What Eliot Spitzer and Carl Paladino Really Have in Common
By: Oy.
You gotta love NY politics.
A new poll out says that New Yorkers wish Eliot Spitzer was still their governor. Yep, that Eliot Spitzer — the same Eliot Spitzer who was forced to resign as governor because of a prostitution scandal that played out daily in the tabs and on TV.
A new Public Policy Polling surveyreveals that New Yorkers want Spitzer or the "Lov Guv" as he's been dubbed by the tabs, back as their Governor.
The disgraced ex-gov is currently co-hosting a nightly talk show on CNN. His debut on "Parker Spitzer” hasn't exactly been a ratings hit and it's been savaged by reviewers. But the Wall Street Journalreports CNN's willing to give him and the show some time in hopes of building an audience and giving the producers a chance to fine tune the show's tone and format.
Hosting a cable show is not what the man who was known as "the Sheriff of Wall Street" had planned. Spitzer was once a possible presidential contender but revelations of his affair with a prostitute shattered those plans.
Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer by author Peter Elkind offers an in-depth look at the rise and humiliating disgrace of Eliot Spitzer.
What follows is a Guest Author Blog by Elkind who provides us an unique look at NY politics, the politicians and those who make up their world.
WHAT SPITZER AND PALADINO HAVE IN COMMON
Guest Author Blog by Peter Elkind, author of Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
Eliot Spitzer and Carl Paladino, liberal Manhattan Democrat and upstate Tea Party Republican, don’t have a lot in common.
But they’re both rich. They’ve both endured sex scandals. They’ve both run for governor of New York. And they share a visceral dislike for two powerful men in Empire State politics: Andrew Cuomo, Paladino’s Democratic opponent in the November gubernatorial election, and Fred Dicker, political columnist for The New York Post.
Spitzer’s hatred of Cuomo has deep roots, which I describe in Client 9. And it’s made a few headlines in the current governor’s race: first, when Spitzer equivocated on the question of whether he’d vote for his fellow Democrat (he eventually said he would); and later, when he pointedly told a CNN interviewer: “the problem that Andrew has is that everybody knows that behind the scenes, he is the dirtiest, nastiest political player out there.” In that same interview, Spitzer even offered a backhanded defense of Paladino (once a donor to his campaigns), calling the Republican nominee “not as crazy as the media has portrayed him to be.” Paladino returned the favor, telling the Los Angeles Times days later that after Spitzer’s involvement with prostitutes was publicly exposed in March 2008, he called the embattled governor—who he viewed as a capable public official—and urged him not to resign.
