Anthony Weiner, the former Democratic congressman from New York City who twice derailed his own political career by sharing lewd pictures of himself with women who were not his wife, will now pay a much steeper price. On Monday, a federal judge sentenced Weiner to 21 months in prison for sending sexually explicit text messages to a 15-year-old North Carolina girl, following a plea agreement Weiner made with prosecutors earlier this year. Weiner had faced up to 10 years in prison and will have to register as a sex offender.
In May of 2011, Weiner earned instant notoriety when he publicly tweeted a photo of himself in underwear to a woman, then claimed he couldn't "say with certitude" whether he was in fact pictured in the photo. (He was.) Smarting from brutal losses in the midterm elections just six months earlier and having no stomach for distractions, Democrats from all corners of the party immediately put pressure on Weiner to resign, which he soon did. But his departure didn't do much to lessen the pain: Republicans went on to pick up Weiner's seat in a special election that fall.
Two years later, Weiner plotted a political comeback and unexpectedly jumped into the wide-open Democratic primary to succeed term-limited New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, promising that he'd reformed his ways and asking voters to give him a "second chance." Weiner quickly surged into first place in the polls, but just as quickly, his campaign imploded when, yet again, it came out that he'd continued to trade sexual messages with other women—even as he'd been asking the public for forgiveness. Weiner insisted on staying in the race and finished in fifth place with just 5 percent of the vote. He continued his compulsive sexting, of course, and now he's finished for good.