Politics / Eliot Spitzer Can Spitzer Hurt Clinton? Fellow New Yorker's fall from grace is an unwanted distraction, unpleasant reminder By Jonas Oransky, Newser Staff Posted Mar 11, 2008 3:40 PM CDT Copied Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer at a news conference on children's health care in New York, Thursday, Aug. 30, 2007. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle) (Associated Press) Will the Eliot Spitzer scandal hurt fellow New York Democrat Hillary Clinton, who's all too familiar with the travails of philandering men? Writers are weighing in: Clinton had trouble securing Spitzer's endorsement, writes John Nichols in the Nation, and now, "He is a distraction—the big player in her adopted home state who is now in big, big trouble." One positive: David Paterson would "instantly become Clinton's most prominent African-American backer." The London Times reports that if Spitzer resigns, he won't be replaced as a superdelegate, so she's down one, and Spitzer's "difficulties will undermine her efforts to paint her rival Barack Obama as morally dubious due to his links with Tony Rekzo." Glenn Thrush of the Chicago Tribune runs down the scandal's potential impact on other New York pols and speculates about Clinton's private reaction: "From a payback perspective, she must be having a discreet chuckle." (More Eliot Spitzer stories.) Report an error