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.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman