Eliot Spitzer

Eliot Spitzer is the Attorney General for the State of New York.

He was born and raised in Riverdale, the Bronx, New York. He attended Princeton University and was elected chairman of the undergraduate student government, graduating in 1981. He then went to Harvard Law School, where he joined the Harvard Law Review. Here he met Silda Wall, his wife. Wall Street TV personality James Cramer was also in the same class.

After law school, he clerked for Judge Robert W. Sweet in Manhattan, then joined the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He stayed there for less than two years, when he left to join the Manhattan district attorney's office.

He joined the staff of Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, where he spent six years pursuing organized crime mobsters. His biggest case came in 1992. Spitzer led the investigation that ended the Gambino crime family's control of Manhattan's trucking and garment industry.

He left public service in 1992 to join the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, for a short time. He quit in 1994 to run for Attorney General when Morgenthau stepped down.

He was young and not well known. He finished fourth in the four person Democratic primary. He ran again in 1998, winning with an extremely narrow margin over incumbent Dennis Vacco. He was criticized for circumventing campaign finance laws, by borrowing $9 million from his father for these two elections.

Traditionally, state Attorneys General have pursued consumer rights cases. Often, this focuses on fraud that is local and unique, avoiding areas in which the federal government maintains oversite. Spitzer has gone after fraud that is nationwide and pervasive, stepping in where he saw federal oversight lacking. When he saw a lack of enforcement by the Securities and Exchange Commission over Wall Street, he went after Merrill Lynch for providing tainted financial advice. This led to a settlement that severed ties between research and investment banking. He followed this with a suit against mutual fund companies that allowed select clients to file late trades costing smaller clients money. This led to hundreds of millions in fines.

He is married to Silda Wall and has three daughters.