Weiner’s campaign manager quits after candidate’s disclosures

7/28/2013

New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner’s campaign manager quit after revelations about the Democrat’s online relationships with women.

Danny Kedem, 31, left the campaign this weekend, said Barbara Morgan, a Weiner spokeswoman. Kedem, reached by telephone, declined to discuss the circumstances of his break with Weiner saying, “my official word is no comment.”

Weiner rose to lead the seven-candidate race in public opinion polls, then fell into a three-way tie for second in a July 25 NBC 4/Wall Street Journal/Marist survey, two days after a gossip website disclosed that he had lewd Internet exchanges with a woman. He had said the behavior was in his past.

Weiner later said he had similar exchanges with six to 10 women. He said three may have occurred after he resigned from Congress about two years ago over similar behavior.

Weiner, 48, said he would continue his campaign after calls for him to drop out from the city’s major daily newspapers.

Kedem, a former campaign adviser affiliated with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, began working with Weiner in May.

In the past week, U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, and Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, said Weiner should leave the race.

‘Tremendous Pressure’

“I suspect there’s been a tremendous pressure on Kedem from labor campaigns and others who oppose Weiner, and I’m sure Kedem’s interested in remaining in this business, and he can’t take the pressure and he’s leaving,” said Joseph Mercurio, a New York-based political consultant who teaches political science at Fordham University in New York.

“Weiner has the money, and he’s a savvy pol, so I would think he can find someone else,” said Mercurio, who worked in former President Bill Clinton’s first campaign for Arkansas governor.

In the poll released July 25, Weiner had support from 16 percent of registered Democrats, after coming in first with 25 percent in a June 25 poll. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn topped the field in the new survey with 25 percent after receiving 20 percent last month.

Former City Comptroller William Thompson and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio each drew 14 percent.

The survey was taken the day after the gossip website TheDirty.com on July 23 posted exchanges between a woman and a man it said was Weiner. The site showed explicit photos sent under the user name “Carlos Danger,” whom the website identified as the former congressman.

In an e-mail the same day, Weiner said, “While some things that have been posted today are true and some are not, there is no question that what I did was wrong.” The behavior, he said, “is behind me.”