Anthony Weiner resisted calls to withdraw from the
new York City mayoral race Tuesday after
finding himself caught in another sexting scandal similar to the one that ended his congressional
career two years ago.
Weiner admitted sending a woman sexually explicit photos and messages and acknowledged the activity took place as recently as
last
summer, more than a year after he resigned from the House in June 2011
for the same sort of behavior with at least a half-dozen women.
With his wife, Huma Abedin, standing an arm's length away from him,
Weiner told a hastily called news conference he would stay in the race
despite the new onslaught of negative publicity.
"I want to bring my vision to the people of the city of New York. I
hope they are willing to still continue to give me a second chance,"
Weiner said.
In an editorial posted online Tuesday, the New York Times urged
Weiner to drop out of the race, saying 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."
Three of his rivals for mayor — Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and
former City Councilman Sal Albanese, both Democrats, and billionaire
John Catsimatidis, a Republican — also called on Weiner to quit the
race.
"Enough is enough," de Blasio said. "The sideshows of this election
have gotten in the way of the debate we should be having about the
future of this city."
Another 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.
The congressman fessed up to the naughty texts after sexually
explicit photos and online chats between "Carlos Danger," allegedly the
pseudonym for the city hall hopeful, and an unidentified woman surfaced
on the blog,
TheDirty.com
.
The reports claim that that the conversation between the pol and an
unidentified 23-year-old woman took place on the social media website
Formspring in August 2012, a year after he resigned from his post in
Congress after being caught the first time — and nearly seven months
after his first child with wife Abedin was born.
The woman claims on the blog that she first started talking online
with Weiner in July 2012 and it became intense by August 2012, when he
offered to find a Chicago condo where they could meet up.
She also alleges that they had
phone
sex and that they exchanged nude photos of each other. She claims she
received photos from Weiner of his penis sent from a Yahoo email account
under the “Carlos Danger” name. The purported image was subsequently
posted on TheDirty.com.
Buzzfeed.com
later reported that a source close to the matter said Weiner exchanged
the explicit messages and photos with a woman named Sydney Elaine
Leathers in late July of last year. The website characterized Leathers
as a "progressive activist" from Indiana.
Weiner released a written statement on Tuesday afternoon, which he
read again at the press conference, admitting to additional raunchy
conversations.
"I said that other texts and photos were likely to come out, and
today they have,” he said in the statement, referring to comments he
made two months ago during the start of his mayoral campaign.
“As I have said in the past, these things that I did were wrong and
hurtful to my wife and caused us to go through challenges in our
marriage that extended past my resignation from Congress. While some
things that have been posted today are true and some are not, there is
no question that what I did was wrong. This behavior is behind me.”
Weiner did not elaborate on which of the new reports are true or false and whether or not it took place last summer.
It's unclear how the lewd news will impact Weiner's campaign. Some
New Yorkers have shown a willingness to forgive his past indiscretions
since he announced his mayoral campaign via YouTube in May.
He has since shot to the lead in the polls, with a Quinnipiac
University survey last week showing he held 25 percent of the vote.
Officials from Anthony Weiner’s mayoral campaign did not respond to requests for additional comment from FoxNews.com.
FoxNews.com's Perry Chiaramonte and The Associated Press contributed to this repor
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