Shaken by plunging polls and raunchy new photos, Anthony Weiner struggled Thursday to salvage his faltering mayoral campaign even as he confessed to having three online affairs after he quit Congress in disgrace.
Despite calls from rivals to quit, mounting criticism from party leaders and the possibility that more embarrassing revelations could emerge, Weiner was adamant that he wouldn’t leave the race — and he soldiered on during a candidates forum Thursday night in Queens.
But it was hard to see how his campaign could survive many more days like this.
The gossip site The Dirty posted full monty crotch shots that Weiner, 48, sent Sydney Leathers, the tattooed 23-year-old from small-town Indiana at the center of his new sexting storm.
TMZ posted some of the dozens of steamy photos that Leathers sent him, including a pic of her bare bottom peeking out of a thong-like panty, and another of her wearing heels.
And Leathers told “Inside Edition” that she once professed love for Weiner and that the randy pol said he loved her — but that now he should “stop lying, stop embarrassing his wife and get help.”
At a soup kitchen in Brooklyn, Weiner tried again to put it all behind him. In a rambling exchange with reporters, he provided a new accounting of his explicit Internet relationships, putting the number at “six to 10, I suppose.”
Asked how many occurred after he left Congress in June 2011, Weiner said, “I don’t believe I had any more than three.”
There weren’t “dozens and dozens,” he added.
Weiner acknowledged that he is still “working with people” to get help for his behavior — but he insisted he does not have an addiction.
“I don’t believe that it is. The people that I’m working with don’t believe that it is. And I’ll leave it . . . I want to have some modicum of privacy between me and the people who are offering me this help, but the answer is no,” he said.
Weiner announced his candidacy on May 22, saying he had put his sexting ways behind him after having six online relationships before the liaisons forced him to quit Congress in June 2011.
The new uproar began Tuesday, after The Dirty revealed that Weiner had a months-long relationship with Leathers beginning in July 2012, at about the same time he and his wife, Huma Abedin, sat for a glowing People magazine profile that portrayed their marriage on the mend.
A new NBC 4 New York/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll out Thursday provided the evidence of the political fallout.
It found that Weiner’s support among registered Democrats had plunged to 16% — a loss of nine percentage points, or more than a third of his backing. The poll put City Council Speaker Christine Quinn in first, with 25%. Weiner was roughly even with city Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and former city Controller William Thompson, both at 14%.
Weiner said questions about his conduct were legitimate. “Citizens have to decide for themselves whether this personal behavior, when one thing happened or it didn’t happen, is important to them. I understand that,” he said.
But he said he believes voters want to hear him out.
“I am waging this campaign on a bet, and the bet is at the end of the day citizens care more about their own future than about my past with my wife and my embarrassing things,” he said in Brooklyn.
At least one voter felt otherwise.
She turned out for his soup kitchen visit, in a largely Orthodox Jewish section of Flatbush, “to hound him,” she said. She was asked to leave — and did so — before he met with reporters.
“I’m a neighborhood resident, and I’m an observant Jew and we want nothing to do with the likes of Anthony Weiner,” she said, declining to give her name.
Weiner insisted his problems were in his “rear view mirror.”
“I’ve worked them out between me and my wife, and I’ve gotten them behind me. They’ve been behind me for some time now,” he said.
“I have resisted talking about the specifics of these things because I don’t want to create a maelstrom for people on the other side. If people want to reveal information, they’re welcome to do it. But these things did take place before and after I resigned,” he said.
Asked what he would do if more women came forward, he said, “I don’t have a game plan, I am just doing what I am doing.”
At the candidates forum in Jackson Heights, Queens, called to focus on issues important to Latino women, the small crowd mostly gave Weiner a pleasant reception. Former Brooklyn Councilman Sal Albanese took a jab at Weiner, declaring, “If you think he’s going to go the extra mile to protect women in this city, based on his history, I’ll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.”
Weiner did not respond.
With Celeste Katz