Ms. Weiss, a die-hard Democrat who once volunteered for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign and was inspired by “Fahrenheit 9/11,” a film critique of the Bush administration, said she had reached out to Mr. Weiner after watching him joust with Republican rivals on cable news. They traded admiring messages on Facebook that, at his prompting, became intimate and raunchy, she said.

When their correspondence eventually became public, she said in an interview, conservative-minded colleagues sought to have her fired. The press lined up outside of her house and showed up at her casino, causing her to miss work for weeks. One night, she turned on the television to find the HBO host Bill Maher and the actress Jane Lynch performing a dramatic reading of the bawdy messages. Ms. Weiss, an avowed Maher fan, said she sat in her living room crying. While coping with the onslaught, she drank heavy amounts of alcohol, a habit that persists.

“I obsess about it,” she said, “every day.”

It is hard not to, she said: Mr. Weiner had faded from view after resigning from Congress, but now that he is in the mayoral race, her phone lights up with calls from reporters, online enemies are pouncing and fresh cruelties abound.

“We know what you want to do to him,” she recalled a man teasing her at work recently.

Little unites the five women whose online relationships with Mr. Weiner have become public. Some were self-confident political admirers; some were struggling and insecure, flattered by attention from a man in power. Some fled publicity after his downfall; some sought it out. (Ms. Weiss even appeared on “Inside Edition.”) Some of them still think he would be a good mayor; some are repelled by the concept.

But it is clear that all of them have been overwhelmed by the reaction to the imbroglio.

Gennette Cordova, a 21-year-old college student when she interacted with Mr. Weiner, is still trying to reclaim her identity, online and off.