Michael Barbaro reporting for the Gray Lady:
Anthony D. Weiner’s improbable campaign for mayor of New York City is a wager that voters have made peace with his lewd online behavior, a subject he has largely left behind as he roils the race with his aggressive debating style and his attention-getting policy proposals.
But for the women who were on the other end of Mr. Weiner’s sexually explicit conversations and photographs, his candidacy is an unwanted reminder of a scandal that has upended their lives in ways big and small, cutting short careers, disrupting educations and damaging reputations.
“I cannot tell you the devastation,” said Ms. Weiss, a 42-year-old blackjack dealer in Nevada who exchanged dozens of explicit messages with Mr. Weiner, then a congressman, in 2010 and 2011.
Ms. Weiss, a die-hard Democrat who once volunteered for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign and was inspired by “Fahrenheit 9/11,” a film critique of the Bush administration, said she had reached out to Mr. Weiner after watching him joust with Republican rivals on cable news. They traded admiring messages on Facebook that, at his prompting, became intimate and raunchy, she said.
From there, the story gets really brutal. Looks like the Times won’t go down easy for the disgraced former congressman.
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