Free Republic

Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s retreat from his plan to permit illegal immigrants to obtain the same kind of driver’s licenses as other New Yorkers drew angry reactions yesterday from civil liberties advocates and immigrant groups, some of whom described the shift as a stunning betrayal. The governor has been under fierce assault from conservative groups and others since proposing last month to allow illegal immigrants to get New York driver’s licenses. But joined by the federal secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, in Washington yesterday, the governor announced a starkly different version of his plan. It calls for separate tiers of...

ALBANY, Oct. 22 — Spurred by overwhelming public opposition to Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s decision to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, the State Senate yesterday passed legislation that would overturn the policy. The 39-19 vote, which passed with the support of all the Republican senators present as well as several key Democrats, capped a debate laden with accusations of racism and demagoguery and warnings about terrorism and voter fraud. The vote also followed a raucous protest outside the Capitol, during which some opponents of the plan called for the governor to be recalled or impeached. The clashes over the...

ALBANY, Oct. 16 — Back in May, in the private dining room of his Park Avenue office building, Peter S. Kalikow marked the end of his six-year reign as chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority with a heartfelt news conference. It was time to open a new chapter in his life, Mr. Kalikow said, and he would step down as soon as Gov. Eliot Spitzer named a successor. Five months later, Mr. Kalikow, 64, is still on the job. Mr. Spitzer picked a replacement, H. Dale Hemmerdinger, in June. But the State Senate has yet to vote on the nomination....

ALBANY, Sept. 20 — The Albany County district attorney said on Thursday that Gov. Eliot Spitzer and his administration did not break any laws and acted within their authority in their handling of travel records related to the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno. The news was a victory for the Spitzer administration, which was knocked back on its heels when the state attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo — a Democrat, as is the governor — issued a report in mid-July that found that the governor’s staff had misused the State Police in their effort to discredit Mr. Bruno, the...

ALBANY, Sept. 13 — Private lawyers for two top aides to Gov. Eliot Spitzer said on Thursday that they would not fight subpoenas issued by the State Ethics Commission earlier this week. Terence L. Kindlon, a lawyer for Darren Dopp, the governor’s communications director, said his client told him to abandon his plan to fight a subpoena and instead cooperate with the commission. And Steven F. Reich, a lawyer for Richard Baum, the secretary to the governor, also said his client would not fight the subpoena issued to him. Two months ago, the governor said he and his staff had...

ALBANY, Sept. 6 — Senate Republicans grilled the state inspector general, Kristine Hamann, during a public hearing Thursday, and suggested that she faltered in her investigation of Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s administration and lacked candor. Ms. Hamann, an experienced prosecutor, defended her handling of her inquiry, and a law professor called by Republican senators did not dispute her contention on a key issue: that she did not have clear standing to confer subpoena-issuing powers to Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, who was conducting his own inquiry. Ms. Hamann also said she opposed Senate legislation that would compel her to refer future...

ALBANY, Aug. 23 — Acknowledging his problems navigating the turbulent waters of Albany, Gov. Eliot Spitzer in recent weeks has reached out to a diverse group of prominent figures for advice in putting his scandal-marred administration back on course. Members of the informal group, who come from a wide range of professional and political backgrounds, include Robert E. Rubin, the treasury secretary under President Clinton; Jerry Speyer, a real estate developer who has advised governors since Hugh L. Carey; and Abraham M. Lackman, a Republican and former top aide to the governor’s chief political rival, the Senate majority leader, Joseph...

Ever since taking office, Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York has made a name for himself as the avenger, the reformer, a political whirlwind who kicks up dust wherever he goes. Albany’s smarmy politics certainly need a reformer and, within reason, an avenger. But now a devastating report from a fellow Democrat, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, has accused Mr. Spitzer’s administration of abusing its power in the name of reform. The report describes how the governor’s office used the state police to collect damaging information about Mr. Spitzer’s chief opponent, Joseph Bruno, the Senate majority leader, and then released that...

Gov. Eliot Spitzer is proposing a major expansion of New York’s database of DNA samples to include people convicted of most crimes, while making it easier for prisoners to use DNA to try to establish their innocence. Currently, New York State collects DNA from those convicted of about half of all crimes, typically the most serious. The governor’s proposal would order DNA taken from those found guilty of any misdemeanor, including minor drug offenses, harassment or unauthorized use of a credit card, according to a draft of his bill. It would not cover offenses considered violations, like disorderly conduct. In...

ALBANY, April 17 — Campaign-finance reform tops Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s agenda for the rest of the legislative session, which has two more months to run. “The first step, and this is the predicate of any meaningful conversation on campaign-finance reform, is lowering dramatically the threshold for contributions” — which would require legislative action — the governor said at a press conference on Tuesday to discuss his priorities. But as he has learned in his first few months in office, the Legislature often has its own, far different, agenda. When the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, spelled out his priorities...

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s budget director mounted a blistering attack on Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s proposed state budget yesterday, asserting that it would create an $862 million shortfall in the New York City budget for the fiscal year that starts on July 1. The city’s budget director, Mark Page, warned that such a shortfall, if other revenues were not found, could result in an 8 percent across-the-board cut in agency spending or imperil the mayor’s $1 billion plan to cut taxes. Mr. Bloomberg’s plan calls for reducing property taxes by about 5 percent for one year, eliminating the city sales tax...

ALBANY — Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s $2 billion stem cell initiative is getting a cool reception in the Assembly. Specifically, Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, below, raised a number of red flags about the proposal in an address this month to fellow Assembly Democrats and in a memo he sent to the Spitzer administration. “Much of this is garden-variety economic development pork that’s hiding behind stem cells,” Mr. Brodsky said. As chairman of the Assembly’s Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, Mr. Brodsky would have oversight over the new public benefit corporation that would be created under the proposal. Mr. Brodsky’s teenage...

Eliot Spitzer had an image problem. It was early 2006, and Republicans were attacking Mr. Spitzer — the New York State attorney general and a Democratic candidate for governor — as a hothead who cowed critics with bullying legal tactics. Around that time a stranger came into Mr. Spitzer’s life: a fast-talking adman turned suspense writer from Stuyvesant Town named Jimmy Siegel. Mr. Siegel was a political fan looking for an idol and thought Mr. Spitzer might be it. So Mr. Siegel snagged a ticket to a Spitzer fund-raiser, downed three glasses of red wine, which helped fortify his nerve,...

ALBANY, Oct. 26 — Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the Democratic nominee for governor, withdrew his support from the embattled state comptroller, Alan G. Hevesi, on Thursday, and made it clear that he expected the State Senate to consider removing the comptroller from office for using a state employee to chauffeur his wife. Gov. George E. Pataki, meanwhile, was returning early from a trip to Hungary to deal with the Hevesi situation. His aides said he would decide by Friday whether to call on the Senate to consider removing Mr. Hevesi; in the meantime, they considered selecting several well-known former prosecutors...

If there was a moment when Eliot Spitzer’s ride to fame as New York attorney general was nearly derailed, it came on April 8, 2002. That was the day Mr. Spitzer stunned Wall Street by using a little-known state law to win a court order requiring Merrill Lynch to disclose potential business conflicts involving its stock analysts. The maneuver brought a secret, long-running investigation into the open, and forced Merrill Lynch — and, later, other big firms — to make concessions they had resisted and helped turn Mr. Spitzer into a political star. But what few people noticed in those...

John Faso aggressively attacked Eliot Spitzer as self-aggrandizing and politically timid last night in their final debate in the race for governor, while Mr. Spitzer — who has rarely been so on the defensive — denounced Mr. Faso’s “angry, extreme rhetoric.” Struggling to close a 50-point deficit in opinion polls, Mr. Faso unleashed a stream of harsh words throughout the hourlong televised debate, saying Mr. Spitzer, the state attorney general, had used “bluster and intimidation” in his prosecutions and twice calling him “asleep at the switch” as Medicaid fraud ran rampant. Yet the clearest calculation of Mr. Faso, the Republican...

BALDWINSVILLE, N.Y., Sept. 7— Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said on Thursday that if elected governor he would close hospitals and drastically cut spending in an effort to restore fiscal discipline to New York State. Giving his most candid glimpse yet of his plans to put the state’s fiscal house in order, Mr. Spitzer said that to fulfill his pledge to cut property taxes he would have to take aim at the state’s health care system. “We’re going to take the tough medicine,” he said at a campaign stop in this Syracuse suburb, adding: “I’m saying to folks this isn’t all...

Borrowing a page from Karl Rove's playbook, John Faso plans to spend the next five months convincing voters that his likely opponent in the governor's race, Eliot Spitzer, comes with a defining liability: Mr. Spitzer would raise your taxes. Mr. Faso, who became the presumptive Republican nominee on Tuesday when William F. Weld withdrew his candidacy, has already used the sort of tactics that characterized John Kerry as a flip-flopper in 2004. In doing so, Mr. Faso is also playing to one of his strengths: Both his friends and his opponents say he is a tenacious debater, who would be...

MANHASSET, N.Y., April 12 — Staking a position on a politically sensitive issue, Eliot Spitzer, who is running for governor, promised at a press conference on Wednesday that his administration would push for a $1 billion bond to pay for stem cell and other medical research. Mr. Spitzer, the state's attorney general, said the money for research on stem cells and other promising treatments would be the "centerpiece" of the state's health care policy if he were elected. In making the announcement at a medical research center on Long Island, Mr. Spitzer ventured onto the home turf of his rival,...

After a stormy political winter, New York Republicans are suddenly speaking to donors, party activists, and reporters about a candidate for governor who just might help their chances to win this fall. Oh, and did they mention he was a Democrat? The candidate, Thomas R. Suozzi, the Nassau County executive, is receiving a lot of Republican love these days because he is trying to do what the Republicans have failed to do over the last year: bloody the leading Democratic candidate for governor, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who sits atop a 50-point lead in the polls. Mr. Suozzi and Mr....