ALBANY — Outraged Democrats rebuked Eliot Spitzer yesterday, accusing the disgraced former governor of settling scores with a bitter attack on Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the party’s all-but-certain gubernatorial nominee.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) said Spitzer’s blunt assessment of Cuomo as a politically driven Albany insider appeared “to be an attempt at payback” for Cuomo’s role in the ex-governor’s spectacular downfall.
“The only beneficiary of this is the Republican Party,” Silver told The Post. “Eliot Spitzer has had his opportunity, and now it’s time for someone else to have that opportunity. I don’t see how this helps him.”
ELIOT’S TRYING TO BE LIKE BUBBA
ESPADA FLAP SETS CUOMO PLAN BACK
Spitzer launched his broadside on Cuomo — his successor as state attorney general — in an interview published yesterday on the front page of The New York Times.
In it, the now widely derided former “Sheriff of Wall Street” criticized Cuomo for going soft on financial giants, and questioned whether the AG has “the stomach to pick political fights” with entrenched special interests.
Spitzer also complained about Cuomo’s July 2007 report on misuse of the State Police by staffers to the then-governor. The blockbuster report, which followed a series of stories in The Post, began a long slide that continued for Spitzer until he resigned amid revelations he patronized prostitutes.
“Andrew wrote a report that was designed to entirely whitewash one side of it and tee up the other side of a major issue,” Spitzer told the Times. “And he lost all sense of proportion, and I think it was driven by politics.”
Cuomo refused to comment on Spitzer’s remarks.
But longtime Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf — a onetime Cuomo critic and Spitzer political ally — said he had no choice but to side with the attorney general.
“Eliot Spitzer is a guy who took illegal loans in his campaign for attorney general,” Sheinkopf said.
“This is a guy who misused the State Police and public employees in the Troopergate scandal, and he should not be attacking a hardworking and accomplished attorney general. I’m kind of pissed.
“Eliot Spitzer is trying to influence the November election and make himself a player, but the fact is, he can’t.”
A source close to Cuomo said, “This is another pathetic effort by a disgraced Eliot Spitzer — a guy who admitted frequenting prostitutes when he was prosecuting pimps, and who is lucky to have escaped not one but several criminal charges, including federal money-laundering — to rehabilitate himself.”
Buffalo Assemblyman Mark Schroeder, a Cuomo supporter, said Spitzer “should be ashamed of himself.”
“New York state has been in free-fall ever since he was escorted out of the building two years ago — and it’s largely his doing,” said Schroeder, a Democrat. “He should take responsibility for himself and not cast aspersions on others.”
Another Cuomo aide dubbed as “suspicious” the timing of Spitzer’s attack. It came during what appears to be a coordinated effort to rehabilitate Spitzer’s image, including the release of a pro-Spitzer book and a new documentary expected to be sympathetic to the former governor.
Cuomo, who has not yet officially announced his candidacy for governor, faces no major Democratic challengers and holds wide leads in polls over three potential Republican opponents.
Additional reporting by Sally Goldenberg