On this day: Eliot Spitzer’s downfall

Former New York governor Eliot Spitzer wasn’t the first political player whose career was prematurely ended by a sex scandal, and he likely won’t be the last.

From a religious family, he studied at Princeton then trained at Harvard Law school. A star of the Democrat party for many years, as New York’s Attorney General he took on many of the city’s financial elites and was named Time magazine’s 2002 “Crusader of the Year”. In 2006 he won the gubernatorial race and looked set to continue his political trajectory.

But the man who had been tipped to become the first Jewish occupant of the White House was publicly shamed in March 2008, when the New York Times revealed his connection to a pricey prostitution service and his involvement with $1,000-an-hour call girl Ashley Dupre. Spitzer was married at the time and a father of three.

The scandal, in which Spitzer was famously identified as “Client number 9”, came to light because Spitzer was being wiretapped by federal agents over allegations of bribery.