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He went on to Harvard Law, where he wrote his way onto the prestigious law review. Market commentator Cramer, who met Spitzer on their first day, tells an anecdote meant to show the roots of Spitzer's rectitude. For a criminal-procedure class, Cramer says, he organized a group of students to alternate attendance and share notes. Spitzer, he claims, thought it was gaming the system and threatened to tell the professor. Spitzer says it's a good story but untrue. Either way, Cramer's tale is revealing (about both men): "Eliot was earnest in an atmosphere where you felt stupid to be earnest. He was kind of a goofy guy--so straight, he didn't have an ounce of guile."
After graduating, Spitzer clerked for a judge, then joined the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a job he found unfulfilling. He did what almost no one does--quit the firm before the requisite resume-enhancing two years. Next he joined the Manhattan district attorney's office, where he spent six years pursuing the Gambinos and other big-time criminals. He returned to private practice, this time at the firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, before making a sudden decision in 1994 to run for New York attorney general. He got crushed, finishing fourth in a four-way primary race. Worse, opponents later claimed he relied improperly on family wealth to finance his campaign, a charge that became an issue in his next race.
Spitzer then helped found a private law firm, Constantine & Partners, and began planning for the following election. He traveled up and down New York, rubbing shoulders with key state political players and meeting the masses. He hit almost every county, putting 70,000 miles on the family minivan. Keith Wright, a state assemblyman from Harlem, remembers campaigning with Spitzer, walking into subway stations, senior centers, hairdressers'. At the end of the day he offered Spitzer a ride home. Spitzer declined, saying he would catch a gypsy cab. "I thought, That's my man," Wright says. "Man of the people--in a gypsy cab. Not bad for a stiff little white kid from Riverdale."
The 1998 election foreshadowed the presidential vote of 2000. The race between Spitzer and the incumbent, Dennis Vacco, was so tight that it took six weeks before Spitzer was finally declared the winner, by about 25,000 votes. (In a memorable dissent, Vacco claimed that "dead people" and illegal immigrants had voted for Spitzer, a charge immortalized in the tabloid headline ALIENS STOLE MY ELECTION.) The new attorney general began looking for cases that mattered. Using an obscure section of the federal Clean Air Act, he took on polluters in the Midwest in 1999, arguing that winds bring their acid rain to New York. Two power companies agreed to pay a total of $2.6 billion to clean up 18 power plants, though the Bush Administration's efforts to gut the act have stalled the cases. Spitzer challenged gun manufacturers who supply retailers involved in illegal sales. Though the case has not yet succeeded, Spitzer used a novel legal tool--the "nuisance law," arguing that such firearm sales created a "harmful condition" that required a change in business practices. Then in 2001 he began his pursuit of Wall Street.