BETWEEN GROWING UP IN Rhode Island and later moving to New York, I’ve witnessed a lifetime of political corruption. It’s part of the landscape, like barren trees in the winter and obese tourists in the summer. When an elected official vows to “clean up the capitol,” I calmly wait for the headline that features his or her name followed by the words “under investigation.”
And so it is with New York Governor Elliot Spitzer. As Attorney General, Spitzer was known as the Sheriff of Wall Street, bringing down the wing tipped bad guys with a loaded subpoena and a grimace that would make Richard Widmark shudder. To me, he always seemed like the kind of guy who’d go after a self-employed accountant for not cleaning out the coffee filter. It wasn’t until he successfully sued several record companies in a payola scandal that I grudgingly gave him his due. Anyone who forces an industry to pay the price for putting Jennifer Lopez on the public airwaves is okay by me. Not okay enough for me to actually vote for him, but enough to give him a 100-day pass upon election.
“Day one, everything changes”: that was Gov. Spitzer’s promise, alluding to George Pataki’s administration. It was bad enough that the rebuilding of Ground Zero went nowhere during his hapless third term. What was worse, to his one-time supporters anyway, was the way Pataki–distracted by a possible presidential run–watched the destruction of the state Republican party with the interest of a halfwit studying a dustbunny.
So to most New Yorkers, “Day one, everything changes” sounded mighty good indeed. Unfortunately, in no time that promise was replaced by the livelier “I’m a f—ing steamroller, and I’ll roll over you.” Spitzer might have been talking to Republican minority leader James Tedisco, but it was definitely a warning shot to anyone else who dared disagree with him.
Enter Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno. A powerful upstate Republican, Bruno was suspected of abusing state-owned helicopters for personal use. Spitzer, in response, abused state troopers by ordering them to spy on Bruno. When it hit the papers, Spitzer first claimed no knowledge of the crime, blaming overzealous aides. When that proved untrue, Spitzer did what he does best: telling New Yorkers to mind their own business or, if that didn’t work, to go to hell–and don’t forget to pay the toll on your way down.
In an apparent effort to run out the clock, Spitzer stalled. Aides presented with subpoenas claimed executive privilege. Computer hard drives containing potentially implicating evidence disappeared. E-mails went missing. By August, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, refusing to be intimidated, announced he was widening his investigation. In what might have been a curious way of taking heat off the scandal, Spitzer announced his plan to give drivers licenses to illegal aliens. That’s like distracting cops from your child pornography collection by showing off your meth lab. On the other hand, it created the opportunity for yet another classic Spitzer quote. When Mayor Mike Bloomberg gently questioned the wisdom of licenses for illegals, the always-diplomatic governor replied, “He is wrong at every level–dead wrong, factually wrong, legally wrong, morally wrong, ethically wrong.” And you thought Rudy Giuliani was bullheaded.
One of the latest chapters of Troopergate involves investigator Herbert Teitelbaum, who doubles as the executive director of the Public Integrity Commission. (I know–integrity in Albany?) Apparently needing a little R&R from the scandal, Teitelbaum–a lawyer friendly with Spitzer’s aides–recently took a two-and-a-half week vacation to South America. And just so he can afford the ducle de leche, he received a $15,000 raise. Now for all you cynics out there, Elliot Spitzer didn’t hand out this raise. No sir. It was, instead, approved by the commission’s chairman, John Feerick . . . who just happens to be a Spitzer appointee.
While State Democrats haven’t publicly condemned their leader’s behavior–for that he’d have to do something really reprehensible, like approve school vouchers–neither have they defended him. Indeed, a little over six months after his inauguration, some were already griping that he was going to be a one-termer. And no wonder. The vindictive crime, the sloppy cover-up and subsequent stonewalling, the missing evidence, paranoid tongue-lashings and angry denials–even the shifty eyes and perpetual five o’clock shadow–Gov. Spitzer is positively Nixonian.
“Day one, everything changes.” Did it ever. Almost immediately upon taking office, New York’s Democratic governor created a scandal that refuses to go away and, in doing so, revived a state Republican party that was considered dead two years earlier. Perhaps Elliot Milhous Nixon might reconsider his choice of heavy equipment. Far from being a steamroller, he more resembles a steam shovel, digging his political grave.
Kevin Kusinitz is a writer living in New York.
