Under pressure, Spitzer resigns

Lieutenant governor to take over Prosecutors vow no deal

NEW YORK - Governor Eliot Spitzer, whose rise to political power as a fierce enforcer of ethics in public life was undone by disclosure of his involvement with prostitutes, resigned yesterday, becoming the first New York governor to leave office amid scandal in nearly a century.

The resignation will be effective at noon Monday. Lieutenant Governor David A. Paterson, a state legislator for 22 years and the heir to a Harlem political dynasty, will be sworn in as New York's 55th governor, making him the state's first black chief executive and the first who is legally blind.

Spitzer announced he was stepping down at a grim press conference at his midtown Manhattan office, less than 48 hours after it had emerged that he had been intercepted on a federal wiretap confirming plans to meet a woman from a high-priced prostitution service in Washington. The disclosure had left the public stunned and angered and brought business in the state Capitol to a halt.

With his wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, at his side, Spitzer, a Democrat, said he would leave political life to concentrate on healing himself and his family.

"Over the course of my public life, I have insisted - I believe correctly - that people regardless of their position or power take responsibility for their conduct," he said. "I can and will ask no less of myself. For this reason, I am resigning from the office of governor."

Spitzer, 48, spoke in a somber but steady voice, his usual barking tone softened by contrition. He took no questions.

His wife, in a dark suit and a brightly colored scarf, looked off to the side of the podium, occasionally glancing up to reveal deep circles beneath her eyes.

Though he swept into office in January 2007 with a sweeping electoral mandate for change, Spitzer's time as governor was marked by fierce combat and costly stumbles. He faced a scandal last year after members of his staff used the State Police to disseminate damaging information about his chief Republican rival, Joseph L. Bruno, the majority leader of the state Senate.

During his remarks, which lasted less than three minutes, Spitzer did not address the pending criminal investigation, and it remained unclear what legal implications, if any, Spitzer would face.

But the US attorney investigating the case issued a statement shortly after the resignation, saying that his office did not have any arrangement with the governor.

In Albany, Spitzer's resignation was greeted with relief, shock, and a sense of the surreal. Legislative leaders from both parties voiced condolences to Spitzer's wife and three daughters and welcomed Paterson, whose amiable nature is widely viewed as a welcome antidote to Spitzer's often headstrong ways.

Bruno, who once labeled Spitzer "a spoiled brat," shunned the fiery language he had often used to refer to his chief political foe.

He said he hoped that Spitzer's ignominious fall would force lawmakers to focus more intently on addressing the state's financial crisis and declined to say how it might affect the fight for control of the state Senate this fall.

"I'm going to leave it to the governor and his family to sort out how they deal with present circumstances and the future," Bruno said at an unusually restrained press conference. "And frankly, I have them in my prayers."

The son of a real estate magnate, educated at Princeton University and Harvard Law School, Spitzer worked as a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney's office before becoming New York's attorney general in 1998.

It was there that he built a reputation as a prosecutorial avenger bringing some of Wall Street's biggest names to heel, pressuring banks, insurance companies, and brokerage houses to pay defrauded investors huge settlements and to adopt tighter regulations.

The audacity of Spitzer's vision and his combative style made him a reviled figure on Wall Street. But to millions of Americans who felt swindled in an age when executive salaries and the income gap between rich and middle class were rapidly growing, Spitzer was viewed as a guardian against corporate excess.

He was so successful at using the relatively limited office of state attorney general to redress the regulatory failures of the federal Securities and Exchange Commission that he was swept into the governor's office in a landslide. Some of Spitzer's admirers had mused that he might one day be the first Jewish president.

Paterson, who asked Spitzer to delay his departure until Monday so he could be sworn in before a joint session of the Legislature, issued a brief written statement offering condolences to the Spitzers and promising to quickly turn his attention to governing.

"It is now time for Albany to get back to work, as the people of this state expect from us," he said.

Spitzer becomes the first New York governor to resign from office since 1973, when Nelson A. Rockefeller stepped down to devote himself to a policy group, and the first to be forced out since William Sulzer was impeached in 1913 over campaign contribution fraud.

Spitzer ended his remarks yesterday by pledging to return to public service outside the political realm, after a period of atonement with his family.

A proud man humbled, he invoked a common aphorism to make a final nod toward the enduring American belief in the possibility of redemption. "As human beings," he said, "our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."