In 1977, I was publishing a small newspaper in the Bronx, the Parkway News. There was a mayoral candidate who wasn’t being taken seriously. He was destined to become a footnote in a field dominated by such names as Bella Abzug, Herman Badillo, incumbent mayor Abraham Beame, Mario Cuomo, and Percy Sutton. Many thought the Parkway News was crazy to cast its lot with the quirky candidate it favored, but I saw something special in that candidate, Edward I. Koch.

Today I say do not write off Anthony Weiner.

Here’s a fact about elections: they are competitive contests between candidates, each of whom brings certain baggage. Polls that ask questions about a single candidate, measuring negative or favorable response are useful, but the thing to always remember is that they fail to mirror the process of choice voters make.

That’s why it would be foolish to dismiss the idea of Anthony Weiner presenting himself to the voters in the Democratic primary. That he comes with baggage is incontrovertible. That he is as right as rain on any number of key issues is true as well. He may well, moreover, be the most moderate of the Democratic contenders, and there are those of us who miss the day when there was someone standing on this line.

Certainly we can ill afford to leave the field as is. Mr. Weiner’s creative energy and firm grasp of the details of city government should outweigh the personal problems, even if he has brought them upon himself. He deserves to be considered seriously by Democrats. His quirky personality, tempered a bit by the public relations inferno from which he recently emerged, is reminiscent of some of New York’s great mayors.

Fiorello LaGuardia had also lost his Congressional seat (albeit in a more traditional way) and was considered an honest, but eccentric figure in New York politics, when he was tapped to clean up City Hall after the scandals that forced Mayor Jimmy Walker from office. He became our greatest mayor.

Ed Koch marched to a different drummer as well, but the tributes following his recent passing show how the rest of us learned to march along with him. Rudy Giuliani has been described as prickly (Koch wrote a book called “Giuliani: Nasty Man”), and in the months before his greatest triumph, his leadership after the attack on the city on September 11, 2001, scandals regarding his personal life were a daily staple of the tabloids. But his legacy of leadership changed New York for the better.

Mr. Weiner, who is an avid public policy wonk, will bring some real issues to the debate, just when our city is again at the crossroads. The Democratic Party has been turned aside from City Hall for nearly a quarter century. Voters have signaled again and again that they are dissatisfied with the politically correct programs and proposals that have become the hallmark of the local party as evidenced by debates and forums held thus far. Voters are also sickened with the corruption among public officials.

Can we exclude Mr. Weiner, yet tolerate the inclusion of the Independence Party standard-bearer Adolfo Carrion, Jr. who has been fined $10,000 by the City’s Conflicts of Interest Board? Many feel that Mr. Carrion was trying to scam a major improvement to his City Island home in exchange for favoritism in granting city contracts.

Another candidate, John Liu, has been compromised by the conviction of his campaign treasurer and a major donor for serious campaign finance law violations. Doesn’t this impact in a most substantive way on his ability to govern?

Doesn’t Christine Quinn’s conduct as Speaker of the City Council, betraying the twice expressed will of the voters on term limits, beating down all independent voices among her elected colleagues, and playing lap dog to the mayor, in essence compromising the ability of the Council to act as a counterweight to Mayor Bloomberg’s excesses and mistakes, disqualify her?

In my eyes it does.

There are tough decisions to be made. The economic underpinnings of the city are now fragile at best. We need a mayor with the ability to say no and explain why, as demands and pressures on government increase. Does anyone see that strength of character in Bill DeBlasio?

I like Bill Thompson. He is a serious person. But he has, albeit to a lesser extent, the same tendency to pander as Mr. DeBlasio. In terms of energy, he is the polar opposite of Anthony Weiner, who seems to define perpetual motion. This is a reason that Mr. Thompson failed to clinch, in 2009, a victory against Mayor Bloomberg.

One thing is certain about Anthony Weiner. He has energy.

This is why I encourage him to enter the race. Once he is participating in the debates, his knowledge and policy prowess would change this contest for the better. Unencumbered by ties to the traditional power brokers of the irrational left and labor union demands, he stand apart from the current field, free to say what he thinks, which I believe more closely mirrors the concerns of New Yorkers than any of the other candidates.

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A bit grayer and somewhat wiser than I was in 1977, I might not yet be ready to jump all the way in as of yet with a full endorsement of Mr. Weiner. After all, the ex-congressman hasn’t even declared his candidacy. But I believe that Anthony Weiner would change the race for the better in the way that Ed Koch did in 1977. He owes it to himself and this great city to give us the opportunity to give him another chance.

Mr. Wolf is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.