Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Eliot Spitzer Would Face Fellow Jew Scott Stringer in Battle for Comptroller

Eliot Spitzer is re-entering politics to run for New York City comptroller, five years after resigning as New York governor in a prostitution scandal.

Spitzer, a Democrat, said he saw a more activist role for the comptroller, the city’s chief financial officer, and told Reuters he hoped voters were ready to move on from his scandal. Spitzer said he decided to run during the July 4 holiday weekend.

“This is the dream: to be able to assume office on behalf of the public once again,” Spitzer said.

The city comptroller manages five pension funds, does budget analyses and audits city agencies. Spitzer, 54, said he hopes the financial community wants someone “who understands markets” in the comptroller’s office, which he aims to revitalize in the way he did the attorney general’s office a decade ago.

He became known in that office as the “sheriff of Wall Street” for his success in aggressively prosecuting financial crimes.

Spitzer became governor in 2007 but resigned the next year after being identified as a client in a prostitution ring. He became a television commentator after leaving public office.

Current comptroller John Liu is running for mayor.

The deadline to file a petition to be on the Sept. 10 primary ballot to succeed Liu is Thursday, by which time Spitzer must collect 3,750 signatures.

If he gets on the ballot, Spitzer is expected to face Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer in a Democratic primary.

Other candidates for comptroller include Republican John Burnett, a Wall Street executive, and former madam Kristin Davis.

Spitzer’s announcement comes as another scandal-tarnished New York Democratic politician, former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, attempts his own political comeback. Weiner is a front-runner in the New York mayoral race, two years after admitting sending lewd photographs of himself to women.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.