Nary a day goes by without fresh evi dence of Team Spitzer’s utter lack of appreciation for the appropriate limits of political power, and yesterday was no exception.
As reported this morning by Post State Editor Fredric U. Dicker, Gov. Spitzer – in a phone conversation with a Republican state senator from Long Island – called Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno “an old, senile piece of s—.”
The mind reels.
Darren Dopp, the governor’s chief spokesman, denied that the insult had been issued. But his denial rings hollow.
After all, another state senator, William Larkin, says Spitzer once threatened to “cut [my] head off.” After that, scatological insults seem almost restrained.
And Dopp, at best, has had an arm’s-length relationship with the truth regarding the administration’s increasingly clumsy political attacks on Bruno.
Regarding allegations of State Police spying on Bruno, Dopp has changed his story more times than Lindsay Lohan’s been to rehab.
In a nutshell, Dopp claims that the records prepared on Bruno by state troopers are not unique. But no one from Spitzer’s office or the State Police has been able to produce documents for any other official comparable to those compiled on Bruno.
These are critical points – because they lend enormous credence to the notion that Spitzer’s office was in fact conducting what Bruno terms “political espionage” against him.
Dopp insists there was never any “surveillance” by the State Police. So why, then, did he change his story over the course of the week?
Why did he first tell The Post that a program to keep records when troopers transport officials began only after Mike Long, the state Conservative Party chairman, complained of armed police at fund-raising events (complaints Long vociferously denies having made)?
Why, two days later, did Dopp deny that police kept such records? And if that was the case, why did Dopp need to bring up Long’s name in the first place?
Equally important, Dopp insists that Bruno wasn’t singled out. Spitzer’s folks say they asked the State Police for Bruno’s travel logs only because The Times-Union in Albany requested them under the Freedom of Information Law, and Bruno’s itineraries weren’t available.
So Spitzer aides then told police to create a log for Bruno – from memory, no less.
But the Freedom of Information Law specifically exempts agencies from any obligation to produce records they don’t already have.
So why have troopers reconstruct Bruno’s travels?
It’s obvious why: Spitzer’s aides were fishing for dirt on their political foe – dare we say conducting “political espionage”?
And they thought they found it, too: The day after the Times-Union story appeared, Spitzer called for probes by state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Albany District Attorney David Soares.
Clearly, Bruno was singled out.
Now it’s up to Cuomo and Soares to figure out if it was all legal.
That will take time.
In the meanwhile, Gov. Spitzer would do well to learn how to control what is clearly a very nasty temper.