New Yorkers are slowly coming around to Eliot Spitzer again, a new Marist poll suggests.
In April of 2010, only 24 percent of New York voters wanted Spitzer to run for mayor of New York City. Now, 33 percent want him to run.
By comparison, only 26 percent of voters, according to the same poll, want the much more recently humiliated-by-a-sex-scandal-New-York politician, Anthony Weiner, to run.
Spitzer, who resigned as Governor of New York in 2008 after an FBI investigation revealed that he had been a customer of a high-end prostitution service, has refused to say he won't run for mayor in 2013.
Daily Intel ventures a guess that maybe Spitzer's now defunct CNN show gave him a boost in the polls.
Or maybe, as Spitzer noted himself over a year ago, people are just forgiving.
From Interview:
Well, I've always said that people are essentially well-meaning and have open and good hearts, and there's forgiveness in most of us. There's the schadenfreude of sort of relishing in the celebrity's fall from grace, which is a very real part of the culture and drives tabloid headlines. But I think there is that dichotomy. People on the street have always been supportive and have said, "Look, you have tried through your public career to fight on behalf of the public, and we wish you well in that regard." The rest of it, you know, we'll deal with.
A recent Quinnipiac poll shows New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly is the current favorite among New york voters for the 2013 mayorship. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn came in second in the poll.