Lawfuel – US Law, Legal Jobs – The 54th Governor of New York, Eliot …

Lawfuel – US Law, Legal Jobs – The 54th Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, was sworn in midnight taking over for George Pataki. The ceremony was private and took place inside the govenor’s mansion. A public ceremony is scheduled for the afternoon of January 1, 2007.

Eliot Laurence Spitzer ( born June 10, 1959 ) is an American politician and the current Governor of New York. Spitzer was elected governor in the November 2006 midterm election. He is the former New York State Attorney General, and a member of the Democratic Party. He is married to Silda Wall Spitzer, the founder and chair of Children for Children, a non-profit organization. The Spitzers have three daughters, aged 12, 14 and 17.

Spitzer was born and raised in the affluent Riverdale section of The Bronx in New York City, by Austrian Jewish parents, though his family was not particularly religious, and Spitzer did not have a bar mitzvah . He is a graduate of Horace Mann School. After receiving a score of 1590 on the SAT exam, Spitzer attended Princeton University, where he was elected chairman of the undergraduate student government, graduating in 1981.
After receiving a perfect score on the LSAT [2], he then went to Harvard Law School, where he joined the Harvard Law Review and became an editor. At Harvard Law, he met and married Silda Wall. They have three daughters.

Upon receiving his Juris Doctor ( J.D. ) degree, Spitzer clerked for Judge Robert W. Sweet in Manhattan, then joined the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He stayed there for less than two years before leaving to join the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Spitzer joined the staff of Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, where he became chief of the labor-racketeering unit, spending six years pursuing organized crime. His biggest case came in 1992, when Spitzer led the investigation that ended the Gambino organized crime family’s control of Manhattan’s trucking and garment industries.

Spitzer devised a plan to set up his own sweatshop in the city’s garment district, turning out shirts, pants and sweaters, and hiring 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. Thomas and Joseph Gambino 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 DA’s office in 1992 to work at the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, where he stayed until 1994. From 1994 to 1998 he worked at the law firm Constantine and Partners on a number of consumer rights and antitrust cases that were widely considered innovative and/or aggressive.

In 1994, Spitzer put aside his private practice to concentrate on attaining the elected office of New York Attorney General. He failed in the 1994 election, but was successfully elected in the next election in 1998. He has since become one of New York’s most recognizable Democratic politicians. On November 7th, 2006 he was elected Governor of New York.

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