An Apology From Albany

By ELIOT SPITZER

Published: July 29, 2007

Albany

WE made mistakes.

Though two independent investigations proved that no illegal activity occurred on my watch, it is crystal clear that what members of my administration did was wrong — no ifs, ands or buts.

I have apologized to Joe Bruno, the Senate majority leader, and now I want to apologize to all New Yorkers.

What you’ve been reading about in the papers and watching on television this week is not what we are about. In fact, it represents just the opposite.

On my first day in office, I brought my staff together and told them what our guiding principles must be: “First, we’re going to fight for what we believe in. And second, we’re going to maintain the highest ethical standards while doing it.”

Over the past few weeks, two members of my administration forgot that second principle — creating an appearance that the State Police were being used inappropriately.

As soon as this became clear, we acted immediately and decisively, suspending one of my longtime advisers indefinitely and transferring the other out of the governor’s office. These steps were not taken lightly. Both of these people have served New York with distinction for decades.

But the message was simple: even though they didn’t break the law, they forgot what we were about, and that won’t be tolerated.

The worst thing that could happen now would be for this to stop our progress, preventing us from building on our many successes of the past six months: health insurance for every child; historic investment in our schools tied to accountability; the largest property tax cut in history; ethics, lobbying and campaign finance reform; breaking the impasse at ground zero; and a 20 percent cut in workers’ compensation rates that will save New York businesses $1 billion and make our state more competitive.

Albany had long been mired in gridlock, but we are changing that. Working together with the Senate and Assembly, we have managed to make remarkable progress — and we are on the brink of so much more.

There are two ways this can go.

We can get bogged down in partisan politics that serve only to distract us from the business at hand — the kind of head-hunting that we’re beginning to see for people in my administration who were cleared by these investigations.

Or we can move forward and pick up where we left off, addressing the long list of issues and challenges that matter to all New Yorkers — which are just as important today as they were last week.

So let us keep our eye on the ball and focus our energy and our resources on the needs of New Yorkers — fighting for a revitalized economy, more jobs, lower health care costs, better schools and lower taxes.

We will renew those two guiding principles I spoke about on my first day in office.

We will continue to fight vigorously to change the status quo on behalf of all New Yorkers. I’m never going to apologize for that. But we must recognize that this effort will succeed only if our means for changing the status quo are as honorable as our ends.

Eliot Spitzer is the governor of New York.

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The Education of Eliot

By GAIL COLLINS

Published: July 28, 2007

Eliot Spitzer accidentally dialed my number the other day, and when he identified himself I automatically said, “How are you doing?”

Really not the right greeting.

“Oh ... great,” the governor said, in a tone that conveyed both deep sarcasm and a near-bewilderment.

He cannot believe what has happened to him. Our brand-new, hot-shot governor, armed with his mighty mandate, laid low. The star of the Democratic Party of New York, whose sway is currently only slightly less sweeping than the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan, has been totally rolled by the 78-year-old leader of the State Senate Republicans.

Spitzer went to war with Joe Bruno, the Senate majority leader, over his reform agenda — the one that people elected him with nearly 70 percent of the vote to accomplish. He clearly got carried away with the governor-as-warrior metaphor. The Republicans claim that he called Bruno “senile” in a particularly nasty way. And although Spitzer denied it, the senator and his supporters reacted with such high-pitched wailing that voters must have had the impression that their governor was committing elder abuse.

Worse, members of the governor’s staff decided to collect evidence that Bruno was using the state helicopter and planes for trips that were not really about state business. It was a fool’s errand. Given the vagueness of the limits on this kind of perk, for Bruno to break the law, he’d have to buy a delicatessen in Times Square and fly down from Albany every day at 11 a.m. to handle the lunchtime rush.

The Republicans quickly turned the tables, claiming the Spitzer administration was using the State Police to spy on their leader. Before you knew it, the governor and his aides were on their way to testify before the State Ethics Commission. Meanwhile, the formerly dispirited Republicans were mouthing the dreaded question, “What did the governor know and when did he know it?”

Spitzer had promised to “bring passion back to Albany.” This was not what we thought he had in mind.

Now in a sane world, Joseph Bruno would not be taking taxpayer-funded helicopters to begin with. He’s a state senator for heaven’s sake. How much critical business can he have in Manhattan?

Bruno’s spokesman said the senator needs to get back and forth to the city to consult with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and with downstate businesses who find the Republicans “much more sympathetic to the needs of the business community.”

Can we have a show of hands? How many people think that the businesses would be willing to make a trip upstate for an opportunity to pour their wishes and hopes and dreams into a sympathetic Republican ear? And if Michael Bloomberg needs to see Joe Bruno, he can afford to hire his own helicopter. He can hire his own litter and have people carry him to Albany if he feels like it.

Bruno now sees himself as a one-man mission to protect traditional Albany from Eliot the Hun. “He’s an official with statewide responsibilities. Especially now in light of what’s come out,” said the spokesman, who referred to the helicopter investigation as “an attempt to annihilate us, to wipe us off the face of the earth, to kill him, do whatever it takes. ... ”

This is all very sad.

Spitzer is probably going to recover, perhaps as a chastened and more pleasant person. But he has lost the moment. When a new chief executive arrives, legislators are usually unsure of themselves for a while, and this is the precious soft spot when they can be pushed into doing big, bold things. If you screw it up, they’ll instantly revert to their preference for doing small, expensive things instead. (One of Hillary Clinton’s great pluses as a presidential candidate is that having been part of the great screwing up of the beginning of her husband’s administration in 1993, she may have figured out how not to do it again.)

The centerpiece of Spitzer’s first legislative session was supposed to be a campaign finance reform bill. Now, the price tag for passing it is escalating by the moment. Legislative pay raises! More construction projects!

It is a great tradition in Albany that no important bill ever emerges by itself. It gets mixed with pork and pet projects and lobbyists’ to-do lists until Bruno, Democratic Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver and the current governor sit down to create one huge hairball of a deal.

Spitzer was supposed to change that. But now here we are. Last week Senator Bruno was striding around the state like Rocky Balboa, while the governor was telling Danny Hakim and Nicholas Confessore of The Times that his wife had started asking, “What was wrong with going into the family business?” (High-end real estate.)

The hairball is back.

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Memo to Spitzer: No One Likes a Bully

By CLYDE HABERMAN

Published: July 10, 2007
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Nine years ago, I raised a question about Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, wondering if he had flunked recess in grade school. He seemed to have never gotten the hang of playing well with others.

It may be time to ask the same thing about Eliot Spitzer and his days at the Horace Mann School. In the playground known as Albany, the governor is now having an awfully hard time getting along with some of the other kids, especially the State Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno.

Not that this comes as a shock. Mayor Giuliani and Governor Spitzer may belong to different political parties, but in key respects they are cut from the same cloth.

Both are supremely smart (and don’t mind letting you know it). Both are exceedingly ambitious. Both are imbued with a certain self-righteousness. In previous jobs — Mr. Giuliani as United States attorney, Mr. Spitzer as New York’s attorney general — both pursued targets with a zeal that may have at times exceeded the bounds of fair play.

In short, both have what might be called temperament issues, except that some New Yorkers who disliked Mr. Giuliani’s style find the same traits somehow admirable in Mr. Spitzer. Those people are usually called Democrats.

But even some of his fellow Democrats are shaking their heads over Mr. Spitzer’s ferocity in taking on Mr. Bruno. Not that the Republican Senate leader is without blemish. He is under federal investigation, and he, too, has a mouth on him. For years, he has been one of the reasons that “Albany” and “dysfunctional” often appear side by side in political analyses.

Turning the hard-edged Mr. Bruno into a sympathetic figure is quite a trick. But Mr. Spitzer has managed to pull it off. When you are 48 and born to wealth (that would be the governor) and you harshly attack someone who is 78 and self-made (that would be Mr. Bruno), rounding up a large cheering section doesn’t come easy.

A few days ago, The New York Post quoted an unidentified state senator as saying that Mr. Spitzer, in a phone conversation, described Mr. Bruno as “old” and “senile” in singularly vulgar language. On Saturday, the governor said the conversation was not “as described,” but yesterday, he sidestepped the question entirely.

This might be dismissed as a case of he said/he said, except that it is hardly the first time that someone has told of Spitzerian unpleasantness only to run into denials from Mr. Spitzer or his aides. The pattern is unmistakable, and not easily ignored.

John C. Whitehead, the former Goldman Sachs chairman, said in 2005 that he had been threatened by Mr. Spitzer for defending a business leader under investigation by the attorney general. “ ‘It’s now a war between us, and you’ve fired the first shot,’ ” Mr. Whitehead, now 85, said Mr. Spitzer told him. “ ‘I will be coming after you. You will pay the price.’ ”

On that occasion, too, Mr. Spitzer denied uttering those words, though he later acknowledged that he might have handled the situation “more judiciously.”

William J. Larkin Jr., a Republican state senator, said Attorney General Spitzer had once threatened during a dispute to cut Mr. Larkin’s head off. An aide to Mr. Spitzer called the story untrue.

Last week, Mr. Bruno said that during a particularly angry exchange, the governor threatened him by saying, “ ‘I’m going to knock you down so that you will never get up.’ ” Presumably, Mr. Spitzer was speaking metaphorically. Mr. Bruno may be 78, but he is a former Army boxing champion.

And then there is Mr. Spitzer’s often-quoted warning to a Republican assemblyman that he is a “steamroller” who will run over opponents. He modified “steamroller” with an all-too-familiar profanity, apparently to show what a tough guy he can be. On this one, there were none of the usual denials from the governor or his staff.

IN defense of his temperament, Mr. Spitzer has said, “You will not change the world by whispering.” Maybe not. But you also might not change it if the people whose support you need write you off as “a bully” and an “overgrown kid,” prone to “tantrums” and “mean-spirited” behavior. The words in quotation marks are from Mr. Bruno.

Of course, the governor may not care what Mr. Bruno says, and instead may find comfort in this advice: “You must guard against arrogance,” but also “accept that maybe you really do know better and can see a little further down the road than others.”

Those words are from a 2002 book called “Leadership,” by a fellow named Giuliani.

E-mail: haberman@nytimes.com

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