By Sean O’Driscoll

IRISH author and raconteur Malachy McCourt, has filed his election papers in his bid to be the next New York governor admitting that he had “no chance of winning.”

“When you think of coming from a slum in Limerick, Ireland, and then all of the sudden you’re in Albany, New York, filing to be governor of the state, you say there’s some sort of humor coming on high here. And I will indulge fully in all of that,” he told reporters.

McCourt, this year’s Green Party candidate, filed about 30,000 signatures with the New York State Board of Elections in Albany and filled in another form to accept the Green Party’s nomination for November’s race.

Even while handing in the signatures, McCourt told waiting reporters that he had no chance of winning but would be morally victorious because his party was telling the truth and was not taking election money from corporations.

He is almost certain to face the current Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who is expected to win by a landslide for the Democrats.

McCourt had a best selling memoir entitled A Monk Swimming and though he is reluctant to be overshadowed by reference, he’s also the brother of Angela’s Ashes author, Frank McCourt.

His campaign will focus on promoting peace, bringing the New York National Guard home from Iraq, abolishing the death penalty, repealing the Taylor laws, and providing single-payer universal healthcare for all New Yorkers.

While McCourt is quick to concede defeat, he said he would easily get the 50,000 votes necessary to keep the Green Party on the New York ballot, and said that so many people had lost faith in the Republicans that he could end up coming in second.

In 1998, Al Lewis, the union activist and formerly Grandpa from the 1960s TV show The Munsters, won 52,000 votes for the Green Party.