Brewer: "That is me in those pictures"

"That is me in those pictures," Eric Brewer said on Inside Edition yesterday.

A week after losing his re-election bid, the East Cleveland mayor says the infamous boudoir photos of him in women's lingerie "were taken by a female friend of mine."

The pictures, a subject of rumors in East Cleveland for some time, were broadcast on WKYC TV-3 six days before the mayoral election. Brewer again blamed them for his defeat (a question I considered in this post last week).

"I myself heard someone say that they were voting for the mayor who wore pants, and one lady said that she did not want to vote for a mayor who would compete with her for wearing her panties," Brewer says.

Inside Edition also interviewed mayor-elect Gary Norton. "No one in my campaign had anything to do with the release of those photos," Norton said.

Brewer said his 23-year-old son Chase has "been relentless in teasing me. I'm dad, I'm mom. He hasn't called me Tootsie yet."

"I love my father regardless. And whatever he does...that's his business, I'm going to support him," says Chase.

The Plain Dealer reports that East Cleveland city council member Mildred Brewer (no relation) is calling for Brewer's resignation: "We have been disgraced nationally," she said. "I think a man should be a man, and a woman should be a woman."

Another councilman, Nathaniel Martin, says the mayor should not resign. "If it is him, it is his private life, and it doesn't take away from his abilities to do his job," Martin told the PD.

Update, 11:30 a.m.: What will Brewer do after politics? Mansfield Frazier at coolcleveland.com has some ideas. In a funny yet fairly sympathetic column, he advises:

Likely, ... he will go back to what he knows and start up another newsmagazine that he can use to blast everyone he can think of, [which] might be temporarily satisfying, but is exactly the wrong thing to do. ... Besides writing a book and erecting a website, as one experienced TV producer recently said to me, Brewer needs to develop a cable TV show where he debates with himself.