Eliot Spitzer

After scoring 1590 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), he attended Princeton University and graduated with a B.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1981, completing a 151-page-long senior thesis titled "Revolutions in Post-Stalin Eastern Europe: A Study of Soviet Reactions".

His maternal grandparents, born in the 1890s, were Jewish emigrants from Ottoman-era Palestine (now Israel).

Spitzer is the youngest of three children.

He was raised in the affluent Riverdale section of the Bronx.

His family was not religious, and Spitzer did not have a bar mitzvah.

Eliot Laurence Spitzer (born June 10, 1959) is an American politician and attorney.

Eliot Laurence Spitzer was born in 1959 in the Bronx, New York City, the son of Anne (née Goldhaber), an English literature professor, and Bernard Spitzer, a real estate mogul.

His paternal grandparents were Galician Jews, born in Tluste, Poland, now Ukraine.

He is a 1977 graduate of Horace Mann School.

At Princeton, he was elected chairman of the undergraduate student government and graduated in 1981.

He then received his Juris Doctor at Harvard Law School.

He has said he received a perfect score on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT).

Spitzer joined the staff of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, where he became chief of the labor-racketeering unit and spent six years (1986–1992) pursuing organized crime.

During law school, he met Silda Wall, whom he would go on to marry in 1987.

Spitzer was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Upon completion of law school, Spitzer clerked for Judge Robert W. Sweet of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, then joined the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

He stayed there for less than two years before leaving to join the New York County District Attorney's office.

In February 1991 Robert Abrams, a Democrat and the longstanding New York State Attorney General, announced his intention to run for the U.S. Senate seat for New York then occupied by incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Al D'Amato.

When he announced his intention the Senate election was almost two years in the future.

Spitzer's biggest case came in 1992, when he led the investigation that ended the Gambino crime family's organized crime control of Manhattan's trucking and garment industries.

Spitzer devised a plan to set up his own sweatshop in the city's garment district, where he turned out shirts, pants and sweaters, and hired 30 laborers.

The shop manager eventually got close to the Gambinos, and officials were able to plant a bug in their office.

The Gambinos, rather than being charged with extortion—which was hard to prove—were charged with antitrust violations.

Joseph and Thomas Gambino, the latter being an extremely high-ranking member, and two other defendants took the deal and avoided jail by pleading guilty, paying $12 million in fines and agreeing to stay out of the business.

Spitzer left the District Attorney's office in 1992 to work at the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

Abrams won the nomination in the Democratic primary but narrowly lost to D'Amato in the general election in November 1992.

Ten months later, in September 1993, Abrams announced that he would resign his position as Attorney General as of December 31, 1993, although he still had one year remaining in his term.

To fill this vacancy the New York State Legislature elected Assemblyman G. Oliver Koppell to serve out the remainder of the Attorney General's term during 1993.

From 1994 to 1998 he worked at the law firm Constantine and Partners on a number of consumer rights and antitrust cases.

Thirty-four-year-old Spitzer decided to run as a Democratic candidate in the 1994 election for Attorney General, as did Koppell, Brooklyn Family Court Judge Karen Burstein, and Kings County DA Charles J. Hynes.

At the time, Spitzer was a young and relatively unknown defense attorney representing white-collar criminals.

When he announced his campaign Spitzer suggested that, if elected, he would use the state's antitrust laws to pursue corporate polluters.

From 1999 to 2006, he was the Attorney General of New York, earning a reputation as the "Sheriff of Wall Street" for his efforts to curb corruption in the financial services industry.

Spitzer was elected Governor of New York in 2006 by the largest margin of any candidate, but his tenure lasted less than two years after it was uncovered he patronized a prostitution ring.

He resigned immediately following the scandal, and his lieutenant governor, David Paterson, served the rest of his term.

Since leaving the governorship, Spitzer worked as a television host and an adjunct instructor at City College of New York, along with engaging in real estate activity and making private investments in a start-up company.

A member of the Democratic Party, he was the 54th governor of New York from 2007 until his resignation in 2008.

Spitzer was born in New York City, attended Princeton University, and earned his Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School.

He began his career as an attorney in private practice with New York law firms before becoming a prosecutor with the office of the New York County (Manhattan) District Attorney.

He sought the office of New York City Comptroller in 2013, but he lost the Democratic nomination to Scott Stringer.