Your staff writer Tony Scott indignantly declared, “Call me overly
skeptical, but Spitzer’s actions as attorney general seemed to have been a way
to consolidate his base of support rather than having stemmed from genuine care
for those he defended and represented.” Call me overly skeptical, but does it
really matter? Spitzer’s record prior to this inflammatory sex scandal, as he
says, was for serving as “an altruistic defender of the working and middle
classes against dangerous corporate interests.” He earned this reputation,
among other things, for investigating the Gambino crime family, whose list of
criminal behavior ranges from paid murder to toxic waste violations. I hope we
can all agree these are weightier crimes.

Righteous Republicans have spent so much time pointing fingers at Spitzer and
whispering about his bedroom activities, the frontier of politics looks like a
high school cafeteria where eager teens discuss who hooked up over the weekend.
Personally, I care more about a representative’s record than his headboard,
and I’m disappointed to find that Spitzer’s questionable behaviors in other
dealings are often secondary text in the news. I applaud Scott for mentioning
the other ethics accusations that swirled around Spitzer during his time for
office, as I see them as more credible fodder for resignation than this freshly
repackaged Clinton case. But why is it that the sex scandal has negated the
credibility of Democrats, instead of a scandal with more “merit“, say, the
Joseph Bruno dealings? Why is Spitzer’s personal life the one we have to
examine under a microscope? We, as voters who willingly elect officials, should
readjust our lenses and start to investigate for ourselves what makes these
candidates worth the ticket, or whether they’re worth the ticket at all.