New York Governor Eliot Spitzer: Not Gone Yet—But Going?

By Joe Guzzardi

Inquiring readers want to know why I didn’t include in my list of our 2007 successes the saga of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s vigorous, and ultimately failed, effort to get driver’s licenses into illegal aliens’ hands.

Great question!

In many ways, the national effort to thwart Spitzer was our most significant victory in 2007. Spitzer, unlike President George W. Bush who needs Congressional approval for his subversive actions against America, perceived himself as having the power to approve the issuance of licenses to aliens by arbitrarily demanding county clerks ignore certain the provisions in state law.

But Spitzer was completely routed by a massive citizen uprising originating in New York and led by the county clerks and other outraged state employees. Anger quickly spread throughout the country.

After a four-week battle, Spitzer gave up—none too graciously—noting that it would be impossible for him to accomplish anything else on his legislative agenda while the license outrage swirled around him.

As 2008 begins, I have good news and bad news about Spitzer.

The good news is that since he revealed himself as a pro-illegal alien advocate his popularity has plummeted to lower than Bush II levels—no small feat for a politician in office for only a year.

In an amusing story in the Daily News, reporters Joe Mahoney and Elizabeth Benjamin tied certain Spitzer arrogant comments to his steady decline in the polls.