Pubdate: Sun, 12 Nov 2006 Source: New York Daily News (NY) Copyright: 2006 Daily News, L.P. Contact: http://www.nydailynews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/295 Author: David Saltonstall, staff writer Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis) THE UNKNOWN SPITZER Much ink has already been spilled chronicling the life and times of Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer, and surely there is much more to come. But Spitzer is more than just the buttoned-down, hard-charging Sheriff of Wall Street most often portrayed in the press. He's also a father of three teenaged girls who keeps Grateful Dead CDs in his office, drives a pickup truck at his Columbia County weekend rental home and boasts a wicked tennis forehand, thanks in part to private lessons from former top-10 tennis pro Tim Mayotte. Here are 10 things you probably did not know about the 56th governor of the Empire State: 1. Spitzer may be regarded as a brainiac, but he got rejected by Harvard as a senior in high school. "It was one of those easy decisions: [Princeton] said yes, and Harvard said no. It made it all very easy." 2. He attended his first rock concert in 1977 as a freshman in college - Jethro Tull, which that year released its acoustic classic "Songs From the Wood" album. Unclear whether this is related to his answering "yes," in a debate this year, when asked if he had ever smoked marijuana. 3. What he likes to do on a Friday night: "Go to the movies with my wife, Silda, and as many of our three daughters as would be willing to spend the night hanging out with their parents." 4. He reported $1.35 million in income last year, mostly from family real estate investments, but his staff insists he owns only three pairs of shoes - a pair of gray New Balance running shoes, loafers and one pair of work shoes. 5. He's a big NASCAR fan. His brother-in-law is an engineer for Hendrick Motorsports, the winner of nine NASCAR championships since 1996. 6. Spitzer's own wheels are decidedly unsporty. The family owns two minivans: a 1996 Plymouth Grand Voyager and a 2003 Chrysler Town & Country (the upstate truck comes with the rental house). 7. He doesn't just run campaigns. In 1983, when he was 24 years old, Spitzer ran the New York City Marathon in 3 hours, 32 minutes. He still runs 4 miles around the Central Park Reservoir most mornings, usually at 6 a.m. 8. He has two dogs, Jesse and James, but there's nothing cowboy about them. Jesse is a Bichon Frise whose name is an acronym based on Spitzer's daughters' and wife's names - J (Jenna), E (Elyssa), S (Silda), S (Sarabeth) - and his own, E (Eliot). James is a much larger Wheaten terrier (and the only other man in the house, Spitzer often notes). 9. As a Harvard Law School student, Spitzer helped Alan Dershowitz research his successful appeal of Claus von Bulow's conviction for the murder of his wife, Sunny von Bulow. At one point, the job required Spitzer to go to a gay bathhouse to meet with the owner about an alleged drug connection. 10. The three people he'd most like to assemble at the same dinner table: Al Smith, the reformist governor who led New York for much of the 1920s; Frederick Douglass, the African-American orator and abolitionist, and the rocker Bruce Springsteen. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman