MEET NEW YORK GOVERNOR ELIOT SPITZER'S HIGH PRICED HOTTIE

AND TO QUOTE SPITZER "GREAT, OK, WONDERFUL"

Court papers show she is known by the name Ashley Youmans -- and as Ashley Alexandra Dupre -- a 22-year-old would-be singer from New Jersey, the New York Times reported Wednesday. She has not been charged with any crime. As Monday she made a brief appearance in U.S. Magistrate Court as a witness against four people charged with operating Emperor's Club VIP, the prostitution ring, the New York Times said.

Who is this high priced hottie? What we know of Ashley is told by her on her MYSPACE page. Dupre writes that she left home at 17 to begin "my odyssey to New York." ...

"It was my decision, and I've never looked back," she writes. "Left my hometown. Left a broken family. Left abuse. Left an older brother who had already split. Left and learned what it was like to have everything, and lose it, again and again.

"Learned what it was like to wake up one day and have the people you care about most gone. I have been alone. I have abused drugs. I have been broke and homeless. But, I survived, on my own. I am here, in NY because of my music."

In her profile, Dupre says she moved to Manhattan to pursue her music career.

"I am all about my music, and my music is all about me," she writes on her MySpace page. "It flows from what I've been through, what I've seen and how I feel."

The page includes a picture of Dupre with the slogan "what destroys me, strengthens me." It also features a song titled "What we want" recorded by Dupre, with lyrics including "I know what you want, you got what I want, I know what you need, can you handle me?"

On the MySpace page, Dupre lists singers Etta James, Aretha Franklin and Celine Dion, as well as her brother, as her influences.

She also offers some advice for those experiencing hard times. CNN has this story and more info on Spitzer giving up his office on Monday.

NY Governor Spitzer Says Power Will Go To The Blind Black Man Effective Monday

A Stunning Fall, An Amazing Rise For David Patterson

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer said on Wednesday that he will resign effective Monday after allegedly spending thousands of dollars on meetings with prostitutes.

"I look at my time as governor with a sense of what might have been," Spitzer said, with his expressionless wife Silda standing at his side. "There is much more to be done, and I cannot allow my private failings to disrupt the people's work."

His wife took deep breaths as hundreds of photos were taken at close range. Each of Spitzer's words was accompanied by a rush of camera clicks.

"Over the course of my public life, I've insisted, I think correctly, that people regardless of their position or power take responsibility for their conduct. I can and will ask no less of myself," he said.

Watch Spitzer's Resignation Speech

Despite Spitzer's resignation, the U.S. Attorney's office said there was no deal in place for the governor regarding possible prosecution.

"There is no agreement between this Office and Governor Eliot Spitzer, relating to his resignation or any other matter," said Michael J. Garcia, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Of New York.

Attending the news conference with Spitzer were his close advisers and lawyers, including Ted Wells, a prominent attorney who recently represented I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Lt. Gov. David Paterson, slated to take Spitzer's place, requested that the resignation go into effect next week in order to have more time to put a transition team in place.

Paterson will become the governor of New York when he is publicly sworn in on Monday. Paterson will become just the eighth black governor in American history, the first in New York.

In a statement, Paterson expressed sadness over the scandal.

"On a personal level, Governor Spitzer and Silda have been close and steadfast friends. As an elected official the Governor has worked hard for the people of New York."

Spitzer formally announced his resignation in a Wednesday morning news conference.

Prior to the announcement, Spitzer and his wife left their apartment around 11 a.m. and got into a black SUV to take them to his office. Cameras aboard news helicopters tracked the movement of Spitzer's three-vehicle motorcade from his apartment on the Upper East Side to his office in midtown Manhattan.

Spitzer's resignation will not become final until he informs top-ranking officials and submits an official letter. WNBC.com has been told to expect a paper statement e-mailed out and posted on the state's official Web site.

New York State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, speaking at a news conference Wednesday, said he felt "sad" for Spitzer and his family but stressed that the state needs to focus on the future.

"He must deal with his own problems in his own way, but it is time for us and all new Yorkers to move forward," said Bruno.

Bruno and Spitzer have an acrimonious history, as Spitzer had been embroiled in an earlier scandal in which his aides were accused of overzealously searching for incriminating information about the majority leader.

Bruno also said he was looking forward to working with Paterson.

"We are going to partner with the lieutenant governor when he becomes governor," said Bruno. "David has always been very open with me, very forthright ... I look forward to a positive, productive relationship."

The case involving Spitzer started when banks noticed frequent cash transfers from several accounts and filed suspicious activity reports with the Internal Revenue Service, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The accounts were traced back to Spitzer, leading public corruption investigators to open an inquiry.

A law enforcement official said Tuesday that Spitzer had spent tens of thousands of dollars with the call-girl service Emperors Club VIP.

Still another law enforcement official said investigators found that during the tryst with a prostitute named Kristen, Spitzer used two rooms at Washington's Mayflower Hotel -- one for himself, the other for the call girl. Sometime around 10 p.m., Spitzer sneaked away from his security detail and made his way to her room, the official said.

According to an affidavit, a federal judge approved wiretaps on the escort service's telephone in January and February. FBI agents in Washington had the Mayflower under surveillance when Spitzer was in town, a senior law enforcement official said.

The officials spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

Spitzer, a first-term Democrat, built his political reputation on rooting out government corruption, and made a name for himself as attorney general as crusader against shady practices and overly generous compensation. He also cracked down on prostitution.

He was known as the "Sheriff of Wall Street." Time magazine named him "Crusader of the Year," and the tabloids proclaimed him "Eliot Ness." The square-jawed graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law was sometimes mentioned as a potential candidate for president.

He rode into the governor's office with a historic margin of victory on Jan. 1, 2007, vowing to stamp out corruption in New York government in the same way that he took on Wall Street executives with a vengeance while state attorney general.

His term as governor has been fraught with problems, including an unpopular plan to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants and a plot by his aides to smear his main Republican nemesis. The prostitution scandal, some said, was too much to overcome.

Barely known outside of his Harlem political base, Paterson, 53, has been in New York government since his election to the state Senate in 1985. He led the Democratic caucus in the Senate before running with Spitzer as his No. 2.

Though legally blind, Paterson has enough sight in his right eye to walk unaided, recognize people at conversational distance and even read if text is placed close to his face. While Spitzer is renowned for his abrasive style, Paterson has built a reputation as a conciliator.

Bruno, though the next highest-ranking official, does not become lieutenant governor upon Paterson's ascension to governor. The lieutenant governor's office would remain vacant until the next general election in 2010 under state law. However, whenever Paterson is out of state or if he were to become incapacitated, Bruno would be acting governor.

David Paterson To Become The Latest African American To Become Governor As Eliot Spitzer Faces Impeachment Unless He Resigns

Black History Spills Into March With Our (Soon-to-be) Four Governors

Now that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer is in talks with Lt. Governor David Paterson to transfer gubernatorial power to the legally blind, former Harlem state senator, we thought it was odd that the media kept saying that Paterson would be the fourth African American governor to serve.

We knew of Virginia's Douglas Wilder and Massachusetts' Deval Patrick, but who else was left?

Well, meet the first to serve with this distinctive title, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback.

Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (May 10, 1837 – December 21, 1921) was the first African American to become governor of a U.S. state. He was also the first non-white (biracial) governor of Louisiana. Pinchback, a Republican, served as the governor of Louisiana for thirty-five days, from December 9, 1872, to January 13, 1873.

Nicholas Lemann, in Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War, described Pinchback as "an outsized figure: newspaper publisher, gambler, orator, speculator, dandy, mountebank -- served for a few months as the state's governor and claimed seats in both houses of Congress following disputed elections but could not persuade the members of either to seat him."[1]

Pinchback was born in Macon, Georgia (Bibb County), to a white planter (William Pinchback) and his former slave, Eliza Stewart. Known as "Pinckney Benton Stewart," he was educated at the Gilmore High School in Cincinnati. After his father died in 1848, he left Cincinnati because he feared that his paternal relatives might try to force him into slavery. He worked as a hotel porter and barber in Terre Haute, Indiana.

In 1860, while in Indiana, Pinchback, 23, married then 16-year-old Nina Emily. They had two daughters and four sons.

During the Civil War, Pinchback traveled to Louisiana and became captain of the Union Army's Company A, 1st Louisiana Native Guards (later reformed as the 74th U. S. Colored Infantry Regiment).

After the war, he became active in the Republican Party and participated in Reconstruction state conventions. In 1868, Pinchback organized the Fourth Ward Republican Club in New Orleans. That same year, he was elected as a Louisiana state senator, where he became the state Senate president pro tempore. In 1871 he became acting lieutenant governor upon the death of Oscar Dunn, the first elected African American lieutenant governor of a U.S. state.

In 1872, the incumbent Republican governor Henry Clay Warmoth, was impeached and convicted, removing him from office. Pinchback, as lieutenant governor, succeeded as governor on December 9.

Also in 1872, at a national convention of African-American politicians, Pinchbank had a public disagreement with Jeremiah Haralson of Alabama. James T. Rapier (also of Alabama) submitted a motion that the convention condemn all Republicans who had opposed President Grant in that year's election.[2] Haralson supported the motion, but Pinchback opposed it because it would include Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, a lifelong anti-slavery fighter whom Pinchback felt African-Americans should laud.

After his brief governorship, Pinchback remained active in politics and public service. He was elected to both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, but both elections were contested, and his Democratic opponents were seated instead. Pinchback served on the Louisiana State Board of Education and was instrumental in establishing the predominantly black Southern University in New Orleans in 1880 (later relocated to Baton Rouge in 1914). He was a member of Southern University's board of trustees.

In 1882, Republican President Chester Alan Arthur named Pinchback as surveyor of customs in New Orleans. In 1885, he studied law at Straight University, (which was closed in 1934) in New Orleans. He was admitted to the bar in 1886, and later moved to New York City where he was a federal marshal, and then to Washington, D.C. where he practiced law.

Pinchback died in Washington in 1921 and was interred in Metairie Cemetery near New Orleans even though the cemetery at the time was segregated and deemed to be exclusively for whites.

NEW YORK'S NEXT GOVERNOR IS SOUL BROTHER DAVID PATTERSON

David Patterson is the Lt. Governor of the Sate of New York. In the next few days once the current and disgraced Governor, Eliot Spitzer resigns his position, David a life long politico will assume the governorship. Relationships, successful campaigns and just plain “sticking around” since 1985 with his stint as a New York State Senator, have blessed him beyond measure.

Former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer: Sex, Lies, And A Sistah Name Temeka!

The Spitzer Scandal: Lust Plus Pride Equals Black Man Will Now Run The Show

Talk about a red phone moment! On a day of heavy ironies for one of America's most prominent and promising politicians, there was drama. Not we're not talking about presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama.

Today the focus shifted to the prostitution ring that New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer allegedly patronized called the Emperors Club VIP. And to Hillary's chagrin, this fall from grace would be particularly bruising for her campaign, while America watches another African American rise to one of the highest positions of power in this country.

It was, in many ways, a Jimmy Swaggart redux for New York state: the sloppy fall of a man known for his uprightness, his starched shirts (white shirts everyday), and the vigorous adjectives he reserved for those deemed less righteous (as the Wall Street giant — and perennial Spitzer adversary — Ken Langone noted in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, the governor called him "unsavory", "deceptive" and "tainted").

Spitzer may have made his name going after Wall Street gluttony, but he had a long history with criminal cases involving wiretaps, from his 1992 Gambino "mob tax" prosecution based on taped phone conversations to his 2004 calls for the FCC to let prosecutors tap internet phones and intercept text or picture messages on cell phones. Spitzer himself said that New York State does about 30% of the nation's wiretaps, and he helped make it a powerful weapon in the prosecutors' arsenal. If the charges are true, why would he think he was immune from such techniques? Another irony.

Four individuals had been charged last week with operating the Emperors Club VIP, which is described by law enforcement authorities as an "international prostitution and money-laundering ring." Court papers indicate the business garnered more than $1 million by arranging trysts between its more than 50 prostitutes and "wealthy male clients" in London, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Paris and Washington. The customers are said to pay $1,000 to $5,500 per hour for the services of the ring's "Spokes Models" [sic]. Spitzer was allegedly among those clients.

Wiretaps allegedly recorded the setting up of a Washington, D.C., appointment between him and an Emperors Club "model." A defendant in the case, Temeka Rachelle Lewis, told a prostitute identified only as Kristen that she should take a train from New York to Washington for an encounter with Client 9 on the night of Feb. 13, according to the complaint. The defendant confirmed that the client would be "paying for everything — train tickets, cab fare from the hotel and back, mini bar or room service, travel time and hotel."

The prostitute met the client in Room 871 at about 10 p.m., according to the complaint. When discussing how the payments would be arranged, Client 9 told Lewis: "Yup, same as in the past, no question about it" — suggesting Client 9 had done this before.

According to court papers, an Emperors Club agent was told by the prostitute that her evening with Client 9 went well. The agent said she had been told that the client "would ask you to do things that ... you might not think were safe ... very basic things," according to the papers, but Kristen responded by saying: "I have a way of dealing with that ... I'd be, like, listen dude, you really want the sex?"

The Emperors Club website crashed on Monday afternoon with the onslaught of journalistic and prurient interest. "Kristen" met with Client 9 the night of February 13, 2008, according to the affidavit, after describing herself as "petite, very pretty brunette, 5 feet 5 inches, 105 pounds". They were finished, three hours and $4,300 later (It may not have been Client 9's first time there: he had a $500 credit.) "Kristen" then called a colleague at the Emperors Club and said that she liked Client 9. "I don't think he's difficult," she said. Spitzer's problem — long before this news broke — is that there are plenty in New York who would disagree.

The allegations will undoubtedly be more damning for Spitzer, a former hard-nosed prosecutor who had made ferreting out corporate malfeasance and cracking down on corruption centerpieces of his political platform. For African Americans, it's a bittersweet moment. While you can't help but feel for this man, all eyes are now on Lt. Governor David Paterson, a black former state senator from Harlem who in many ways will serve to avenge one David Dinkins, the former Mayor of the Big Apple who got kicked to the curb like no other New York politician of recent memory. That is, until now!

When Spitzer finally addressed the Emperors Club charges in a delayed and brief non-denial before the assembled media on Monday afternoon, the governor said, "I do not believe that politics in the long run is about individuals. It is about ideas." But if these accusations do spell the end of Spitzer as an individual in political life, his ideas — of reform and clean governance in Albany — had already stalled because of a different cardinal sin: not Luxuria (Lust), as in Monday's scandal, but Superbia (Pride).

After sweeping to power in Albany with a landmark victory — he took office in January, 2007 by winning 69% of the vote — he quickly engendered resentment for both his policies and management style. Spitzer was the architect of a widely unpopular plan to issue driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants, and did not endear himself to constituents by squabbling with the Republican-controlled State Senate, and particularly the body's majority leader, Joseph Bruno, whose camp accused the governor of deploying "dirty tricks" to smear his opponents.

"I don't think, by any metric, you'd say that his administration thus far has been a success," Phillips says. In order for Spitzer to keep his job, says Phillips, "he'd have to come clean right away, admit to what he did and not have this trickle of damaging information come out." [Time Magazine]

NY GOVERNOR ELIOT SPITZER TO RESIGN OVER PROSTITUTION SEX SCANDAL, BLACK LT. GOVERNOR TO ASSUME POWER!!!

Spitzer Linked to Prostitution Ring

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has informed his most senior administration officials and now the rest of the world that he had been involved in a prostitution ring. Of course he apologized to his family and those whose trust he violated, but when it's all said and done, this man RIGHT HERE will be the new Governor of New York:

With David Paterson, the blind African American politician currently serving as Lieutenant Governor, maybe 2008 will see Black men running the show in DC with Barack, Deval Patrick in Massachusetts, and this brother in Hillary's state. To make things even more interesting, Governor Spitzer is a superdelegate... for Clinton!

David Paterson is a former State Senator who evokes mixed feelings in New York political circles and particularly in his native Harlem. Spitzer chose him based on his personal liking for, and confidence in, him.

Here's a profile of Paterson in the New York Observer in 2006:

State Senator David Paterson’s bid to be Eliot Spitzer’s candidate for Lieutenant Governor and campaign-trail partner was launched last month in a flurry of confusion and political intrigue. It stunned his Harlem-based world, and left him for a few days opposed by a candidate who had been endorsed by his wife and father. And when things settled down, Mr. Paterson unsettled some of Mr. Spitzer’s supporters with a public promise of a “Paterson-Spitzer administration.”

It seems the brother may have been more clairvoyant than people realized.

Mr. Spitzer, who was huddled with his top aides early this afternoon, had hours earlier abruptly canceled his scheduled public events for the day. A first-term Democrat who pledged to bring ethics reform and end the often seamy ways of Albany, is married, has three children, and was named by Time Magazine as "Crusader Of The Year" for all his prosecutorial good deeds.

Just last week, federal prosecutors arrested four people in connection with an expensive prostitution operation. Administration officials would not say that this was the ring with which the governor had become involved.

He had a difficult first year in office, rocked by a mix of scandal and legislative setbacks. In recent weeks, however, Mr. Spitzer seemed to have rebounded, with his Democratic party poised to perhaps gain control of the state Senate for the first time in four decades. Most people, however, never realized that he had a sex addiction that would finally cause him to hit rock bottom!

Mr. Spitzer gained national attention when he served as attorney general with his relentless pursuit of Wall Street wrongdoing. As attorney general, he also had prosecuted at least two prostitution rings as head of the state’s organized crime task force.

In one such case in 2004, Mr. Spitzer spoke with revulsion and anger after announcing the arrest of 16 people for operating a high-end prostitution ring out of Staten Island.

“”This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multitiered management structure,” Mr. Spitzer said at the time. ”It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring.”

Albany for months has been roiled by bitter fighting and accusations of dirty tricks. The Albany County district attorney is set to issue in the coming days the results of his investigation into Mr. Spitzer’s first scandal, his aides’ involvement in an effort to tarnish Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, the state’s top Republican. [CNN]