Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

According to an AP report , former Attorney General and Governor of New York Elliot Spitzer was hoisted by his own petard because the so called “dirty tricks” commonly employed by attorney generals in this the land of the free and home of the brave were not transferable once Spitzer had become governor of New York. The canary who sang to Albany County District Attorney P. David Soares was Spitzer’s former communication director Darren Dopp. Before Dopp began his employment with then Attorney General Spitzer, he was a reporter for the Associated Press. In his previous capacity, Dopp likely would have gone to jail to protect his source. As communications director for Governor Spitzer, Dopp was just a yeoman functionary attempting to burnish the public persona of his boss. He was successful in this possibly because he had friends in high places within the journalistic community. When Dopp was threatened with jail, he began to sing. Dopp told Soares that Spitzer had “directly ordered him ...

Now that Governor of New York Elliot Spitzer has been hobbled by scandal , are there any lessons to be learned in the Spitzer mess for our own crusading Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who is said to be seriously considering a run for governor? The template for the successful attorney general here in Connecticut was fashioned by once attorney general, now senator, Joe Lieberman, who took a sleepy office and transformed it into a major indignation outpost. In the colonial period, the attorney general was the King’s lawyer; but the modern office, first under the hand of Lieberman and now Blumenthal, has been transformed into a consumer protection agency with subpoena powers. When Spitzer, as attorney general, wanted to set right defective businesses, he would direct his sprawling office to examine all the records he had gathered through his subpoena powers and, having found a chick in the armor of the business, there he would thrust his lance. Pre-prosecution publicity, the death kn...

According to an extensive report in The New York Times , the state’s new governor, the redoubtable Elliot Spitzer, once attorney general of the Empire state, has slipped on blood. Evidentially, carrying into his new office some of the bad habits he so carefully cultivated as New York’s attorney general – some dare call him Caligula – Spitzer planted a story in an upstate newspaper that was designed to discredit his chief foe in the state’s legislature, State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. Problem was the information leaked to the paper was rancid, and not entirely true. Newspapers generally resent being manipulated in this way and, even as I write, it may be supposed that several managing editors of various newspapers are knotting the rope they will use to hang Spitzer. The poor fellow probably lapsed for a moment into his discarded skin as attorney general and thought he was dealing not with a powerful legislator but rather with some small time businessman who had run afoul of o...