Anthony Weiner, the former Democratic congressman from New York and registered sex offender who served 18 months in federal prison for sending explicit texts to a 15-year-old girl, is running for office again. After weeks of publicly mulling a bid for New York City Council in 2025, Weiner has formally filed to run in the second district, which encompasses the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He is running in an open race to succeed term-limited incumbent Carlina Rivera.
"Mr. Moneybags over here," Weiner joked on X after New York Post reporter Craig McCarthy posted a screenshot of the candidate's campaign financial summary—showing an estimated balance of $0—from the state's campaign finance board. This will be Weiner's second attempt at political redemption after more than a decade's worth of sexually perverted scandals dating back to May 2011, when he accidentally posted a photo of his semi-erect genitalia to his public Twitter account, which prompted his resignation from Congress several weeks later.
Weiner, 60, attempted his first political comeback in 2013 when he ran for mayor of New York City in the Democratic primary. Months after announcing his candidacy, reports emerged that following his resignation from Congress, Weiner had continued to send sexually explicit images to at least three women, including 22-year-old Sydney Leathers, using the alias "Carlos Danger." He ended up losing the mayoral primary after receiving less than 5 percent of the vote. Fun fact: Olivia Nuzzi, the former New York magazine reporter who had a sexting affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was an intern on Weiner's campaign, and later recalled that the candidate referred to her and another female intern as "Monica."
During this time, and despite these scandals, Weiner remained married to Huma Abedin, the longtime personal servant of Hillary Clinton, who launched her now infamous second campaign for president in 2015. The following year, several months before the general election, Weiner was busted again for sexting, and Abedin announced her intention to separate from her husband, with whom she shared a young son. Additional reporting revealed that Weiner had been sexting a 15-year-old girl, which prompted a criminal probe that led to the discovery of new documents related to the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails. As a result, FBI director James Comey reopened that investigation less than two weeks before Election Day, and the rest is history.
Abedin, 48, was recently engaged to Alex Soros, the 39-year-old son of billionaire George Soros. Before that, she briefly "dated" Hollywood actor Bradley Cooper. Weiner was convicted in 2017 of transferring obscene materials to a minor and sentenced to 21 months in prison. Following his release from prison in 2019, Weiner sold kitchen countertops before launching a weekly podcast, The Middle with Anthony Weiner, in 2022. Under the terms of his release, he is required to permanently register as a sex offender.
Weiner's odds of achieving the political redemption he seeks are not great. President-elect Donald Trump has argued that New Yorkers are strongly opposed to electing "perverts."