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Spitzer
Well, the announcement that Elliot Spitzer will run for governor of New York surely has to rank as one of the least-unexpected political stories of the decade (Schumer's decision not to run was interesting), but good luck! Early polling has it Spitzer 44, Pataki 41 which doesn't look good for the incumbent, though it's super-meaningless two years away from the day and especially meaningless in light of the fact that Pataki may not run. I can only assume that anyone hoping to cut Spitzer's political career short will have no trouble raising money.
December 7, 2004 | Permalink
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Comments
My guess is Pataki doesn't run, unless it's to oppose Senator Clinton (in the event Guiliani doesn't run).
Posted by: P.B. Almeida | Dec 7, 2004 3:24:46 PM
Just out of curiousity, what's Spitzer's religion?
Posted by: No Name | Dec 7, 2004 3:31:47 PM
Just out of curiousity, what's Spitzer's religion?
Spitzer.
Posted by: Delicious Pundit | Dec 7, 2004 3:52:35 PM
Schumer didn't run because it would leave a hole in the Dem side of the Senate. And with a Repub governor . . .
Posted by: The Fixer | Dec 7, 2004 4:04:02 PM
Pataki won't run again. He knows that you can't get a 4th term. Just ask Mario Cuomo.
Posted by: Al | Dec 7, 2004 4:31:01 PM
I think Big Business is probably much safer with Spitzer in the Governor's Mansion than it is with him as Top Cop.
They should be writing him checks ... if they're smart enough to merit their gazillions.
Posted by: Anderson | Dec 7, 2004 4:53:27 PM
MY, doesn't your brother intern for his office? I see the inside scoop coming to an American Prospect near you. . . .
Posted by: Kriston Capps | Dec 7, 2004 6:08:04 PM
Has anybody heard anything about this Marsh & McLennan deal? For a crusader like Spitzer, for whom an appearance of impropriety is enough to get you locked up for years, this seems fishy. He sues M&M and when M&M fires its management and hires Spitzer's old boss (and campaign donor) Cherkasky as chairman, Spitzer decides not to file criminal charges.
http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/relatedarticles/45088.php
Another similar case a few months ago, whereby a buyer sued Donald Trump was decided in favor of Trump, who was a big Spitzer donor. It got some press so Spitzer gave the cash back.
http://www.businessweek.ch/bwdaily/dnflash/may2004/nf20040521_6099_db035.htm
Now I don't know much about the merits of these cases, maybe NY is just that insular where all the bigshots know each other and forget about how shady this all looks, but for a guy like Spitzer who revels in his reputation as an anti-corruption crusader, one would think he'd be a bit more careful about how these deals look.
Posted by: Reg | Dec 7, 2004 10:35:08 PM
I'm agnostic about Spitzer pretty much for the reasons Reg brings up above. The kind of reputation Spitzer has been building is incredibly vulnerable to the least bit of evidence that he isn't so pure. However, I'm betting that unless the republicans get a huge candidate like Guiliani to run, Spitzer will win. (Pataki is bland to most, hated by some, or at least that's how I read the press.)
Posted by: Jackmormon | Dec 7, 2004 11:49:17 PM
Has anybody heard anything about this Marsh & McLennan deal?
I see the anti-Spitzer talking points are already set to go, two years in advance. Another sign that Karl Rove's influence on the US political scene will extend far into the future, long after the man himself retires. Destroy your opponent's reputation at its strongest point, etc. American politics has been poisoned but good.
This should serve as an object lesson to both camps in the recent brouahha that's been going on around here. Mirroring the Republicans' success in the Rove era really doesn't mean moving to the right or to the center. It means finding the willingness to destroy your opponent's reputation and indeed his life. In other words, giving payback to the Republicans doesn't mean becoming more ideologically strident. What it means is playing dirty.
How would this manifest itself in practice? For starters, Republicans, for whatever reason, are much more vulnerable to charges of marital infidelity and/or sexual deviance than are Democrats. There are certainly counterexamples on both sides, but as a general rule this is true. See, for instance, what happened to Bill Clinton vs. what happened to Bob Livingston. This might have something to do with the fact that for the man on the street, one of the most basic fallback reasons for voting for a generic Republican is often the perception that "well at least he's a good traditional family man." In 2006, a Democratic Karl Rove wouldn't approach, say, the Ohio Senate race primarily by turning up the criticism of Mike DeWine's policies on the war or the tax cut or whatever. Instead, he'd be sending goons out there to start an under-the-radar whispering campaign that DeWine is a philanderer or a deviant or something like that. There are ways this can be done without leaving any fingerprints, even without a talk radio network. The art of character assassination is really pretty well-developed. And once you accomplish it successfully, the policy disputes frankly become sort of irrelevant.
If you don't find this kind of thing distasteful, then you're not a human being. The whole point of a successful character assassination is that you destroy a person's reputation where it isn't deserved. If they deserved it, they probably already would have thought up a way to inoculate themselves from it. Rick Santorum may be a horrible person in a lot of ways, but as far as I know he really does love his family. But mirroring the Republicans' tactics means sullying his reputation in the latter area, not the former. I don't know if Democrats will ever be willing to follow Rove so far down that road, but that is what emulating the Republicans' "backbone" means, not becoming more vehement about the issues. The ideological debates that have been going on here are really kind of irrelevant.
Posted by: JP | Dec 8, 2004 12:04:26 AM
re Spitzer and M&M: Cherkasky is (based on what I've heard from people who are personally acquainted with him) an upstanding guy. He actually ran a very tangential part of M&M's operations but kept rising through the ranks because everyone on top of him kept having to resign as each new scandal arose. It's hardly a quid pro quo, since the individuals in question are still going to face prosecution and Cherkasky's main vested interest lies with his subsidiary, not Marsh and McLennon as a whole.
Posted by: BW | Dec 8, 2004 3:38:13 AM
Now I don't know much about the merits of these cases, maybe NY is just that insular where all the bigshots know each other and forget about how shady this all looks, but for a guy like Spitzer who revels in his reputation as an anti-corruption crusader, one would think he'd be a bit more careful about how these deals look.
The world is that insular, after all James Bath was a GW financier and an agent of the Bin Laden Group, GH Bush works for Carlyle( one of the investors was the Bin Laden family), one of the biggest Bush backers was Ken Lay, and we won't discuss Cheney's conflict of interest with Halliburton.
Posted by: Don Quijote | Dec 8, 2004 9:01:33 AM
Re: Spitzer's religion
I don't know what his theological views are, but unless he stands up and says otherwise, he will be perceived as Jewish, which is his background. There have been many references to him as a possible "First Jewish President," which is bad news for Joe Lieberman.
Posted by: C.J.Colucci | Dec 8, 2004 12:43:22 PM
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