Eliot Spitzer was lucky that newspapers exposed his yen for high-priced Washington hookers. The scandal that ensued allowed Spitzer to resign in disgrace from the New York governorship in 2008 for sleazy behavior, distracting attention from his egregious abuses of power and skirting of the law throughout his career. Now, because his political downfall is associated in the public consciousness with personal foibles, he has an opening to regain power, which he will no doubt abuse once more.

In 1994, Spitzer launched his political career by cheating and then lying about it. A lawyer and prosecutor without a very public profile, Spitzer had no political experience when he decided to run for New York State Attorney General that year. But he did have a very rich father. Though campaign finance law limited the amount of money that his real estate mogul father could donate to his campaign, as a candidate, Spitzer could use an unlimited amount of his own money. So, Spitzer got around these restrictions by having his father issue him personal loans on favorable terms that the younger Spitzer then transferred to his campaign. He then sold Manhattan apartments that were gifts from his father to help pay off the debt. Over the course of two campaigns for AG (the unsuccessful 1994 one and the triumphant 1998 race), Spitzer effectively received millions in campaign donations from his father, according to the New York Times, even while publicly insisting that he was financing the runs himself. Eventually, he was forced to admit to the Times that he had been receiving help from his father, even while maintaining he had done nothing wrong.