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Eliot and the Rising AG Tide
How much of his success does Spitzer owe to a national trend?

For 23 of the 30 seconds of Eliot Spitzer’s (D) first campaign commercial, pathetic-looking New Yorkers stare straight into the camera, helpless, as a voice-over inhales a few ham-handed phrases about citizens with nowhere to turn. Then we hear Spitzer.

“I represent the people of the State of New York,” he says, as carefully-synched applause dissipates.

This is natural campaign rhetoric, steeped in the kind of determined, teary populism that sets voters’ hearts aflutter. He has dipped into that same well many times in the campaign since, as in his third commercial, in which he revealed the “simple rule” he held to while attorney general: he never asked anything about the case, he tells us via an extreme close-up.

“I simply asked if it was right or wrong,” he says steadfastly, looking off camera as he does.

Conventional wisdom and history suggest that when it comes to electing presidents, voters are more inclined to trust governors, who have had executive experience, than senators, Congress members or anyone else who has not. In picking the next top state executive, it might seem sensible that New York voters would be willing to entrust the position to someone who has had some executive experience before. By that logic, Spitzer should be at the back of the pack of the polls. Tom Suozzi (D) is the Nassau County Executive, and John Faso (R) was the leader of the Republican minority in the Assembly.

Spitzer’s executive experience, meanwhile, consists of managing a staff of a few hundred fellow prosecutors, and his legislative experience consists of calling an occasional press conference to champion or decry some bill.

Suozzi has already tried trumpeting this experiential difference on the campaign trail, and by the time November comes, Weld and Faso probably will as well.

But if current polls and fundraising expectations are to be believed, the voters are not listening. Those paying attention seem to see something in Spitzer’s work as attorney general that has convinced them he should be put in charge of Albany.

“They’re very similar,” Spitzer said in his own analysis of the relationship between the offices of attorney general and governor. “I am running an agency that has a several hundred million dollar budget. I’ve managed to generate billions of dollars of revenue for the state, I’ve managed to be effective in what we have done both as a manager, as a litigator, as one who speaks for the values that I think the public would like to see in government,” he said.

He added, “I think the people will understand if they want a voice for change, I am that voice.”

The voters seem to be responding. And not just to Spitzer.

There has been an explosion in the past few years—not of attorneys general around the country running, but of them running and actually winning.

This might seem intuitive: as statewide elected officials in every one of the 48 contiguous states, they have been putting themselves up for elections for governor, senator and Congress member for years. But until four years ago, they had been suffering through a dry spell of success that stretched back until at least the late 1980s.

"There has been an explosion in the past few years—not of attorneys general around the country running, but of them running and actually winning."

Then came 2002. As George W. Bush enjoyed a historically rare pickup of seats in Congress, the only Democratic Senate gain came in Arkansas, with Attorney General Mark Pryor knocking off Tim Hutchinson. Meanwhile, Texas Attorney General John Cornyn kept Phil Gramm’s seat in Republican hands that year, and their colleagues were elected governor in Oregon, Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. Two years later, Colorado sent its attorney general to the Senate, and Washington State elected Attorney General Christine Gregoire (D) its new governor by a 133-vote margin.

“In one year, there was this sudden reversal of fortune,” said former New York State Attorney General Bob Abrams (D), looking back to 2002. Abrams himself ran for Senate in 1992, but lost a very close contest to Al D’Amato in the midst of the dark political days for state prosecutors.

But with most of those elected in the past four years secure, and many of the nine attorneys general who ran, or are still running, this year well on their way towards having voters help them switch their job titles, Abrams said, “the pendulum has swung.” There is no clear reason why this is, or why attorneys general started suffering in the polls in the first place. It could be cyclical. It could be karma. It could be chance.

New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid (D), who is running for a House seat in her state’s first district, thinks it is something much more substantial.

“I think that the attorneys general nationally have a much higher profile, especially in the wake of the tobacco litigation and Microsoft and all the other anti-trust litigation,” she said. “Then, of course, Eliot Spitzer has done a great deal to raise the profile of all attorneys general nationally.”

This is why, Madrid explained, being attorney general is the “perfect platform to run for these higher offices,” and why she is one of several Democratic attorneys general set to win offices that have proven unattainable for their party in recent years. Madrid is up against Heather Wilson, an Air Force veteran and Rhodes Scholar. Wilson squeaked past her Democratic opponent in her first election in 1998 with fewer votes than the total cast for the Green Party candidate that year.

Democrats have fought but fallen in every election since, as they have in Massachusetts, which is a blue enough state to make it a punch line in some parts of this country, but which has not had a Democratic governor since Michael Dukakis retired in 1990. This year, Attorney General Tom Reilly is getting the best poll numbers among those looking to succeed Mitt Romney (R), who is turning in after just one term to start thinking about a presidential campaign.

And then there is New York. George Pataki (R) won a narrow victory over Mario Cuomo (D) in 1994, but by 1998 had become enough of a powerhouse to score 55 percent against then-City Council Speaker Peter Vallone (D), who won 33 percent of the vote. Last time around, then-Comptroller Carl McCall’s (D) campaign fizzled after his primary, and though he kept Pataki to 50 percent, he too finished with 33 percent of the vote. Democrats could not seem to win the governor’s mansion here either, but Spitzer has given the party what appears good reason for hope.

Not all attorneys general have been so successful, even in these days when, as Madrid put it, the position has been acting as “the pipeline” for further office. Already this year, current Attorney General Jim Petro (R-Ohio) did not make it through his primary in his race for governor, nor did former Attorney General Don Stenberg (R-Nebraska) in his race for Senate.

Others are holding out hope. Former Attorney General Lee Fisher (D) is now running for lieutenant governor in Ohio, and Mike Beebe (D) and Mike Hatch are running for governor in Arkansas and Minnesota, respectively. In California, Bill Lockeyer (D) is running for state treasurer and in Rhode Island, former Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse (D) is edging ever-closer to a senate seat.

"In picking the next top state executive, it might seem sensible that New York voters would be willing to entrust the position to someone who has had some executive experience before."

And as in New York, gluts of candidates are battling for all the spots soon to open, many likely looking to leap on the springboard themselves.

In Missouri, Attorney General Jay Nixon (D) has read the tea leaves enough to have already launched his gubernatorial campaign, though voters will not head to those polls until 2008.

Reading the tea leaves, though, may be all there is to it, said James Tierney, a former attorney general of Maine who now teaches at Columbia Law School and heads the National State Attorneys General Program there.

“There are ebbs and flows that go back and forth,” he explained. “These races go on the local level, and it’s hard to extrapolate a broader tendency.”

And so while it may seem that the political fates are smiling more on attorneys general these days than in the recent past, Tierney said “it depends on when you start the clock.”

“You sit there and you try to follow this bouncing ball,” he explained. “For every case, there’s another case, and when you scrape behind it, you see that there are often things that are far more dramatic.”

Photos by Andrew Schwartz