The Steamroller Should Step Down

Opinion by Nathan Shapiro

Governor Eliot Spitzer came onto the public scene as a no-nonsense New York attorney general, busting up alleged corrupted Wall Street tycoons and, yes, prostitution rings. For victims of his whirlwind prosecutions, his tactics were harsh, public and embarrassing. To many, he was the epitome of a public servant dedicated to upholding ethical behavior, but to others his tactics were nothing more than that of a politically ambitious bully.

We now know which one it was and he no longer deserves to hold public office because of it. Governor Spitzer has been implicated in using the services of a prostitution ring and is currently under investigation by the federal government. But it’s ultimately not the crime that’s Spitzer’s biggest problem, but his hypocrisy. He built his reputation as a tough-on-crime prosecutor and was elected governor with a huge margin on a platform to bring ethics to Albany. Both have now turned out to be a sham.

Since being elected governor, my intuition tagged Spitzer as someone who could not be trusted. My take is that he used whatever office he occupied for his own self-aggrandizement. I’ve heard that his staff used to talk about Spitzer becoming the first Jewish president, and debated whether he or Barack Obama would make it there first, as if his continued rise to power was entitled to him.

The first chinks in his armor of self-righteousness were made last year when it was learned Spitzer’s administration was using state troopers to spy on the Republican majority leader of the state senate, Joseph Bruno. Spitzer had essentially declared war on Bruno’s slim majority in the senate, and made it clear he was willing to go after Bruno himself.

But few expected he was willing to illegally use state resources to dig up the dirt to do it. Granted, Spitzer disavowed the decision and blamed it on others, but it’s hard to imagine his top aides would undertake such a plot without his knowledge and his administration dragged its feet on cooperating with any investigations into the matter.

But we now see “trooper-gate” merely foreshadowed the full depths of the governor’s ethical lapses. Spitzer has betrayed his wife and his family, and the public’s trust. Not only that, but he has likely committed federal crimes in his shady dealings and his efforts to hide the money trail.

The sad thing is Spitzer could have been a great governor, especially for students. He was elected with a huge mandate and was incredibly popular. He named Stony Brook a flagship school with the intention of fully funding higher education. If his focus was really on helping the people of New York, he could have accomplished so much, but he squandered it all for personal—and physical—satisfaction.

Spitzer’s electoral mandate was based on a pledge to bring ethics to Albany. That pledge is now broken and the mandate is now gone. Spitzer should step down and allow the state to move on from this disgrace and focus on building it’s future so that some of good points of his agenda might have a chance to succeed.