Here is the story: 

Lt. Gov. David Paterson, who will take over as New York’s governor following Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s dramatic fall from power in a prostitution scandal, said Thursday he is ready to lead and “get New York back on track.”

Paterson takes over on Monday, and will become New York’s first black governor and the nation’s first legally blind chief executive.
Spitzer stepped down Wednesday amid a call-girl scandal that made a mockery of his straight-arrow image and left him facing the prospect of criminal charges and perhaps disbarment.

Spitzer and his successor have starkly different leadership styles. While Spitzer was famously abrasive, uncompromising and even insulting, Paterson has built a reputation as a conciliator, and lawmakers quickly embraced the new order.

Barely known outside his Harlem political base, Paterson, 53, has been in New York government since his election to the state Senate in 1985. Though legally blind, he has enough sight in his right eye to walk unaided, recognize people at conversational distance and even read if the text is placed close to his face.

Spitzer, who built his political reputation on rooting out corruption, resigned without securing a plea bargain with federal prosecutors, though a law enforcement official said the former governor was still believed to be negotiating one. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

“I cannot allow my private failings to disrupt the people’s work,” Spitzer said at a Manhattan news conference, his weary-looking wife, Silda, again standing at his side as he answered for his actions for the second time in three days.

The resignation brought down the curtain on a riveting drama that made Spitzer an instant punchline on late-night TV, and fascinated Americans with the spectacle of a crusading politician exposed as a hypocrite.

The scandal erupted Monday after federal law enforcement officials disclosed that a wiretap had caught the 48-year-old father of three teenage daughters arranging to spend thousands of dollars on a call girl at a fancy Washington hotel on the night before Valentine’s Day. Law enforcement officials said he had hired prostitutes several times before and had spent tens of thousands of dollars, perhaps as much as $80,000, on the high-priced escort service Emperors Club VIP.

Investigators said he had arranged for a prostitute named Kristen to take the train from New York while he was in the nation’s capital to testify before a congressional subcommittee about the bond industry.
Among the possible charges that law enforcement authorities said could be brought against Spitzer: soliciting and paying for sex; violating the Mann Act, the 1910 federal law that makes it a crime to take someone across state lines for immoral purposes; and illegally arranging cash transactions to conceal their purpose.

Spitzer could also be disbarred. In New York, an attorney can lose his license to practice law for failing to “conduct himself both professionally and personally, in conformity with the standards of conduct imposed upon members of the bar.”

Well first I would like to say congratulations to the soon to be Gov. Patterson. I think it is great that New York is getting its first Black governor (even though he is a Clinton supporter), but I think it is even more fantastic that he is the first legally blind person to reach such a high position.

I also have to comment on Gov. Spitzer’s resignation…first, what took him so long? I thought it was pretty disgraceful that he didn’t immediately resign once news of this leaked. For a governor to be engaged in an illegal activity such as paying for prostitutes is reprehensible. The fact that he prosecuted prostitution rings while he was paying for prostitutes makes it that much more remarkably hypocritical. He disgraced himself and it’s a shame that someone so self righteous had to go down in flames. I hope that he gets disbarred and prosecuted, because he should not be exempt from the law. He prosecuted people and now that his dirt has come to light it is time that he pays for his actions.
What do you guys think of this whole ordeal? Isn’t it crazy when people in goverment office get caught up doing the very thing they are supposed to be fighting against? Do you think Patterson’s success could open up more doors for other minorities in the future?

Posted by Reecie