Word: spitzers
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...Spitzer took it to heart. While still an undergraduate at Princeton, he took off for the South one summer to work at menial jobs. He hit the day-labor agencies at dawn and took whatever was available--stacking fiber-glass insulation at a warehouse, operating a jackhammer, cleaning up a sewage overflow at a hotel. He also worked that summer as a migrant laborer in upstate New York, side by side with Mexicans picking tomatoes. "I'd had a comfortable upbringing," says Spitzer, "so I wanted to experience harder work, to see the world from a different perspective...
There was no rebellious stage in Spitzer's life, no long-hair days. But his competitiveness, especially in athletics, was directed as much at family as friends. In some well-to-do households, there is a rite of passage in which the son finally beats the father at tennis. As a teen, Spitzer found himself near that goal one day, closing in for the kill. When his father paused to catch his breath, Spitzer called out, "Mom, Dad is stalling!" The family still talks about the time Bernard cruelly whipped his son in Monopoly...
...Princeton, Spitzer entered the Wood-row Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He got good grades and listened to Bruce Springsteen (he just went to Albany with an ex-classmate to see the Boss for the fourth time). He was elected president of the student body in his sophomore year. Colleagues remember his taking on the university administration over divestiture from South Africa and (a student classic) higher wages for campus service workers...
...went on to Harvard Law, where he wrote his way onto the prestigious law review. Market commentator Cramer, who met Spitzer on their first day, tells an anecdote meant to show the roots of Spitzer's rectitude. For a criminal-procedure class, Cramer says, he organized a group of students to alternate attendance and share notes. Spitzer, he claims, thought it was gaming the system and threatened to tell the professor. Spitzer says it's a good story but untrue. Either way, Cramer's tale is revealing (about both men): "Eliot was earnest in an atmosphere where you felt stupid...
After graduating, Spitzer clerked for a judge, then joined the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a job he found unfulfilling. He did what almost no one does--quit the firm before the requisite resume-enhancing two years. Next he joined the Manhattan district attorney's office, where he spent six years pursuing the Gambinos and other big-time criminals. He returned to private practice, this time at the firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, before making a sudden decision in 1994 to run for New York attorney general. He got crushed, finishing fourth in a four...