On Monday, former Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry said he empathized and could “identify” with disgraced former New York politicians Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner. Both Democrats are trying to make political comebacks this year.
“I can identify with them,” Barry told CNN. “I know what people are going through who have fallen, people who have stumbled. I went through some of it, in a different way.”
The FBI videotaped Barry smoking crack cocaine in 1990 while he was mayor, and Barry had to serve six months in prison. He then “won a seat on the D.C. City Council in 1992 — and then voters put him back into the mayor’s job in 1994.”
“It takes a lot of courage to come back,” Barry said. “It takes a lot of tenacity, a lot of heart to believe more in yourself than people believe in you.”
Spitzer, the former New York governor who was also known as “Client 9” in court records, had to resign in 2008 after a prosecution scandal. He announced this week he is running for comptroller in New York.
Weiner, who is running for mayor of New York, resigned from Congress in 2011 after the late Andrew Breitbart broke the story about his online sexting habits.
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