As attorney general of New York, Spitzer had a reputation for cracking down on white-collar crime. He was elected governor but lasted only 15 months, resigning in March 2008 amid revelations that he had spent tens of thousands of dollars as a client of a prostitution ring.
And the madam who ran that business said Wednesday she is outraged that the ex-governor is lecturing a paying audience on ethics.
Steven Speliotis
Kristin Davis, who ran the prostitution service frequented by Eliot Spitzer, questions Harvard University's decision to invite the disgraced ex-governor to speak on ethics.
"I don't understand the need to have this man speak," Kristin Davis said in a phone interview. "Why do we continue to promote dirty politicians?"
Davis, who pleaded guilty in 2008 to promoting prostitution, says her hookers -- including call girl Ashley Dupre, whose trysts with Spitzer torpedoed his career -- provided the married Spitzer with sexual services on more than 80 occasions.
Davis said she recently sent a letter to Lawrence Lessig, director of Harvard's Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, outlining what she sees as the double standard of punishment.
"For nearly five years," Davis wrote, "I supplied Mr. Spitzer with high-priced escorts while he was both Attorney General and Governor. For this crime, I served four months on Rikers Island, had all of my assets confiscated and am now considered a sex offender on five years probation. Mr. Spitzer broke both state and federal laws and walked away free."
Davis -- who has a bachelor's degree in business from St. Mary's College in California and says she is writing a master's thesis in psychology -- said she has not heard back from Lessig or Harvard. Neither Lessig nor university officials responded to a request for comment.
Davis, who has posted her letter on her blog, said she would love to go to the lecture herself and ask her former client a number of questions in person. "Unfortunately, I can't leave the state because that would be a violation of my parole," she said.
According to the ethics center's Web site, Spitzer's talk at Harvard is titled, "From Ayn Rand to Ken Feinberg -- How Quickly the Paradigm Shifts. What Should Be the Rationale for Government Participation in the Market?"
"I don't have a personal vendetta against Spitzer," said Davis. She said she only met him once, when he arrived at one of her apartments early and his call girl was running late. "It was back when he was attorney general. He just seemed like a normal client to me."
Still, Davis is hopeful that the audience members won't simply defer to Spitzer out of respect of the positions of power he once held.
"This is a forum on ethics, so I want someone to ask him some tough questions about what he thinks about the ethics of public officials who hide their own corruption from the public."
