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Spitzer looks like Rudy redux

New York state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is seen after a fundraiser at the Glen Oaks Country Club in Old Westbury. (Newsday / Karen Wiles Stabile / February 15, 2006)

Ellis Henican

January 25, 2006

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Same prosecutorial personality.

Same my-way-or-the-highway consensus-building technique.

Same fast fuse when someone dares to question.

Could it be? Eliot Spitzer is turning out to have Rudy Giuliani's personality? The pre-9/11 edition, the Rudy who kept making people mad at him!

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"All he lacks is the Rudy comb-over and the messy marital life," one veteran campaign consultant was grumbling yesterday about the Democratic attorney general who expects to be governor. "Can't this guy get along with anyone?"

"Actually, I think Rudy has more charm than Eliot," said Doug Muzzio, the tart-tongued political scientist from Baruch College.

This is what is known in politics as faint praise. Which self-righteous prosecutor-type with his eye on higher office would you prefer to hang with?

"I'd rather go to dinner with Rudy, wouldn't you?" Muzzio said. "Rudy has more personality."

I should probably stop right here, before I go one dicey step further, and point out that Spitzer's likely opponent in the Democratic primary for governor, Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi, has never exactly been known for his bashfulness. There are those around Long Island who file his telephone messages under "return Hothead's call."

But this week at least, compared to Spitzer's recent bad vibes, Suozzi's looking like the Mr. Congeniality of the Democratic governor's race.

Imagine.

The headstrong attorney general struck again on Monday, catching New York Democrats off-guard by announcing he'd like state Sen. David Paterson for lieutenant governor. No dis on the state senator from Harlem. Most people in politics genuinely like him.

But in picking Paterson and telling almost no one in advance, Spitzer managed to tick off the four old lions of Harlem politics. That would be David Dinkins, Charles Rangel, Percy Sutton and Basil Paterson, all of whom had already endorsed another candidate and one of whom happens to be David Paterson's dad.

You know you lack a certain personal deftness when you offer a man a job, and his father ends up irritated with you. This is especially unfortunate when Dad's old cronies still carry some sway over your party's solid black base.

Rangel, the dean of the New York congressional delegation, certainly didn't sound too charmed. "When Eliot Spitzer, the world's smartest man, is telling me that he has picked his candidate and knows that his candidate can win, who am I to question the world's smartest man?" he told the Times with dripping sarcasm.

Ouch! And that's a Democrat talking about a Democrat he's actually endorsed!

There are plenty of these Spitzer-can-be-a-jerk anecdotes floating around this week. Hot explosions of temper in front of wide-eyed staff members. Sharp elbows tossed at local politicians judged slow to board the front-runner train.

But the current flurry began just before Christmas, when John C. Whitehead, the former chairman of Goldman Sachs, described a phone call he'd gotten one day. Spitzer was on the line, and boy was he steamed about an op-ed Whitehead had written!

"It's now a war between us," Whitehead quoted the governor-to-be as threatening him. "I will be coming after you."

Spitzer quibbles with the quotes. But does that carry echoes of early Rudy or what?

Some of this can surely be traced to Spitzer's training as a prosecutor. Like the Republican ex-mayor with the similar resume, Spitzer has sometimes seemed like someone who'd feel more comfortable saying "you're indicted" than "good morning."

Neither man came up through the give-and-take of retail politics. Neither man ever seemed to learn the human skills.

Some Democrats caution: Don't make too much of this.

"I haven't seen anything in Spitzer's personal or public persona that leads me to believe he's overly pushy," said state Sen. John Sabini of Queens. "It may be people looking for ways to knock down a front-runner. Of course, Tom Suozzi is not exactly a shrinking violet either."

And Spitzer himself seems to recognize he has some work to do in the play-well-with-others department. Lately, he's been trying out some new ways of explaining his tightly wound personality.

"You will not change the world by whispering," he said recently.

And he definitely wasn't whispering when he said it.