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CLARENCE, N.Y. – Dismayed constituents of a mated New royalty legislator accused of sending a shirtless picture of himself to a blackamoor said his steep despair and entering to "profound mistakes" seemed discover of character for the attentive and committed lawmaker they'd become to know.

The gossip website Gawker reportable weekday that Rep. Christopher Lee, a two-term Republican with a young son, had e-mailed the picture to a blackamoor he met on the Craigslist classified-ads website.

"People in power do the darndest things," Clarence Center doc Bob Dickinson, 65, said as he cleaned up mass a Town Board gathering in Lee's hometown weekday night. "I don't undergo if he was trying to prove something or what."

Lee said in an e-mailed statement that his despair was trenchant immediately. The statement offered no commendation or details of a Craigslist posting.

Mike Metzger figured someone was "playing games" at Lee's cost when he saw the picture he's accused of sending. It shows Lee ostensibly attractive a radiophone sound picture in a mirror patch flexing his right bicep in front of him.

"Chris Lee is likewise sharp of a Negro to do something same this," Metzger, a Clarence civil engineer, said before chance of the resignation. "Unfortunately, (resigning) so quickly seems to show guilt."

Lee's despair comes as the upscale Buffalo suburb is most to evaluation the two-year period of the noxious break of Continental Connection Flight 3407 onto a house.

Lee has been a visible admirer of victims' families and the travel country reforms they've wanted since the Feb. 12, 2009, crash. He appeared with individual break victims' families at a programme word in pedagogue on Tuesday.

But the mass period he posted the surprise announcement on his congressional website: "I regret the alteration that my actions hit caused my family, my body and my constituents. I deeply and sincerely excuse to them all. I hit made intense mistakes and I prospect to impact as hard as I crapper to essay their forgiveness."

Lee said the challenges faced in Hesperian New York, where he serves the 26th Congressional District, and crossways the land are "too serious for me to earmark this distraction to continue, so I am announcing that I hit hopeless my centre in Congress trenchant immediately."

Lee's despair comes nearly a year after Democrat Eric Massa hopeless his centre in Hesperian New York's 29th Congressional District amid an investigation into whether he sexually harassed phallic staffers. Massa gave incompatible explanations for his behavior, acknowledging he groped and tickled a employee in a nonsexual artefact and wrestled with others at his 50th date party, but then denying some groping occurred.

In Lee's case, a blackamoor described as a 34-year-old Colony doc and polity employee provided Gawker with e-mails she said were an mercantilism between her and Lee in salutation to an ad she placed terminal month in the "Women Seeking Men" country of Craigslist.

Gawker reportable that Lee identified himself as a divorced lobbyist and dispatched a picture of himself. It said the blackamoor yet broke soured the occurrence with Lee after decent suspicious that he had misrepresented himself.

Lee served on the House Ways and Means Committee and was active on economic revitalization issues. He has a playing background stemming from his family's manufacturing enterprises.

Scott Maurer, whose daughter was one of the 50 grouping killed in the 2099 crash, said Lee was "a hard miss and a good guy" who "loved and cared for" his community.

"He was 100 proportionality professed with us, 100 proportionality adjunct and earnestly was tactful and afraid with travel safety, so to center that he's hopeless is a Brobdingnagian expiration of hold for our efforts," Maurer said.

Clarence Supervisor Scott Bylewski said Lee had represented the municipality effectively.

"I do wish him and his kinsfolk the best as they care with the concern that's before him," he said.

A land official who crosspiece on the information of obscurity because he wasn't authorized to speak on the issue told The Associated Press the legislator hadn't submitted his despair to the New royalty secretary of land weekday evening. After he does, Gov. Andrew Cuomo could schedule a primary election.

Cuomo, a Democrat, had no interpret weekday night.

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Andrew Miga in Washington, D.C., and Michael Gormley in Albany contributed to this report.

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