Spitzer Apologizes (Again)

Yesterday wasn’t the first time that Elliot Spitzer apologized during his tenure as New York Governor. Spitzer had come under fire shortly after taking office, and wrote the editorial below. I keep it on hand because it is a classic apology-and it worked, moving the debate beyond party bickering and helping to put the Spitzer agenda back on track.

It’s hard to imagine that Spitzer’s current troubles can be fixed with a well written apology. The Mann Act, formally dubbed the White-Slave Traffic Act, specifically prohibits arranging for a prostitute to cross state lines. It’s not clear yet just what Spitzer’s legal defense may look like, but his political crisis is as formidable as they come.

James Carville was on CNN last night arguing that Spitzer’s alleged crime didn’t rise to the level of a resignation, essentially arguing “So what? Everyone does it”. The movement to legalize prostitution got a major push in 1973 when Margo St. James founded a prostitution rights group called COYOTE. This group was the offshoot of WHO: Whores, Housewives and Others (”Others” = lesbians). St. James was a self described feminist and pushed to shift the thinking of feminist organizations like the National Organization for Women. Two decades later, in the early 90’s, some NOW chapters had formed sex worker task forces, and resolutions were debated at the national conference. The issue sharply divided NOW leaders.

Former NYC prosecutor Michael Bachner told the Wall Street Journal that prosecuting Spitzer based on the Mann act would deviate from how the law was designed and has been applied. “Those who frequent prostitutes are very, very rarely the subjects of a federal prosecution when clearly its commercial and consensual”. Although many legal experts have said that customers of prostitution rarely face serious legal trouble, the leaders of the prostitution ring have already been arrested.

Below is Spitzers apology from last summer. It’s a classic apology op ed because it includes three ingredients: a) apologizing and accepting responsibility, b) demonstrating proactive steps to prevent future occurances, c) putting the situation in context (in this case, reminding voters what they should be focused on instead).

Elliot Spitzer editorial in the New York Times, July 29, 2007

WE made mistakes.

Though two independent investigations proved that no illegal activity occurred on my watch, it is crystal clear that what members of my administration did was wrong — no ifs, ands or buts.

I have apologized to Joe Bruno, the Senate majority leader, and now I want to apologize to all New Yorkers.

What you’ve been reading about in the papers and watching on television this week is not what we are about. In fact, it represents just the opposite.

On my first day in office, I brought my staff together and told them what our guiding principles must be: ”First, we’re going to fight for what we believe in. And second, we’re going to maintain the highest ethical standards while doing it.”

Over the past few weeks, two members of my administration forgot that second principle — creating an appearance that the State Police were being used inappropriately.

As soon as this became clear, we acted immediately and decisively, suspending one of my longtime advisers indefinitely and transferring the other out of the governor’s office. These steps were not taken lightly. Both of these people have served New York with distinction for decades.

But the message was simple: even though they didn’t break the law, they forgot what we were about, and that won’t be tolerated.

The worst thing that could happen now would be for this to stop our progress, preventing us from building on our many successes of the past six months: health insurance for every child; historic investment in our schools tied to accountability; the largest property tax cut in history; ethics, lobbying and campaign finance reform; breaking the impasse at ground zero; and a 20 percent cut in workers’ compensation rates that will save New York businesses $1 billion and make our state more competitive.

Albany had long been mired in gridlock, but we are changing that. Working together with the Senate and Assembly, we have managed to make remarkable progress — and we are on the brink of so much more.

There are two ways this can go.

We can get bogged down in partisan politics that serve only to distract us from the business at hand — the kind of head-hunting that we’re beginning to see for people in my administration who were cleared by these investigations.

Or we can move forward and pick up where we left off, addressing the long list of issues and challenges that matter to all New Yorkers — which are just as important today as they were last week.

So let us keep our eye on the ball and focus our energy and our resources on the needs of New Yorkers — fighting for a revitalized economy, more jobs, lower health care costs, better schools and lower taxes.

We will renew those two guiding principles I spoke about on my first day in office.

We will continue to fight vigorously to change the status quo on behalf of all New Yorkers. I’m never going to apologize for that. But we must recognize that this effort will succeed only if our means for changing the status quo are as honorable as our ends.