Why Did Spitzer Defend Pataki?

[Freddie Stubbs]

The Gubernatorial Wannabe Undercut Our Schools in Major Court Battle

Michael Rebell, the attorney who spearheaded the 10-year-old lawsuit to overturn the state's discriminatory school-aid formula, went to a New York Bar Association gathering in April to hear his longtime adversary, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Rebell was then nervously awaiting the Court of Appeals decision that came down last week, striking the formula by a 4-to-1 vote, and he could not resist the opportunity to ask his longtime opponent Spitzer about the case. He'd wondered for years why Spitzer was taking positions in court that seemed so contrary to his larger public profile.

"He was speaking about his Wall Street cases," Rebell recalls, "so I just asked him, since he was such a liberal crusader on those issues, 'How do you justify backing the governor in the school case?' He just gave me the standard answer that he had a constitutional duty to defend the state." Rebell says he has long found it "incongruous" that Spitzer's decision to represent George Pataki in this suit has drawn so little criticism, adding that he "was never convinced that Spitzer was required" to do so.

In fact, Bob Abrams, who was AG from 1978 to 1993, infuriated Governor Mario Cuomo by refusing to defend the state on everything from Westway (a development plan for the West Side) to sports betting to the cleanup of toxic dump sites. Louis Lefkowitz, who preceded Abrams, did the same, declining to represent the Carey administration on Westway. In an object lesson for Spitzer, Cuomo was so incensed by what he branded Abrams's "weathervane representation" that he told the Times that if the AG "did not want to take on such cases," he "might not need as big a budget as he has." That threat provoked Abrams's spokesman to point out that all six attempts since 1846 to make the AG an appointive office had failed.

"The Attorney General is sworn to uphold the constitution," the Abrams spokesman said, "and he has an obligation to be independent and to exercise independent judgment."

more: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0327/barrett.php