Eliot Spitzer, The New Governor: Just Another Local
by Constance Young

I had heard of Eliot Spitzer sightings in Pine Plains for several years. He was seen shopping at Peck's Food Market, Stewart's, and Deuel's, the local hardware store; and he's been spotted jogging or bicycling around the lakes wearing shorts and a nondescript baseball cap. For those of you who haven't heard: for more than ten years, Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer has been weekending in the area. Susan Crossley, a local realtor, told me that she had arranged for him to rent a Columbia County house bordering on Pine Plains well before he first became New York's Attorney General in 1998. Another friend who spoke to our Governor-elect at a recent fundraiser said that Spitzer told her that he grocery shops in Pine Plains "every chance he gets." I recently saw him lugging groceries to his old black van (whose make I was too flustered to notice) with a young, shy, pretty and long-reddish-haired teen whom I assumed must have been one of his three daughters. I realized then that I had probably brushed up against him many times but, despite the fact that he is a privileged and powerful man, he is so unassuming that he is easy to miss.

Spitzer's modest demeanor belies his impressive credentials. Here is what I found online about our new Governor-elect. Eliot Spitzer graduated from Princeton University in 1981 and from Harvard Law School in 1984, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He began his career in public service as a law clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Robert W. Sweet; and from 1986 to 1992 he served as Assistant DA in Manhattan under Robert Morgenthau. Spitzer rose to become Chief of the Labor Racketeering unit in the DA's office, where he successfully prosecuted organized crime and political corruption cases. His biggest case came in 1992, when he led the investigation that ended the Gambino organized crime family's control of Manhattan's trucking and garment industries. Spitzer later spent some time in private practice.

Eliot Spitzer seems to be universally liked. Everyone I spoke to appears to respect him as well. Every shopkeeper, Democrat and Republican alike, had good things to say about him.

Word around town is that, at the time of this writing, Spitzer is in contract to buy a house in the area. So we may soon be seeing even more of him, as he stops for some rest and relaxation in his travels between his Manhattan apartment and the New York State House in Albany.