(Adds background, comment from political science professor)
By Francesca Trianni and Edith Honan
NEW YORK, July 23 (Reuters) - New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner confirmed on Tuesday that some newly revealed sexually explicit online chats and photos, published this week by a gossip website, were sent by him.
Weiner, 48, resigned from the U.S. Congress in June 2011 after admitting he used Twitter and other social media to send lewd pictures of himself to women he met online.
Tuesday's admission concerned a series of suggestive chats published by gossip website TheDirty.com on Monday. The website said it obtained the chats and images from a young woman in her early 20s, whose name it withheld.
The website said chats between the two began in July 2012 and extended into this year.
The development could complicate Weiner's campaign for mayor less than two months before the Sept. 10 Democratic primary.
Weiner has been running neck-and-neck in public opinion polls with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, but many voters surveyed say they have an unfavorable view of him.
"Voters are going to say, 'What is wrong with this guy?'" said Douglas Muzzio, a professor of political science at Baruch College. "It demonstrates some kind of real psychological problem."
Muzzio noted that Weiner was being evasive, the same way he was when the scandal first broke and he took days to admit the images and messages were his.
In Tuesday's statement, Weiner was vague about the timing and sequence of events, saying that "some things that have been posted ... are true and some are not."
"I said that other texts and photos were likely to come out, and today they have," he said.
"As I have said in the past, these things that I did were wrong and hurtful to my wife and caused us to go through challenges in our marriage that extended past my resignation from Congress," he added.
Weiner's wife, Huma Abedin, a close aide for former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has publicly stood by him and in recent days joined him on the campaign trail.
The couple had a son six months after Weiner's resignation.
Weiner had been a popular six-term Congressman representing parts of Brooklyn and Queens.
Launching his mayoral campaign in May, Weiner said he hoped voters would give him a second chance and pledged to be an advocate for the working class. (Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen,; Editing by Barbara Goldberg, Ellen Wulfhorst and Prudence Crowther)
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