New York City, comeback city? Weiner and Spitzer hope so

Eliot Spitzer joins Anthony Weiner in the race for top New York City positions. Both lost their previous positions to sex scandals, but now Weiner is running for mayor and Spitzer for comptroller.

By Jennifer Peltz,?Associated Press / July 8, 2013

Former New York governor Eliot Spitzer is surrounded by media as he tries to collect signatures for his run for New York City Comptroller in New York, on Monday, July 8. Spitzer, who stepped down in 2008 amid a prostitution scandal, says he is planning a political comeback with a run for New York City comptroller.

Seth Wenig/AP

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First, Anthony Weiner vaulted back from an embarrassing sexting scandal to become a top mayoral contender. Now, Eliot Spitzer has sprinted onto the comeback campaign trail in New York City, where this fall's races are turning into a mini-Olympics of political redemption.

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So Weiner, just two years after a tweeted underwear photo spelled the end of his congressional career, jumps into the race for the nation's biggest mayoral job less than two months before the deadline to get on the ballot? Well, Spitzer embarked Monday on something just as audacious, if not more so: Only four days before the deadline, he launched a bid to become city comptroller, asking voters to look past the prostitution scandal that cost him the governor's mansion five years ago in one of politics' steepest falls from power.

While the two Democrats insist they're not looking at one another's examples, they're drawing from a common playbook: ask voters for forgiveness, tell them you've changed, and focus on what you can do for the city.

"New Yorkers, as good souls, have a sense of forgiveness," he added. "But whether or not they forgive me is a whole separate issue."

The limits of forgiveness are becoming a theme in this fall's New York City elections, which also feature former Democratic state assemblyman Vito Lopez, a onetime power player tarnished by a sexual harassment scandal, running for a City Council seat.

Not that New York is the only political climate undergoing a season of rebounds: Republican former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, whose extramarital affair spurred his resignation in 2009, was elected to Congress this spring.

But the prospect of both Spitzer and Weiner ? who were some of the state's best-known and most driven politicians before their respective downfalls ? on the same ballot, at least in September's primary, could give the contest an undertone of being a referendum on how much and how soon voters can be asked to excuse.

Will it matter that Weiner's undoing was only two years ago, while Spitzer's was five? That the former congressman has stayed out of the public eye, while the ex-governor kept himself visible as a TV commentator? That Weiner lied about misdeeds that were cringe worthy but not criminal, while Spitzer's scandal involved allegations of illegal behavior, though he was never charged with any crime?

Voters' response so far has been fairly encouraging for Weiner: he's polling at or near the top of a crowded Democratic mayoral field. As for Spitzer, New Yorkers expressed mixed feelings as they digested the news of his re-emergence.

Cleonie Sinclair wedged her way through the media crush to shake Spitzer's hand on her lunch break from her medical records job.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/TNJIirsNIA0/New-York-City-comeback-city-Weiner-and-Spitzer-hope-so

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