So says the New York Daily News:

Rep. Nydia Velazquez is the front-runner - for now, at least - to replace Hillary Clinton if she becomes the next secretary of state, a source close to Gov. Paterson said yesterday.

There are two other top contenders: Rep. Brian Higgins of Buffalo and Rep. Steve Israel of Long Island. Each would help Paterson with key constituencies when he makes his first run in 2010 for the post he inherited from disgraced Gov. Eliot Spitzer - upstaters in Higgins’ case and suburbanites in Israel’s.

Velazquez offers the tantalizing possibility of killing two political birds with one stone by appealing to Hispanics and women - both critical voting blocs.

I see this as much more likely than Brian Higgins… and far more realistic than Byron Brown.

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It is nice to know that some people are fighting for the taxpayers and not kowtowing to the unions.

Honoring a campaign pledge, Erie County Executive Chris Collins suspended the controversial, union-friendly apprenticeship law that business leaders felt unnecessarily drove up the cost of county-financed public works construction projects.

The Erie County Legislature enacted the apprenticeship law two years ago, despite concerns raised by the business community that the law favored unions, limited those who could bid on projects and, effectively, increased construction costs for the cash-starved county.

The law mandated any firm that bid on a county construction project had to have an approved apprenticeship and training program.

“It was the most anti-business, anti-taxpayer law in the county,” Collins said.

To suspend the law, Collins on July 21 submitted a new set of rules and regulations that withdrew the apprenticeship requirement to the Erie County Legislature. The Legislature’s majority had 60 days to block the new set of rules, but failed to do so.

“We did this in the open,” Collins said. “This has been in the light of the day for the past 60 days. We did not try to sneak it past anyone.”

Last summer, then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer also suspended apprenticeship requirements for all state projects.

Erie County Legislator Michael Ranzenhofer, R-Clarence, said the apprenticeship law drove up construction costs between 20 percent and 30 percent.

“It was so un-American and so unfair,” he said. “There will be no more special treatments.”

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A sad, but amusing article in the Buffalo News today says that with New York’s capital city, with its fair share of sex scandals, has earned the label of “Sin City.”

A former legislative aide accuses an assemblyman of sexually harassing her.

An underage intern accuses an assemblyman of raping her in a hotel room, then recants and says it was consensual, although he gave her alcohol.

An aide to the Assembly’s top leader is accused of raping two women, and the assemblyman stands by him until very recently.

The governor resigns as a federal investigation uncovers he had been seeking the services of high-price prostitutes. His successor admits that he and his wife had had affairs.

And now a Buffalo assemblyman admits he had been unfaithful to his wife several years ago but says his conduct did not violate any laws or State Legislature rules.

What is going on in Albany? According to longtime Albany insiders, the state capital has more than earned its nickname “Sin City.”

“Albany is a conducive environment to this kind of thing,” said Barbara Bartoletti, legislative director of the League of Women Voters of New York State, who has spent 28 years in Albany. “That may be true of every capital in the nation. You have a lot of powerful people, and young people tend to be attracted to powerful men.”

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I moved to Buffalo the day before Eliot Spitzer resigned in disgrace. As much as I despised the man, it was unfortunate to be welcomed to New York when its top executive was forced to resign. It’s just really unfortunate Albany is more of a city of elected officials doing monkey business rather than the people’s business.

But, I guess they’re all private matters, right? 

UPDATE: More at Albany’s Insanity.

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Gotta love it.

NO DOUBT, when Eliot Spitzer was attorney general - or, as he was more fondly called, the Sheriff of Wall Street - you know he expected his high-profile cases to be turned into thinly disguised episodes of “Law & Order.”

Tomorrow night, he gets his wish - in spades. Too bad it’s not the scenario as it played out in real life.

For sure, back in the glory days, Eliot-the-Idiot was thinking it would be about his fight against Dick Grasso, king of the New York Stock Exchange. He wasn’t dreaming that “his” “Law & Order” ripped-from-the-headlines episode would be the one about a New York governor and a hooker.

As amusing as this is, I still won’t end up watching it. The real story was pathetic enough.

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Plea Expected in Prostitution Ring Used by Spitzer

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The latest chapter in troopergate scandal has the investigators being investigated.

A little-known but powerful state agency with broad powers to ferret out wrongdoing in government said today it has begun an investigation into how at least three different state and local agencies handled their probes of the Spitzer administration’s attempt to smear a political rival with the help of the State Police.

Albany County District Attorney David Soares, for instance, cleared Eliot Spitzer of wrongdoing in his original probe of Troopergate last year, but in a new report last week concluded that Spitzer was heavily involved in the effort against Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.

In addition, various questions have been raised about the closeness of the two state agencies — Public Integrity and the Inspector General — because Spitzer appointees control those agencies, neither of which has interviewed Spitzer about his role.

The state Commission of Investigation, created by Gov. Thomas Dewey in 1951 to look into political corruption cases, can use its subpoena powers to look into the how effectively the state ethics agency, the state inspector general and the Albany County district attorney handled the scandal known in Albany.

“Let me be clear. The commission is not investigating the events concerning troopergate; more than enough investigations of the issues surrounding those events have taken or are taking place,” SIC Chairman Alfred D. Lerner said in a written statement this morning.

“Rather, the commission is investigating the investigations. We are seeking to determine the efficacy of the various investigatory efforts, including those of the Albany County district attorney, the state inspector general and the state Commission on Public Integrity,” he said.

It will be interesting to see how this investigation pans out. Soares has already been accused of sitting on information that Spitzer had lied about his role in the Troopergate scandal… something tells me Soares is in real trouble.

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State Senate committee will continue to investigate Spitzer’s role in smear

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It appears now that disgraced former governor Eliot Spitzer played a much bigger role in the plot to smear Senate Majority Leader Bruno than previously thought…

Former Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer lied to prosecutors about what turned out to be his major role in a campaign to smear a political rival, but the Albany County district attorney said he will not pursue any criminal charges against the already- disgraced ex-governor.

Spitzer had full knowledge of the effort to discredit Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno last summer and, in a profanity-filled tirade, directed the release of State Police travel records of the State Legislature’s top Republican following a breakdown in negotiations between the two men at the end of the 2007 legislative session.

More than a month after telling aides not to release information or investigate Bruno’s use of state aircraft between Albany and Manhattan, Spitzer then angrily dismissed an aide who raised warnings angering Bruno. Calling Bruno a “piece of [expletive],” Spitzer added, “Shove it up his [expletive] with a red hot poker.” The aide, former communications adviser Darren Dopp, described Spitzer to prosecutors as “spitting mad.”

Despite this new information, District Attorney Soares says there will not be any criminal charges because Spitzer has already resigned from office. Senate Republicans are justifiably angry.

But Senate Republicans lashed out at Soares, charging he sat on information that Spitzer had lied to him about his role and failed to pursue before a grand jury the role of other top Spitzer advisers in the matter. They noted that Soares only last September cleared Spitzer, saying he had no knowledge of the smear effort against Bruno, and that Soares never interviewed Spitzer or other top aides under oath before a grand jury.

“Soares botched this thing so badly that it is amazing. Here he has knowledge — that the governor lied to him and he did nothing,” said Sen. George Winner, R-Elmira, who is heading a separate Senate investigation into the affair. He criticized Soares for not delving more into the role of the State Police and whether top Spitzer aides coerced Dopp into signing a document he submitted to the attorney general last summer about the campaign.

Soares may not want to kick Spitzer any more when he’s already down, but anyone following this story knew what was going on, and one has to wonder if this revelation would have been kept quiet had Spitzer not already fallen from grace as a result of his prostitution scandal. Bruno accuses Soares of botching the investigation as a “cover” for Spitzer.

Spitzer’s office has been under a dark ethical cloud for quite a long time before the sex scandal erupted, it surprised me he wasn’t forced out of office quite a long time ago. Perhaps that’s why he resigned after the sex scandal erupted. With Soares covering for him in the DA’s office, other serious charges against him may not ever be pursued.

UPDATE: Soares outlines “TrooperGate” investigation…

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Spitzer Linked To Second Prostitution Ring

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New York Governor Eliot Spitzer will be giving a statement at 11:30 a.m. ET. I’m hearing that the resignation will take effect on Monday. There is a lot of speculation about a possible deal with prosecutors in return for his resignation…

The hypocrisy of this whole situation is astounding. The sex aspect is nothing in the big picture:

As attorney general, he once broke up a call-girl ring and locked up 18 people on corruption, money-laundering and prostitution charges. He ruthlessly investigated the pay packages of Wall Street executives and was so familiar with shady financial maneuvers that he rose to become the top racketeering prosecutor in Manhattan.

But in the end, it appears that Spitzer may have been done in by the same behavior he built a career out of prosecuting.

In fact, it seems he was tripped up by some of the very financial accounting methods he used so successfully against multibillion-dollar Wall Street firms.

For one thing, the governor initially drew the attention of federal investigators because of cash payments to an account operated by a call-girl ring, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of because of the sensitivity of the case.

Banks are required to file Suspicious Activity Reports to the government whenever they observe something they fear may be a crime.

In court papers, Client 9—identified by another law enforcement official as Spitzer—hurried to get more than $4,000 in cash to pay a call girl at a Washington hotel.

That kind of activity, repeated over time, is just the kind of thing that would set off alarm bells with a bank’s compliance officer, who is trained to be on the lookout for what is called structuring or “smurfing”—a pattern of transactions aimed at hiding the nature or purpose of certain money.

There is a lot more to this story, particularly since, as Rep. Peter King has noted, the link between prostitution rings and organized crime:

At least a dozen New York members either didn’t return calls or gave variations on “no comment” or “we’re monitoring the situation” when Capitol Briefing asked for a reaction. One of the few exceptions so far was the always media-friendly Rep. Peter King (R), who passed along his thoughts right before sitting down for a CNBC interview on the subject.

“I was absolutely shellshocked,” King said of the Spitzer news. “I’ve never heard any rumors, any whispers, anything at all.”

King added that he believed Spitzer should resign, since “prostitution rings are invariably linked to organized crime” and the governor’s behavior “leaves himself and the state susceptible to blackmail.”

The question remains what is the ultimate fate of Spitzer? Will he avoid prosecution and jail time?

UPDATE 11:45 am.: Spitzer resigns with his wife at his side.

UPDATE: Robert Stacy McCain hits the nail on the head:

In many ways, Spitzer’s resignation statement was classy, and notably lacked the kind of “accuse the accusers” tactic that Bill Clinton taught us to expect from Democrats caught red-handed.

However, Spitzer’s repeated use of the phrase “my private failings” was a dishonest evasion. What would Spitzer, as a former prosecutor, say about an accused dope dealer who spoke of his crime as a “private failing”?

In patronizing prostitutes, Spitzer was engaged in a criminal act. Crime is an offense against the citizenry, which is why the prosecution of Spitzer for federal money laundering charges — if such a prosecution is indeed pursued — will be called “United States vs. Spitzer.” And no crime can be more public than a crime committed by a powerful public official, such as the governor of New York.

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And this guy’s platform was all about routing out corruption..

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a person briefed on the federal investigation.

An affidavit in the federal investigation into a prostitution ring said that a wiretap recording captured a man identified as Client 9 on a telephone call confirming plans to have a woman travel from New York to Washington, where he had reserved a hotel room. The person briefed on the case identified Mr. Spitzer as Client 9.

He may resign this evening.

UPDATE: While I am commuting back home on the train I would like to add that considering the dark ethical cloud hanging over Spitzer’s office since he became governor — his office was the subject of multiple investigations — it is somewhat unfortunate that this alone is what people will remember about his downfall.

UPDATE: Video of Spitzer apologizing…

UPDATE: As the New York Times notes, this is a federal crime…

Federal prosecutors rarely charge clients in prostitution cases, which are generally seen as state crimes. But the Mann Act, passed by Congress in 1910 to address prostitution, human trafficking and what was viewed at the time as immorality in general, makes it a crime to transport someone between states for the purpose of prostitution. The four defendants charged in the case unsealed last week were all charged with that crime, along with several others.

UPDATE: Impeachment threat if he doesn’t resign…

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