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Calls Mount For Weiner To Quit The Race


weinerAnthony Weiner said he is moving ahead with his mayoral campaign despite some of his opponents calling on him to quit the race after he was caught in another scandal Tuesday like the one that destroyed his congressional career.

Weiner admitted sending highly inappropriate photos and messages as recently as last summer, more than a year after he resigned from the House because of similar behavior with at least a half-dozen women.

With his wife Huma Abedin smiling at his side, he said at a news conference Tuesday that “this is entirely behind me,” and both made it clear they were moving ahead with his campaign.

“I want to bring my vision to the people of the city of New York,” he said. “I hope they are willing to still continue to give me a second chance.”

Weiner, 48, has been near the top of most polls since his late entry into the race in May. The latest disclosures could severely test voters’ willingness to forgive him.

“I said that other texts and photos were likely to come out and today they have,” said Weiner, who added that he was surprised that more had not previously surfaced.

“It makes it tougher to believe this is behind him,” said Democratic former state Assemblyman Michael Benjamin, now a political consultant.

And some voters who were open-minded about a second chance may not be able to stomach a third.

“He had a chance to redeem himself and if he did it twice, he really betrayed the public’s trust again,” Jeremy Green said. “I think he’s past the point of no return.”

The New York Times, the Daily News and some of his mayoral rivals, including Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and former City Councilman Sal Albanese, both Democrats, and billionaire John Catsimatidis, a Republican, called on him to drop out of the race.

“Enough is enough,” de Blasio said. “I’m calling on Anthony to withdraw from this race for the good of the city that I know he loves as much as all of us.”

“He’s done it again,” Albanese said. ”How many times can you mislead people?”

“The Mayor of New York City should be a leader that all the residents of our city, especially our children, can look up to,” Catsimatidis said in a statement. “Anthony Weiner should do what is right for his family and our city and drop out of the race for mayor so we can end this soap opera.”

Another Democratic mayoral hopeful, City Comptroller John Liu, stopped short of calling for Weiner to bow out, but suggested his “propensity for pornographic selfies is a valid issue for voters.”

The other leading Democratic candidates, including City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and former City Comptroller Bill Thompson, did not immediately comment.

After the news conference, Weiner went directly to a mayoral forum on gay men’s issues and was warmly received.

Abedin said her husband had made some “horrible mistakes both before he resigned from Congress and after” but insisted she and her husband discussed “all of this” before he jumped into the mayor’s race in May.

Seeming a bit choked with emotion, she noted that she had chosen to stay in the marriage, but “it was not an easy choice.”

“I love him. I have forgiven him. I believe in him. And as we have said from the beginning, we are moving forward,” she said.

Weiner said in a July 2, 2012, interview with People magazine that he’d “tried to become a better person” every day since the scandal. And yet the latest indiscretion appears to have started just days after he gave that interview.

In an editorial posted online Tuesday, The New York Times said, “the serially evasive” Weiner “should take his marital troubles and personal compulsions out of the public eye, away from cameras, off the Web and out of the race for mayor of New York City.”

In an editorial Wednesday, the Daily News said: “He is not fit to lead America’s premier city. Lacking the dignity and discipline that New York deserves in a mayor, Weiner must recognize that his demons have no place in City Hall.”

Weiner resigned from Congress in June 2011 after tweeting an inappropriate picture of himself and lying about his account being hacked. He later admitted trading inappropriate messages with several women.

In announcing his run for mayor this past spring, Weiner admitted to “making mistakes and letting many people down.”

(AP)



7 Responses

  1. GO WEINER GO , YOUR AS GOOD AS THE REST OF THE BUNCH , AND AS GOOD AS THE CLINTONS, BILL WOULD STILL LOVE TO BE PRESIDENT AND YOU WILL VOTE FOR HIM AGAIN KEEP ON GOING

  2. This article fails to mention that I have also called for Mr. Weiner to withdraw himself from the mayoral race.

    In other reports, Mr. Weiner said all his problems were in his “rearview” mirror. But the problem is … well, his rearview mirror gives a view of his …. Never mind.

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