He forgot about the church ladies: The Rev. Floyd Flake had to withdraw his endorsement of Eliot Spitzer after his congregation erupted in anger. (Ellis Kaplan)
The Rev. Floyd Flake, senior pastor of the Allen AME Cathedral of Queens, former congressman and one of the class acts in New York politics, endorsed Eliot Spitzer for city comptroller the other day.
And then he recanted.
Why was that?
It’s clear that Flake came under enormous pressure from Democratic Party leaders, but there seems to be more to it than that.
For it’s also said that a different sort of pressure was brought by folks with no establishment credentials at all — the ladies of the Allen congregation, a 20,000-member assembly that has engaged the African-American middle class in Queens for decades.
They found Flake’s endorsement abhorrent, says an Allen congregant, simply because of the shameful disregard for his family that Spitzer exhibited during his Client 9 days.
“They have no patience for a man who would treat his wife, and his daughters, like that,” he adds, “and they let Floyd know it.”
What this means in electoral terms isn’t clear — but it does underscore an indisputable truth about Eliot Spitzer: The man couldn’t buy a scruple on eBay.
And nobody knows this better than his wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, and his three daughters, who understandably haven’t been seen in public with him since forever.
And if they, who know him best, can’t abide the disgraced ex-governor, why should the voters be any less judgmental?
A man of character, of course, wouldn’t subject his family to another round of exquisite public humiliation — no matter what form it takes, you just know it’s coming — and that’s not accounting for the old wounds raked open by the current campaign.
But character isn’t in Eliot’s toolbox, and never has been. Also missing: sound judgment, a sense of proportion and respect for propriety and for the law.
What’s bewildering, as the Sept. 10 primary election draws closer, is why Spitzer’s opponent in that contest isn’t making more of such clearly disqualifying pathologies.
Take Spitzer’s monies-for-honeys cash-cleansing, for example.
Right now, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer is bogged down in a metaphysical parsing of the US penal code as it relates to money laundering. He said that’s what Spitzer did to finance his whore-mongering; the ex-governor snarled back and Stringer commenced to explain himself. Incoherently.
What the beep needs to say is this (and it’s not too late): Look, Eliot, you needed five grand for Ashley Dupre, and you didn’t want Silda to know, so you asked the bank to break the law by keeping your name off the transaction, They refused, and dropped a dime on you to the feds and a heartbeat later you weren’t governor anymore.
You call it what you want; I call it money-laundering. Sue me.
And Stringer needs to say it up front, in public and often — with his own wife and two children beside him.
Because you don’t win fights with sociopaths unless you engage them on their own terms.
And because that wasn’t the first time Eliot Spitzer has — how to put it? — dry-cleaned cash to serve his ambitions, and it would be a pity if he gets away with it now.
Back in the day, the then-candidate for state attorney-general spun a deceitful web around a $5-million loan to finance that campaign. Spitzer said he had mortgaged apartments his real-estate-developer father had given him — but it turned out that Dear Old Dad was paying off the loan, and that did serious violence to the election law.
Not that Spitzer was ever called to account for it.
Silda went along for the ride then, but could she ever have imagined what was to come? And it is to her great credit that she wants no part of him now.
Neither should New York City.
It’s not just that Spitzer’s public career is bookended by odious money manipulation, though that’s bad enough.
It’s simply that Eliot Spitzer can’t control himself — his gross Sheriff of Wall Street excesses, his inability to practice civil politics as governor (best illustrated by his abuse of state troopers to spy on, if not frame, an opponent in the Troopergate affair) and the Client 9 debacle stand out, but his utter contempt for his family predominates.
Anthony Weiner may fantasize about being dangerous. Eliot Spitzer is the real deal.
And Scott Stringer needs to make that case — but he doesn’t have much time left.