Disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner did his fellow Democrats no favors yesterday — moving out of his district just as his panicking party struggled to hold on to his endangered congressional seat.
Winer took the last ramining items from his Queens co-op just in time to remind voters why they have to vote today — because he resigned in a sexting scandal that made him a national laughingstock.
Weiner is ditching the neighborhood that sent him to Congress six times, and is renting a three-bedroom apartment on a high-rent Greenwich Village street, sources said.
The two men who want Weiner’s job — Democrat David Weprin and Republican Bob Turner — brought out the big guns on the eve of today’s special election.
Turner, a businessman, campaigned with former Mayor Rudy Giuliani at a Forest Hill LIRR station, while the voices of supporters like Ed Koch and Donald Trump were heard in recorded phone calls to voters.
Weprin, a state assemblyman, campaigned with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn at a senior center, while voters got robo-calls on his behalf from former President Bill Clinton and Gov. Cuomo.
Giuliani, noting that Weprin had distanced himself from President Obama, said the Democrat’s “strategy is running away from the current president of his party. That’s a heck of a statement.”
Quinn got in last-minute shots at Turner, saying he is “trying to turn back the clock on civil rights” while Weprin was a supporter of gay marriage.
Weprin downplayed two recent polls that showed him trailing by 6 percentage points.
And Queens Democratic Party leader Joseph Crowley danced around questions of whether Obama is a liability. “This isn’t about the president’s numbers,” he said.
The Weiner seat, in the state’s 9th Congressional District, is likely to be chewed up by redistricting, so whoever is elected today will represent his Queens-Brooklyn constituents for only the unexpired one year of Weiner’s term.
But Turner made clear that if elected, he’ll be back on the ballot for some seat.
“If I win this election, I will challenge somebody,” he said.
Residents of the district complained they had been bombarded with robo-calls over the weekend.
“After a while, we didn’t answer the phone,” said registered independent Gabriela Garcia, 35. “Enough already.”
On Friday, Weiner virtually emptied the two-bedroom co-op he and his pregnant wife, Huma Abedin, occupied on Ascan Avenue in Forest Hills. He came back for an office chair and a box yesterday.
Weiner put the Queens apartment on the market for $449,000 early this year, then yanked it off the market after he was exposed as a randy exhibitionist who sent lurid photos of himself to women.
He later sold the co-op but decided to rent in Manhattan. “It’s all very hush- hush,” a real-estate source said.
Weiner declined to comment on his move or his plans.
The move to Manhattan ends Weiner’s chances of rebuilding his political career in the district.
“He is gone from the game for the immediate future,” said Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf. “This move means no local office hopes.
Additional reporting by Carl Campanile,