Weiner urged to quit NY mayoral race

A Times Square newstand with local papers displaying headlines yesterday about the latest sexting scandal involving New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner.

AFP/New York

New York’s newspapers rounded ferociously on mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner yesterday, branding the former congressman as unfit to lead the city after fresh revelations about his online sexual escapades.

As some of Weiner’s rivals to succeed Michael Bloomberg at the helm of the Big Apple also urged him to quit, a headline in the Daily News told the 48-year-old Democrat to “Beat It!”

In a two-line editorial, the tabloid declared: “Enough of all the lies and salacious revelations. Weiner is not fit to lead America’s premier city.”

The rival New York Post mercilessly mocked Weiner over the online identity he used to send intimate pictures and lewd texts to a young woman in 2012, a year after he was forced to quit Congress for similar conduct.

The New York Times, which had previously sympathetically covered Weiner’s attempts to rebuild his marriage after his 2011 fall from grace, placed its news story near the bottom of its front page under the low-key headline “Weiner Admits Explicit Texting After House Exit.”

But an editorial pulled no punches, noting: “A mayoral candidate’s sexting scandal has not gone away, but he should.”

It concluded: “Mr Weiner says he is staying in the mayoral race. To those who know his arrogance and have grown tired of the tawdry saga he has dragged the city into, this is not surprising.”

The latest revelations about Weiner were damaging because they indicate that he continued to pursue extra-marital online liaisons for at least a year after his tearful resignation from Congress, as well as after the birth of his son - an event he had portrayed as being the happy event that had kept his marriage together.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Weiner’s wife, former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, said she had been aware of his conduct and was standing by him.

“Anthony’s made some horrible mistakes, both before he resigned from Congress and after,” she said. “But I do very strongly believe that that is between us and our marriage. “I love him, I have forgiven him, I believe in him.”

Weiner ruled out pulling out of the mayoral race, saying he hoped New Yorkers would be “willing to still continue to give me a second chance.”

Polls last week suggested Weiner was the front-runner in the battle to secure the Democrat nomination in September, which would give him a strong chance of becoming mayor in November, but analysts expect his standing to be hit hard by this week’s revelations and the adverse reaction to them.

Rival Democrat Bill de Blasio said Weiner’s private life had become an unwelcome sideshow and called on him to pull out of the race, as did another Democrat Sal Albanese and Republican John Catsimatidis. But other candidates including Christine Quinn, the City Council Speaker seen as his main rival for the Democrat nomination, were silent.