For the first time, Eliot Spitzer acknowledged he’s weighing another run for office — as he expressed deep remorse for failing in the “fundamental duty” to be faithful to his wife, Silda.
In an interview with Fortune magazine editor-at-large Peter Elkind, the former governor is candid about his love of politics and his “agony” at being out of the game after resigning office in March 2008 following reports that he’d been snared in a high-priced call-girl scandal.
His comments to Elkind confirm a Post report from August 2009 that he has started talking to people about a political comeback — possibly for state comptroller or against fellow Democrat Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. Sources recently told The Post that in recent months, he asked his wife what she thought about him possibly running this year, and her reply was that it was too soon for him to do that, given the impact it would have on their healing family.
Of his conduct regarding his marriage, Spitzer told Elkind, “I made an egregiously horrendous judgment at every level.
“Not just in terms of the risk-reward calculus, which seems like a very antiseptic way of thinking about it, but also in terms of what it meant to my family . . . What more fundamental duty is there than to a spouse?”
And even as Spitzer continues to say he isn’t running again, Elkind said, “he declined to shut the door.”
“I love politics,” Spitzer told Elkind, author of “Rough Justice: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer.”
“The substance, the debate about the issues. As for a race in 2010? It is just hard to see,” he said. But he added, “I’ve never said I would never consider running for office again.”
Spitzer said his life was in a good place.
“Right now, I can tell you I have a family that is in one piece . . . That’s a measure of success after what we went through,” he said.
Elkind’s book is out April 20, and a screening of a documentary filmed in tandem will take place at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 24.