"I think it fundamentally shows a lack of judgment," Ms. Gillibrand told reporters after a panel discussion on cyber-crime at NYU today. "And I have concerns because I feel like the nature of the rhetoric is very anti-women and very disrespectful and disregards women. And I think it's a matter of judgment that, and a level of inappropriateness, that's not appropriate for anyone seeking any office."

The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee piled  on as well, calling the postings "shocking and offensive" in an email to reporters this morning.

But George Maragos, the Nassau County Comptroller who was considered the likely GOP Senate nominee until Mr. Cenedella started making the political rounds, declined to join in the chorus.

"Each person needs to speak for himself," Mr. Maragos said.  "I think it is up to Marc to address the allegations that have been made and to be transparent."

He added that he thought Mr. Cenedella should say whether or not he wrote the blog posts--according to The Times, The Ladder's spokesman said the blog was not Mr. Cenedella's but rather a “staging site contained testing content from a wide variety of sources, including spam from automatic spiders. We have since eliminated the potential for anyone to view the maintenance site--but didn't think that the incident was disqualifying.

"That is up to the party to decide. I think the allegations have to be addressed forthrightly and completely and it will be up to the party to decide."

The offending posts contain headlines like “Sexy vs. Skanky,” “Dating Advice for Girly Girls,” “He Stole My Weed” and “High Quality Dope," and in them the author proposes a holiday in which women offer free oral sex and steak dinner to men and suggests that men should be allowed to have more than one wife.

In their statement, the DSCC noted that Mr. Cenedella has not explicitly denied writing the blogposts. The Politicker however ventured over to the other side of the newsroom to our friends at our sister technology site, Betabeat, who told us that the company's explanation is actually plausible, and that indeed the blog easily could have been a staging area set up by some staffers. They also noted however that it was curious that the items in The Times story appear to not have been pulled from elsewhere on the web, since they do not turn up in further Google searches.