Anthony Weiner resigns over Twitter photo scandal

New York congressman finally steps down as US Democrats try to limit impact ‘Weinergate’ has on 2012 presidential race Twenty days after the scandal dubbed “Weinergate” erupted with the sending of a sexually suggestive photograph on Twitter, a rising star of the Democrats was forced to resign his congressional seat in the face of pressure from the highest levels of his party. From having been ranked as a possible future Democratic leader and the frontrunner to become New York mayor in 2013, Anthony Weiner’s fall from grace is spectacular and close to complete. He has spent his entire adult life in politics, having been elected in 1991 as the youngest councillor to serve in New York city then aged 27. True to his character as an abrasive and at times antagonistic politician, Weiner, now 46, at first tried to lie his way out of the sex scandal he had provoked by sending lewd photographs of himself to several different women. When the rightwing blogger Andrew Breitbart revealed his actions on 28 May, Weiner initially claimed his Twitter account had been hacked into, later changing his story to say he wasn’t sure whether the images of a semi-naked man were of him. After further revelations emerged virtually every day of his sexually charged interactions, he went in front of the cameras on 6 June to admit that he had been involved through cyberspace with at least six different women. But even then he refused to stand down from his New York seat. The fall-out from the billowing scandal rose to the top of the Democratic party. On Monday, President Obama said that “if it was me, I would resign”. Bill Clinton has also taken a direct role in pushing Weiner. The former president has reportedly been “livid” about Weiner’s behaviour, despite Clinton’s own history of sexual peccadilloes. The Clintons are intricately linked with Weiner and his wife Huma Abedin. Bill Clinton officiated at their wedding, Abedin is a close aide to the secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and Abedin’s best friend Doug Band is Bill’s top adviser. “The decision for Weiner to go was taken on a presidential level, by the existing and a past president,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic consultant who has worked on campaigns for Bill Clinton. “It was a straight political decision.” The views of Abedin, who is pregnant with their first child, were also likely to have been crucial. She returned on Wednesday from a trip to the Middle East with Clinton and was in discussions with her husband before his announcement. Weiner’s resignation was made on the day that party leaders had been preparing to strip him of his powerful positions on congressional committees — a move which would have further humiliated and weakened him. The official line taken by party leaders such as Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic chief in the House of Representatives who has called on him to resign, was that the scandal was distracting attention from important political debates such as the economy. But the timing of the imbroglio has also been deeply painful for the party, coming as it does in the middle of a sensitive period in which the coffers for next year’s presidential race are being filled. Key fundraisers have been heard complaining that donors were being turned off by the salacious revelations. Weiner might have found it easier to weather the storm in the face of relentless media exposure and ridicule had he had more friends within the party hierarchy. But his famously outspoken and irascible style earned him few mentors within Congress or the White House. Despite the almost universal pressure on him to go, there remain those in the party who lamented Weiner’s passing as a prominent liberal politician who was prepared to speak out on core left-wing principles. “He was a firebrand, an independent voice. Yes, he was a little quirky and he had an ego, but at least on the issues that liberals care about he was upfront,” said Democratic strategist Victor Kamber. Weiner now faces a bleak future. With no training as a lawyer or media figure behind him, there is nowhere obvious for him to go, unlike Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced former governor of New York who is now a CNN presenter. Sheinkopf predicted it would be at least 10 years “if ever” before Weiner could contemplate a comeback in politics. He said: “What does a person who has spent every day of his life in politics do after a fall like this? It will be a welcome relief for him to be out of the political spotlight for a while, but after that he’ll miss it.” Anthony Weiner US politics Democrats Barack Obama Bill Clinton New York Ed Pilkington guardian.co.uk

Posted by on June 16, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.