ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo took a bite out of Anthony Weiner — declaring “shame on us” if city voters elect him mayor.
Cuomo flamed Weiner during an interview Wednesday with The Syracuse Post-Standard editorial board, it was revealed yesterday.
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“So if Anthony Weiner wants to run for mayor, he can run for mayor?” Cuomo was asked.
The governor responded: “He runs? He runs.”
What would your reaction be should Weiner get elected mayor, the newspaper pressed Cuomo.
“Shame on us,” he said.
The popular Democratic governor’s skewering is damaging to Weiner’s candidacy, suggesting that Cuomo believes the ex-Queens congressman is unfit to be mayor following the sexting scandal that drove him from office two years ago.
But Cuomo immediately tried to backpedal.
“The remark was made in jest. As the governor has said many times, he has no plan to endorse in this year’s mayoral primary,” said a Cuomo-administration official, who declined to be identified.
Hours later, Cuomo, asked again about Weiner during an event to promote tax-free business zones, said, “I don’t have an official position on the mayor’s race. And I’m going to leave it at that.”
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Cuomo has been asked about Weiner everywhere he goes ever since Weiner made his mayoral run official Wednesday.
When asked about it earlier that day, Cuomo kept a straight face: “None. No reaction. None. Look, my face didn’t move. No reaction.”
Weiner’s campaign declined to comment on Cuomo’s “shame on us” remark.
Meanwhile, a person from Weiner’s lurid past came back yesterday to haunt him.
Ginger Lee, a stripper caught up his sext-tweet scandal, said the idea of Weiner moving into Gracie Mansion fills her with dread.
“I do not think Anthony Weiner should run for mayor of New York City,” Lee said in a statement. “There will be a new flare-up of jokes, inaccurate statements and hurtful remarks.”
According to Lee, who had an online correspondence with Weiner, there could be more crotch shots to come.
“Even now, nearly two years after this story broke, there are still details relating to other women that have not been exposed,” she said.
Speaking last night at a mayoral forum in The Bronx, Weiner apologized for his past behavior and pledged to move forward.
In his first appearance before voters since entering the race, Weiner took a few questions from the sympathetic crowd, but none about the scandal.
When he appeared earlier on WNYC Radio’s “Brian Lehrer Show,” Weiner was asked twice how he “could be sure this won’t happen again.” All he would say is, “It is behind me.”
Lehrer also asked Weiner how he would respond to the many voters “frankly creeped out” by the sexting and lying.
Weiner said he’d give as much information as he could and “will be doing a lot of apologizing” about the scandal, which “I compounded immeasurably by being dishonest.”
Weiner said he lied — by saying his Twitter account had been hacked — because he was more afraid of hurting his wife than of offending the public.
“I was trying to conceal from my wife what I’d done,” he said.
He said he spent up to three days at a facility in Texas to get therapy after the incident, but won’t cop to being a sex addict.
“How do you characterize your problem? Was it an addiction? What word would you use?” Lehrer asked.
“It was none of those things,” Weiner said. “It was simply a blind spot.”