Metro

Weiner not as bad as Edwards: poll

WASHINGTON — The indiscretions that led to New York Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner’s downfall may have been bad, but they don’t constitute the worst recent political sex scandal, according to a new poll released Friday.

Only three percent of respondents in Public Policy Polling’s survey rated Weiner’s scandal the worst of recent years.

Instead that honor belonged to former North Carolina Senator and 2004 vice presidential nominee John Edwards, who fathered a child out wedlock with mistress Rielle Hunter while his wife, Elizabeth Edwards, had cancer.

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He then lied about both the affair and the existence of the child during his 2008 presidential run, even getting married campaign aide, Andrew Young, to pretend to be the father.

Thirty-eight percent of those polls said Edwards was deserving of the dubious “honor.”

Former President Bill Clinton came in second with 21 percent for his Oval Office indiscretions with Monica Lewinsky.

Former Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig placed third with eight percent for his “lewd” behavior in a Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport men’s bathroom in 2007. Former Florida Republican congressman Mark Foley placed fourth with five percent. He resigned from Congress in 2006 after a scandal involving sexual messages and emails he sent to male Congressional pages.

Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign, who cheated on his wife with a campaign aide, former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who “hiked the Appalachian Trail” with his Argentine mistress, and former New York Gov.-turned CNN talk show host Eliot Spitzer, who paid for prostitutes, all received three percent in the poll.

Asked whether voters thought “most male politicians are sexually immoral or not,” 23 percent of voters answered yes with 56 percent saying no and 21 percent saying they weren’t sure. Twenty-seven percent of women said “yes” compared with 19 percent of men.

The poll surveyed 520 American voters nationwide from June 9th to 12th.