After he was found sexting multiple women and sending lewd photos via Twitter, Anthony Weiner resigned from Congress. But now the former lawmaker may run for New York City mayor, and is asking for a second chance.
It won’t be easy for voters to brush aside the sexting scandal that lost Wiener his job in June 2011: the former New York congressman admitted to sending sexual photos to numerous women, several of whom shared them with the media.
Due to the publicity of the scandal, Weiner resigned from Congress, while apologizing for the embarrassment he caused and claiming that the distraction has made it impossible for him to continue working. Many were happy to see him leave and a crowd assembled outside of the Brooklyn meeting room where he formally resigned, booed him as he left.
“Bye, bye, pervert!” members of the crowd yelled as he surrendered his position.
But Weiner hopes voters can forget about the sexts and the
half-naked pictures they might have seen on the news. The Brooklyn
native says he may consider running for New York City
mayor.
“I don’t have this burning, overriding desire to go out and run for office,” Weiner told the New York Times in an interview posted Wednesday. “It’s not the single animating force in my life as it was for quite some time. But I do recognize, to some degree, it’s now or maybe never for me, in terms of running for something. I’m trying to gauge not only what’s right and what feels comfortable right this second, but I’m also thinking, how will I feel in a year or two years or five years? Is this the time that I should be doing it? And then there’s the other side of the coin, which is . . . am I still the same person who I thought would make a good mayor?”
The current New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is currently serving his third and last term in office. Elections will be held in November 2013 to replace him.
Although Weiner hasn’t formally made a decision on whether or not he will participate in the race for mayor, he has been suspected as a potential contender on numerous occasions. According to unnamed sources interviewed by the New York Post last summer, Weiner has spoken to former staffers about coming back to work for him if he were to run for mayor and win.
One unnamed source allegedly told the Post that Weiner was “seriously considering” a mayoral run, in large part because the public match on his campaign funds will expire after the 2013 election.
“I want to ask people to give me a second chance,” he told the Times. “I do want to have that conversation with people whom I let down and with people who put their faith in me and who wanted to support me. I think to some degree I do want to say to them, ‘Give me another chance.’”
Huma Abedin, the wife of Weiner and longtime aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has given her husband a second chance. She told the Times that after numerous tears and counseling, Weiner is a changed man.
But even if Abedin says he has changed and Weiner begs for forgiveness, his scandalous past will always remain a talking point when he’s in the public sphere.
“The general feeling is that you can’t text pictures of your penis to a girl, then lie about it, then get kicked out of the House and then run for mayor right after,” a political consultant told the New York Post in 2012. “But people believe there is a way for him to run for a lesser office.”
Weiner told the Times that he is aware that he would be the ‘underdog’ in any race he ran. But if Weiner does have public matching funds that will soon expire, it is likely he could try to run for a city position – even if it isn’t for mayor. The odds will likely remain against him.
“Sure, voters can get past this scandal,” an unnamed political advisor told the Times. “But why do they have to? There are four established candidates. Who are the voters to say, ‘I need Anthony Weiner back?’”