Bizarre reason man leaked his own BDSM sex tape while trying to be elected as politician

When it comes to politician campaigns, generally, the people involved will try as hard as they can to make sure that controversial things like sex tapes do not leak.

In one bizarre case however, someone running for city council actively leaked their own sex tape to the press.

This was not a joke where he wasn’t on the ballot, this wasn’t some AI video to prove a point, it was someone who was on the ballot to gain a place on the City Council of New York.

In 2021, the campaign of Zack Weiner contacted the New York Post and actively leaked a BDSM tape of him with a dominatrix.

This was all part of an elaborate hoax for a documentary Zack Weiner was working on, but importantly: the campaign he ran was genuinely real, and the video of him was not doctored in any way.

The tape was quite explicit, also featuring him having hot wax poured over his body (Zack Weiner)

For those confused, Weiner decided in 2020 alongside friend Joe Gallagher that they should do a documentary film where someone runs for office, but the whole time admits he’s an actor and is being fake.

Separately, they also discussed the idea to make a movie about a politician who becomes embroiled in a scandal and decides to embrace it. Ultimately, they combined the two, creating the documentary Citizen Weiner.

The doc follows Weiner running for office with a plot point in the film being their frustration that, despite leaking it online, the BDSM sex tape had not been picked up by anyone.

They eventually solved this by having Gallagher, his ‘campaign manager’, contact the New York Post saying they wanted to ‘get ahead’ of the scandal after it had become circulated online (which was also by them).

The New York Post ran the story about how a man running for city council had been videoed with nipple clamps and a ball gag, and having hot wax poured over him by a dominatrix.

This ultimately received mainstream attention, with Stephen Colbert and Seth Myers mocking the story, and Weiner telling the New York Post he was a 'proud BDSMer'.

In an interview with AV Club, the director said the dominatrix was an actor friend, explaining: “We just asked some actor friends we know who might be down.

“One of them said, ‘I know this girl who’s really funny and they’d probably do it for you as long as you blur their face, because they don’t want people thinking they’re an actual dominatrix in an actual sex video.’”

They explained that, as much as it was funny and for a film, they were genuinely intending to win. Gallagher and Weiner had actual policies they were looking to enact, such as prioritising the reopening of store post COVID-19, and have hinted that they may run again in a future City Council Election.

He ran an actual campaign even when the cameras were off (Zach Weiner)

When asked in a Reddit Ask Me Anything about his policies, Weiner said: "We ran on tackling very concrete hyper local problems. Homelessness. Financial Literacy. Empty storefronts (13% of Manhattan storefronts are vacant!) City Council Members have access to five to ten million in discretionary money for their district. I promised the voters immediate results using that discretionary money.

"Right now millions are going to very niche cultural projects while homelessness spikes and mere thousands are allocated to street services. This was the heart of our campaign."

Weiner ultimately gained 2% of the vote, which is miles off winning, but 2% more than many would likely expect.

The documentary was more well received however, receiving an 80% on Rotten Tomatoes and an 8/10 on IMDb.