Weiner Flops

(AP) Voters slam Weiner, Spitzer comebacks
By JONATHAN LEMIRE and LARRY NEUMEISTER
Associated Press
NEW YORK
It was perhaps a fitting end to an Anthony Weiner mayoral run that couldn’t seem to escape a sexting scandal.

Outside a “victory” party where supporters mourned a disappointing fifth-place finish in the Democratic primary, cameras were crowded around Sydney Leathers, the 23-year-old woman whose sexting with the former congressman brought his once-high-flying campaign to a screeching halt.


To avoid an embarrassing confrontation, Weiner’s staff sneaked him into his own event through a side entrance. His wife, Huma Abedin, who stood by his side at the height of the scandal, was nowhere to be seen.

And after a concession speech in which he got choked up as he spoke of family, he was caught by a photographer giving an obscene gesture to reporters as he was driven away.

Leathers, who has launched a porn career since the scandal broke, said Weiner needed “to stop being an embarrassment to the city of New York. He’s going to continue this behavior. If it’s not going to be me, it’s going to be some other girl.”

For his part, Weiner acknowledged in his at-times emotional concession speech that he was an “imperfect messenger.”

Weiner had been in political exile since he resigned from Congress in 2011 for sending women lewd online messages and pictures. He got into the mayor’s race in May, and aside from a few dust-ups with hecklers, was largely well-received at first, holding the lead for most of June and July.

But after an obscure gossip website named The Dirty released X-rated exchanges between Weiner and Leathers that took place well after the candidate quit the House of Representatives, Weiner _and his sexting pseudonym, Carlos Danger, once again became a national punchline.

With 96 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday night, Weiner was far behind in the city’s Democratic mayoral primary, with about 5 percent of the vote.

Another politician with a sex scandal, Eliot Spitzer, lost the primary contest for city comptroller to Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president. Stringer took 52 percent of the vote to Spitzer’s 48 percent.

Spitzer resigned as governor in 2008 after admitting he paid for sex with call girls. In exile, he bounced around television as a pundit. Then, just four days before the deadline, he announced he was running for comptroller.

He took an early lead in the polls, but the race tightened dramatically in recent weeks as the Democratic establishment rallied around his main opponent, Scott Stringer, Manhattan borough president.

Unlike Weiner, who made a point of fielding voters’ questions about his scandal, Spitzer apologized a few times and then refused to talk about it.

He largely eschewed retail campaigning _ situations that could have led to awkward exchanges with voters _ in favor of national TV interviews and a big television ad campaign, financed with his own millions.

But he could not avoid all mention of the scandal. The city’s tabloids hounded him about the state of his marriage; Spitzer said he was still married, but his wife never appeared on the campaign trail.