'Manhattan Madam' Says She'll Challenge Eliot Spitzer if He Runs for Office

There is at least one person in New York who wouldn't be happy with an Eliot Spitzer comeback: "Manhattan Madam" Kristin Davis, who now says that she will run against Spitzer if he attempts to return to politics. Davis once ran what she describes as "New York City's most successful prostitution ring," which supplied Spitzer with escorts and sex partners before his exposure and resignation as New York governor in 2008.

Now, Davis is keeping close tabs on his much-discussed search for political rebirth.

"Eliot Spitzer has the bug," Davis wrote on her Web site. "For the second time in six months he has been caught planning a come-back. First, he floated a trial balloon for his old job as Attorney General. . . . Now he is contemplating a run for the US Senate or New York State Comptroller." She was referring to rumors that Spitzer is testing the waters for a comeback, all of which he has firmly denied. Since leaving office, he has written for Slate and begun teaching an undergraduate class on law at the City University of New York.

Davis said she hoped to use any future political campaigns as an opportunity to air more sordid details about Spitzer's liaisons with prostitutes. "I may have to run myself to focus attention on the multiple illegal acts for which he has not been punished, his abuse of women and the sexism in the way he walked away scot free while I went to Rikers [Island] for four months," she warned. "There is far more to tell about Eliot Spitzer, the ladies and the way he treated them."