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NEW YORK – Former Rep. Eric Massa and his touch fights are so 2010. Eliot Spitzer? He's digit governors ago. With the shirtless picture dispatched to a blackamoor he was trying to woo online, Rep. Chris Lee is the stylish in a progress of New royalty politicians whose misdeeds hit riveted domestic attention.

Lee, a 46-year older politico and mated father, resigned his Buffalo-area centre Thursday after the gossip website Gawker publicised e-mails he dispatched to a blackamoor he met on Craigslist, including a picture where he is shirtless and flexing a bicep. Lee free a grounds apologizing to his kinsfolk and constituents for letting them down.

Lee is scarce the prototypal leader to engage in intense behavior. But some lately hit come from the Empire State — from the obtusely packed, hyper-caffeinated New royalty City metropolitan area to the agricultural communities and industrialized cities upstate.

"I don't conceive it's anything in the water, but we do seem to hit a disproportionally super turn of scandal," land Democratic Party Chairman diplomatist doc said. "Maybe it's because we're a high-profile state, we hit a impulsive population, and we separate at a faster measure than some places."

A assemblage ago, it was Massa's turn in the spotlight.

A freshman Democrat from Hesperian New York, the 50-year older Massa dead resigned his seat, citing upbeat concerns. News surfaced within life that he was low enquiry by a House motive panel for sexual misconduct, a calculate he denied modify as he recognized involved in touch fights with some phallic aides.

"They are locution I groped a phallic staffer," Massa said in a television interview. "Yeah, I did. Not exclusive did I seek him. I tickled him until he couldn't breathe."

Also terminal year, Carl Paladino, a metropolis actual estate developer, separate onto the domestic scene when he won the politico direct to challenge Democrat saint Cuomo. Paladino, whose electioneering was backed widely by tea party activists, recognized fathering a child discover of wedlock and, with no evidence, publically accused Cuomo of quality during his 15-year wedlock to Kerry Kennedy, a daughter of past New royalty Sen. parliamentarian Kennedy. He after backed absent from that charge.

A videotaped dustup where Paladino threatened to "take out" a semipolitical reporter became a domestic telegram news goods for life and Paladino had to excuse for racist and pornographic e-mails that he forwarded — twice.

Cuomo trounced Paladino by 30 percentage points in the November election. But Paladino has remained visible and some supporters are already pressing him to start the race to follow Lee. Paladino said weekday he is not planning to run.

Some past New royalty scandals hit been Brobdingnagian and historic, like Gov. Eliot Spitzer's despair in 2008 after grounds surfaced that he had patronized a harlotry ring. Others hit been smaller but similarly tawdry, much as the sentence of past Democratic land Sen. Hiram Monserrate terminal assemblage for fighting up his girlfriend.

Spitzer's successor, Democrat king Paterson, was encumbered in controversies of his own, much as improperly accepting tickets to the 2009 World Series and intervening in a domestic hostility housing involving a close aide. metropolis free criminal charges in both instances, but paying a super dustlike for taking the baseball tickets.

Following a drunken driving collar in 2008, politico Rep. Vito Fossella, a mated father of three, was forced to pass he had fathered a daughter with a mistress. Fossella, who had represented the New royalty City borough of Staten Island in legislature since 1997, declined to separate for re-election.

The most visible past New royalty semipolitical gossip involved Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel, the past House Ways and Means Committee chair and dean of the state's congressional delegation. Rangel was disapproved by the House terminal assemblage after existence institute blameable of violating individual motive rules, including dealing multiple rent-stabilized apartments in New York's Harlem neighborhood and using congressional stationery to offer donations for a college center direction his name. Rangel denied some evilness and was re-elected terminal November, but the gossip and message surrounding it did not help domestic Democrats as they tried — unsuccessfully — to indorse their majority in the House.

John McLaughlin, a domestic politico enquirer who has worked for some New royalty candidates, said the state's dynamical demographics haw hit presented uprise to a new society of semipolitical gossip in the state.

"For years, you had a destined take of middle-class folks who were traditionally ethnic, Catholic and person in New royalty state. Then, you had your deal of semipolitical immorality but now you hit moralistic corruption, too," McLaughlin said.

But some constituents in Lee's regularise said they didn't consider his downfall a New royalty land of mind, kinda a consequence of honor that crapper infect politicians from some state.

"People in power do the darnedest things. I rattling don't know what they're thinking," said Bob Dickinson, 65, of Clarence Center.

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Associated Press Writers Michael Gormley in Albany, N.Y., and Carolyn Thompson in metropolis contributed to this report.

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