ABSTRACT
Eliot Spitzer became a national figure as a result of his prosecutions of Wall Street figures that paved his way to the New York governorship. Of course, Spitzer is not the only New York prosecutor that sought headlines from highprofile investigations for political gain. He was preceded by some giants, including Charles Evans Hughes, Thomas E. Dewey, and Rudolph Giuliani. Spitzer maximized his use of that model, and it worked, putting him in the mansion in Albany with a landslide vote. Yet Spitzer’s causes often failed when put to the test of a courtroom. Most visibly, Spitzer lost the contentious fight over Richard Grasso’s pay, which should never have been initiated, but that loss came long after Spitzer left the attorney general’s office.
