Former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner is back. Having given up his House seat following being exposed in a 2011 sexting scandal, Weiner bowed out of politics for the last two years.<\/p>\n
On May 22nd<\/sup>, Weiner threw his proverbial hat into the New York City mayoral race, one of a half-dozen Democratic candidates seeking to replace Michael Bloomberg in the upcoming election. In a well-plotted campaign, he\u2019s back in the game. He harbors a war chest estimated at $5 million and was required to announce his run or forfeit public matching funds.<\/p>\n In a professionally produced video that launched his campaign, he lays out a profile of his life \u2014 his childhood in Brooklyn, his Congressional accomplishments and his \u201cmiddle class\u201d agenda for the city. Most telling in terms of the scandal that will likely dog his campaign, Weiner opens and closes the video accompanied with his wife, Huma Abedin, an aide to Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n Weiner\u2019s reemergence on the political scene comes just a couple of weeks after another political figure who was forced from office following a sex scandal, Mark Sanford. The former governor of South Carolina won a race for a House seat against Elizabeth Colbert Busch.<\/p>\n These two races \u2013 involving a Democrat and a Republican, in a blue and a red state \u2013 signal the further erosion of the culture wars. The Christian right remains absolutist with regard to a woman\u2019s right to an abortion. But some within the Republican right have given ground with regard to gay rights, immigration, teen sex ed and the morning-after pill.<\/p>\n An increasing number of states have legalized marriage equality and the Senate is advancing a somewhat \u201cbipartisan\u201d immigration bill. \u00a0These efforts signal the emergence of a new right-of-center \u201cmoderate\u201d faction within the Republican Party.<\/p>\n The new Republican moderates seem to recognize that the 2012 election signed a profound shift in the electoral climate.\u00a0 They seem to acknowledge that the message of Tea Party activists is getting shriller, more fundamentalists. More insightful, they see Republicans as a shrinking political force due to demographics and as capitalist recovery takes place. They wonder how to hold \u2014 if not gain \u2014 ground in the 2014 Congressional elections. Can it be a replay of what happened in 2010?<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Americans love a scandal involving the high-and-mighty, whether a politician, celebrity or grandee. It represents all-American schadenfreude<\/i>, the satisfaction or pleasure that comes from someone else\u2019s misfortune. U.S. history is rich with political scandals, many involving sex. \u00a0More interesting, time \u2013 and changing moral values \u2014has led to the rehabilitation of pols and others brought down by a sex scandal.<\/p>\n This shifting value system is personified by former-President Bill Clinton. His illicit Oval Office tryst with Monica Lewinsky was the grounds for his Impeachment by a Republican-controlled House of Representatives led by Newt Gingrich. Clinton\u2019s value position has been significantly enhanced by the subsequent revelations about Gingrich, who, while leading the charge against the sitting president, was involved in an out-of-wedlock affair with Callista Gingrich, his current wife.<\/p>\n Today, Clinton has been fully rehabilitated. He runs the prestigious Clinton Foundation and his wife, Hillary, who stuck with him through the scandal, served as Secretary of State and has a shot at becoming the next president. One can only wonder whether Weiner, his wife and political confidants reflected on this possibly parallel scenario.<\/p>\n Other pols have not fared so well. Gingrich flubbed the 2012 election. Al Gore, a well-meaning if inept politician \u2014 whatever happened to the \u201cInformation Superhighway\u201d? \u2014 was deflated after his divorce. New York\u2019s former governor, Eliot Spitzer, kept his marriage but has floundered as an entertainment figure, jumping from an online columnist, to talk-show personality, to whatever gives him visibility.<\/p>\n Weiner seems to be taking a more strategic \u2014 and carefully plotted \u2014 play for political rehabilitation. He reportedly paid $100,000 to David Binder, who worked as an Obama pollster, to determine his political viability. Binder framed the question in stark terms: \u201cAre voters willing to give him a second chance or not, regardless of what race or what contest?\u201d According to a New York Times\u2019<\/i> story about the poll, \u201cThere was this sense of \u2018Yeah, he made a mistake. Let\u2019s give him a second chance. \u2026 They want to know that they\u2019ve put it behind them.\u201d<\/p>\n Weiner has plotted a well-crafted campaign that involved a series of steppingstones, each one leading to his formal declaration as a candidate on May 22nd<\/sup>. The cornerstone of the pre-announcement campaign was a feature spread in the Sunday, April 10th<\/sup>New York Times<\/i> magazine. The puff piece, written by Jonathan Van Meter, reports that Weiner was truly remorseful about the pain and suffer he caused his wife. This may well be the case, but offered \u2014 in a heartfelt declaration \u2014 in an influential, primary public-media source, seemed calculated, a steppingstone in a well-crafted campaign.<\/p>\n One can only wonder what was the strategic significance of our oh-so-contrite pol\u2019s appearance a month earlier on NY-1, a local cable news program. He declared, \u201cI think I\u2019ll be spending a lot of time, here on out, saying I\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s still a long way to the Democratic primary and one can only wonder whether he will release his game plan?<\/p>\n David Rosen<\/strong> writes the \u201cMedia Current\u201d column for Filmmaker and regularly contributes to AlterNet, Huffington Post and the Brooklyn Rail. Check out www.DavidRosenWrites.com<\/a>; he can be reached at drosennyc@verizon.net<\/b><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n