In legal limbo, Spitzer tries to look ahead

ALBANY, N.Y. — Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was reading his newspaper when he was jolted by a comment made by his successor, David Paterson.

In a New York Times article Aug. 21, Paterson said aides to Spitzer had lacked experience in Albany and added that the Spitzer administration's management approach sometimes "just didn't work."

Spitzer grew upset, according to a senior aide to Paterson and another official. He picked up the phone, reached a Paterson aide, demanded a public apology from the governor and "issued threats, veiled and unveiled" against Paterson, said the aide, who insisted on anonymity.

No public apology was offered; Spitzer and Paterson have not spoken since June.

Six months have passed since Spitzer's quick exodus from office in March after being implicated as a patron of a prostitution ring.

One day, Eliot Laurence Spitzer was a national figure some saw destined for the White House; the next he was a target of ridicule.

In interviews with friends and former aides, and through e-mails obtained through a Freedom of Information request, a picture emerges of Spitzer, 49, trying to focus on the future and his family, with the threat of criminal charges hanging over him.

He is working at his father's real-estate firm and has discussed with friends whether to undertake charity, environmental or free legal work to try to rehabilitate his image.

But he has faced an adjustment as he confronts life without the power he once wielded.

In June, he traveled with his three daughters and his wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, to Southeast Asia, where the family could enjoy time together far from New York and the media.

But while the family was in Laos, news broke that the state's highest court had thrown out most of the charges in the civil case that Spitzer, as state attorney general, had brought against Richard Grasso, a former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, over Grasso's $139.5 million compensation package.

Spitzer called a reporter in New York — though it was the middle of the night there, given the time difference — to criticize the ruling and suggest people to call who would back up his view.

On Sept. 18, approached outside his father's Fifth Avenue office, he lamented the federal rescue of giant insurer American International Group (AIG) and defended the steps he had taken to force the ouster of its chairman, Maurice Greenberg, in 2005 amid an accounting scandal.

He said his political demise shouldn't diminish his achievements.

"I committed my sins, and I've paid for them," Spitzer said.

Then he added, referring to AIG: "But I was right."

Asked how he was doing, he shrugged and responded: "Making money is making money," before heading inside the building.

His daily routine, once scrutinized by a roving pack of reporters, aides and cameras, has taken on a more ordinary feel.

He sometimes jogs in Central Park before work, buys his own cup of coffee, drops his daughters at the school bus and hails a cab to the building that houses his family's real-estate business.

Sometimes people ask for his autograph or offer supportive words or smiles. Construction workers snicker, and cabdrivers take pictures of him on their cellphones.

His life will be in limbo until his legal troubles are resolved.

In the past two months, four of those charged in the prostitution ring have pleaded guilty, including a booking agent who has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

Prosecutors have not signaled whether they will charge the former governor.

His close friends remain in touch and have encouraged him to rehabilitate himself through some charitable work, though he is more focused for the moment on building on his father's already estimable wealth.

"I told him that I think, in the end, this incident will be a footnote to a great life lived greatly, and that he still has the ability to make enormous contributions," said Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor, who once counted Spitzer as a student and now counts him as a friend.

"One of his goals has to be to make this a footnote in his obituary, and not make it the lead."