America’s bad acting poster boys: Bob Filner and Anthony Weiner

There’s good news for Chargers master of disaster Mark Fabiani, and though it doesn’t come from San Diego, it does bear a distinctly familiar back story. Fabiani’s old friend and favored candidate for mayor of New York is reported by the New York Times to have taken the lead. “Bill de Blasio, the most liberal of the leading candidates, has vaulted into first place among likely voters,” the Times said last week. De Blasio’s success is said to owe to a cause well known to San Diegans. Ex-Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner — who along with San Diego departing mayor Bob Filner has become a national poster boy for bad acting — was leading the pack until it emerged that he hadn’t exactly lost the habit of sending sexually explicit photos to various women. A poll taken last week showed de Blasio first with 30 percent. Fifty-one percent of respondents pegged Weiner as the candidate they would “definitely not vote for under any circumstances.”

Fabiani has been a long-time de Blasio backer. He had given the Democratic former Brooklyn city councilman and New York Public Advocate $3000 in mayoral campaign money through this summer. Coronado’s Maureen Steiner, long a donor to Democratic campaigns, gave Christine Quinn, the first female and openly gay speaker of the New York city council, a total of $1250. La Jolla lesbian and biotech PR maven Susan Atkins, who sold her firm to Porter Novelli in 2005 and has served as a San Diego city library commissioner, gave Quinn $2524. Another San Diego gay leader, Robert Gleason — the Evans Hotel executive, a big financial backer of Democratic city councilman Todd Gloria who will wield major transition clout at city hall now that Filner has failed — gave $1000 to Quinn last year. Only one county resident appears to have offered Weiner financial succor. Rancho Santa Fe’s Stanley Cohen came up with $100 for the notorious tweeter on July 29.