Election News and Features
What Now for Eliot Spitzer?
by
findingDulcinea Staff
The New York Governor who rode into office a year ago on a record-breaking majority now faces comparable levels of disapproval. Spitzer’s allies in the press are hard to find.
30-Second Summary
In a cartoon in Vanity Fair’s first 2008 edition, the path of a steamroller-driving Spitzer is blocked by the erect figure of New York Senate Leader Joseph Bruno. The governor is cross-eyed with bewilderment beneath the banner “The Year of Governing Dangerously.”
The following article is a far cry from the Spitzer profile run in the same publication in 2005. “To the man on the street, he’s a hero” was Vanity Fair’s assessment then.
The problems began in July with Troopergate. It became known that Spitzer’s office had used state troopers to monitor Joseph Bruno. The attorney general's investigation concluded that there had been a serious breach of propriety, if not of the law.
In the fall, Spitzer's troubles continued with his announcement that New York State would issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. That declaration drew national criticism and created an awkward moment for Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail.
Spitzer soon dropped that policy. The New York Times managed some faint praise, writing that his reversal “won the kind of wide acclaim from elected officials that he could not win for the proposal itself.” Most commentators were less kind.
Spitzer’s steep fall from grace has suggested comparisons with Bill Clinton’s difficult first year as president and popular New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s doldrums in the middle of his first term.
The big question is whether Spitzer’s current unpopularity is more a problem of personality than policy, and if it is, how great a change can be expected.
As Vanity Fair's David Margolick concludes, looking to the coming year, “A great drama will now play out in Albany.”
The following article is a far cry from the Spitzer profile run in the same publication in 2005. “To the man on the street, he’s a hero” was Vanity Fair’s assessment then.
The problems began in July with Troopergate. It became known that Spitzer’s office had used state troopers to monitor Joseph Bruno. The attorney general's investigation concluded that there had been a serious breach of propriety, if not of the law.
In the fall, Spitzer's troubles continued with his announcement that New York State would issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. That declaration drew national criticism and created an awkward moment for Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail.
Spitzer soon dropped that policy. The New York Times managed some faint praise, writing that his reversal “won the kind of wide acclaim from elected officials that he could not win for the proposal itself.” Most commentators were less kind.
Spitzer’s steep fall from grace has suggested comparisons with Bill Clinton’s difficult first year as president and popular New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s doldrums in the middle of his first term.
The big question is whether Spitzer’s current unpopularity is more a problem of personality than policy, and if it is, how great a change can be expected.
As Vanity Fair's David Margolick concludes, looking to the coming year, “A great drama will now play out in Albany.”
Headline Links: Assessing the past twelve months
Interviewing Gov. Eliot Spitzer, David Margolick reports that there is little in his demeanor to suggest defeat: “It is as if it were still Inauguration Day, and he’d just gotten off the podium.” Margolick also observes that a temperamental aversion to dwelling on the past may mean that Spitzer has spent little time trumpeting his successes, which as a consequence have been forgotten amid the noise of Troopergate and the driver’s license reversal.
Source: Vanity Fair
“Ham-Handed Eliot Year’s Big Loser” declares the transparent headline in Frederick U. Dicker’s end-of-year reflection on the governor in The New York Post. Dicker has been a persistent gadfly troubling Spitzer since Troopergate first made the news in July.
Source: The New York Post
Over the holiday period, Spitzer’s team have looked to raise funds from a corner once rejected by the governor. Political lobbyists were, in the words of The New York Times, derided as “the stubborn stewards of Albany’s old political culture, in which money buys access and favor” in the first months of Spitzer’s governance. Spitzer’s aides said that there was never meant to be an “impermeable barrier between officials and lobbyists.” Elsewhere, there is debate as to whether Spitzer is going soft on his commitment to reform Albany or this latest development is a sign of a healthy rapprochement.
Source: The New York Times
Opinion: The driver’s license debate
Soon after Spitzer’s decision to drop his bid to provide driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, former City Council woman Una Clarke gave an interview on the Town Hall steps in which she derided the reversal. “Cowards die many times before their death,” said Clarke, who is caught on video. “Shakespeare says that. If you believe in something, you take it to the end.”
Source: The New York Observer
Blogger the “California Yankee” states that “if Spitzer’s position was truly principled, should it not be worth fighting for to the bitter end? The truth is more likely that Spitzer’s decision is simply unprincipled and poll-driven.”
Source: California Yankee
The latest imbroglio to engulf Spitzer may have taught a few New Yorkers something about the character of their governor, according to The Wall Street Journal. However, the lesson could have been learned earlier: “The bullying, the arrogance and the focus on destroying anyone who stood [in] his way were on full display when he was attorney general.” Whether he has learned from his recent difficulties, avers the Journal, remains to be seen, but “he could do worse than enroll in anger management class and take a pledge not to try to ruin everyone who disagrees with him.”
Source: The Wall Street Journal (subscription may be required)
“If this debacle looks like a national smackdown for this governor, it is,” stated a New York Times op-ed. However, the Times observed that this may be an opportunity for Spitzer to temper his aggressive leadership style: “Spitzer can either figure out how to operate the governor’s office more skillfully for the next three years, or he can fail in his vital mission to reform and restart New York State.”
Source: The New York Times
A New York Times article reported that the governor’s decision to drop his proposed legislation under the banner “Dropping License Plan Wins Praise for Spitzer.” According to the Times, his was a move that “won the kind of wide acclaim from elected officials that he could not win for the proposal itself.”
Source: The New York Times
Background: Spitzer’s difficult year
Spitzer backs down
In October, Spitzer’s intention to permit illegal immigrants to qualify for driver’s licenses faced objections that it would endanger national security and increase voter fraud. The policy was eventually dropped.
Source: findingDulcinea
In November, The New York Times reported that the governor had abandoned plans for broader access to driver’s licenses, a retreat was widely represented his first admission of failure. The Times wrote that he also struck some “familiarly pugilistic notes, lashing into critics who, Mr. Spitzer said, ‘equated minimum-wage undocumented dishwashers with Osama bin Laden.’”
Source: The New York Times
Soon after his reversal over driver’s licenses, the governor also backed away from plans to impose a sales tax on online retailers, as detailed by Publishers Weekly.
Source: Publisher’s Weekly
Troopergate
The New York Times has a round-up of stories on Spitzer, including an interactive timeline for the Spitzer versus Bruno spat. The row, which became known as Troopergate, arose when Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno claimed that state troopers were monitoring his movements on orders from Spitzer’s office. That allegation was confirmed by an investigation conducted by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. The incident is cited by many commentators as the start of the governor’s troubles in office.
Source: The New York Times
The “steamroller”
In February 2007, The New York Post reported on Gov. Spitzer’s alleged declaration that he was “a f-----g steamroller” in a story titled “Full Steam Ahead for Spunky Spitz.” The Post wrote that Spitzer “bragged” to Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco (R-Schenectady), “I’ve done more in three weeks than any governor has done in the history of the state.”
Source: The New York Post
Historical Context: First terms and past popularity
Clinton and Bloomberg’s difficult first terms
Spitzer was, not so long ago, widely tipped as a future Democratic presidential candidate. Now when the presidential analogy is drawn, it is more likely to be comparing the difficulties of Spitzer first year as governor with those of Bill Clinton’s first year as president. Clinton was troubled by attempts to allow gays in the military and complaints about painful inexperience in his White House team, as well as damaging rumors about his private life. According to a January 1994 article in Time, “Bill Clinton qualified as the most unpopular first-year president since polling began in the 1930s.” Nonetheless, he turned things around quickly. His approval rating, which had sunk to 37 percent in June 1993, had risen to 54 percent in January 1994. The Comeback Kid lived up to his sobriquet and won a second term.
Source: Time magazine
Another New York politician to suffer and recover from first-term doldrums is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The goodwill extended to the mayor has persuaded many that he is about to launch a bid for the presidency. Yet, in the middle of his first term, a cigarette ban and increased property taxes led to Bloomberg’s approval rating sinking to 24 percent. He bounced back and won his second term in 2005.
Source: The New York Post
What the pundits used to say about Spitzer
In January 2005, Vanity Fair ran a piece on Spitzer’s plans to run for governor. He was New York State attorney general at the time, and the magazine opined that “to the man on the street he’s a hero.” Indeed, the magazine begins with Attorney General Spitzer, arm in arm with his wife, making his way along a rain-lashed Canal Street in Manhattan while passersby call out to him with praise.
Source: Vanity Fair
The day after he was elected governor with a record-breaking majority, The New York Times published a short profile of the politician that opened with Spitzer complaining about the slow pace of work on Ground Zero. “It was a double-barreled Spitzer moment,” observed the Times, referring to the governor’s “combative” style. One comment from the Times piece has proved prophetic: “That independent streak lies at the heart of Mr. Spitzer’s broad appeal, but whether it proves an asset or liability in Albany could be the pivotal question of his administration.”
Source: The New York Times
In February 2007, after only a few weeks in office, the governor personally attacked legislators after the State Assembly rejected his recommendation for state comptroller. At the time, New York Magazine ran a profile on Spitzer portraying him as taking on “Albany’s entrenched power structure, making it us versus them, with Spitzer as the face of us.” The magazine judged that the disagreement “played perfectly to Spitzer’s strength, as a crusader for what’s right—not simply on a policy level but on a good-versus-evil level.”
Source: New York Magazine
Reference Material: A poll and Spitzer’s résumé
In November, a Siena New York survey found that if the 2010 gubernatorial election were held at the time of polling, 49 percent of voters would prefer someone other than Spitzer for governor. Only 25 percent would re-elect him. SurveyUSA reports that he has at present only a 36 percent approval rating.
Source: Real Clear Politics
Project Vote Smart provides a brief online résumé for the governor, who was born in the Bronx, educated at Princeton and Harvard, and elected to the governor’s office in November 2006.
Source: Project Vote Smart
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