel, Quinn talked about trying to "create that connection."
She says it's frustrating when people criticize her for being politically inauthentic. By trying to calibrate your authenticity, she says, "you're gonna make yourself crazy and take up space in your brain — and I don't have that much space in my brain." She bursts into her lusty laugh with the snort at the end.
Quinn is bracing for her rivals to start airing ads excoriating her for helping Emperor Bloomberg get his third term. She says she has no regrets about that, or about making the decision to have a "productive" relationship with the mayor.
"This idea that the honor of all this is in the fight as opposed to in the victory for New Yorkers really gets my goat," she said. "Look at Washington, where you're either all in or you're the devil. Who does that help?"
Bloomberg loyalists regard Quinn's attempt to distance herself from the mayor on "stop and frisk" and other issues as awkward and offensive, like a teenage daughter rebelling against daddy.
She defended herself for calling the police and fire commissioners in July when an ambulance did not arrive in a timely way, after a City Council intern fainted in the heat.
"I'm going to do whatever I have to do to help a New Yorker," she said, "whether it's a girl on the street or a tenant in a housing development."
Despite her Irish temper, some wonder if she has Bloomberg's spine.
"If you can't make it through being booed at the 92nd Street Y, you can't be mayor," she said.
Though she would be the first female and openly gay mayor, she knows she hasn't sparked Hillary-style thrills yet.
She recalled that one of her best moments came at a school forum when some little girls chased her for autographs. "They all said I had really bad handwriting," she grinned.
She has been stressing identity politics lately, putting out a video with Gloria Steinem comparing Quinn to Bella Abzug.
"There's a potential here for great firsts," Quinn said. "This sounds a little silly. I wake up every morning and I'm a lesbian. It's just the way it is. When I was running for speaker, people would go out of their way to point out why I wasn't going to win: 'You're a woman, you're too liberal, you're gay, you're from the West Side of Manhattan,' which in that context was an insult. You kind of want to go, not for nuttin', but I knew that when I woke up, so stop pointing out the obvious."
I asked how her wife, Kim Catullo, a corporate attorney, would feel about being the first first lady married to a lady. That sends her on a long paean to the "shy" but "fabulous" Kim.
I tell her she was the first candidate I'd ever seen on the trail wearing teal toenail polish.
"It matches my campaign literature, that's the point of it!" she said excitedly, pulling two bottles out of her bag. "It's the color of the blue on my posters so I'm trying to wear it all summer long."
Maureen Dowd writes for The New York Times.