UPDATED March 12, 2008:
Ryan Karben responded to yesterday’s blog. In an e-mail, Karben wrote that he never stated that “Spitzer should (or should not) resign.”
He wrote that he’d simply responded to a reporter’s “what-if” question.
“I was asked what would happen IF Spitzer chose to fight and responded he’s a resilient person with lots of fight in him,” Karben said in an e-mail. “I was not asked by the paper, and did not opine publicly, on what he should do.”
As we all know, Spitzer didn’t stay resilient too long. He resigned today.
ORIGINAL POST, March 11, 2008
Ryan Karben just can’t stay out of the newspapers – even if he’s being quoted in his old stomping grounds in Albany.
Karben was quoted giving advice to the beleaguered Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a fellow Democrat, in the Albany Times-Union (You have to go to page 2 of the article to find Karben’s quote.)
Karben told the newspaper Spitzer should fight for his job, even after it was revealed the governor supposedly was the man caught on a federal wiretap making arrangements for a high-priced prostitute to meet him in Washington’s famous or infamous Mayflower Hotel. Federal agents were investigating the call-girl service operating on the Internet. The costs top $1,000 an hour.
“This is a very smart, extraordinarily capable man with tremendous resilience,” Karben told the newspaper. “If he’s determined this is a battle he wants to fight, I think he’s got a lot of fight in him.”
The paper identifies Karben as a former Democratic Assemblyman from Rockland County and a lobbyist on Spitzer’s finance committee, showing Karben had close ties to the governor. What the paper left out was that Karben left the Assembly in 2006 under the cloud of a sex scandal, albeit different than Spitzer is facing. Accusations of improper behavior with male interns followed Karben, 33, forcing Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to bring down the hammer on the young Assembly member.
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