By Heather Grossmann
DNAinfo News Editor
MANHATTAN — It’s been just more than two years since disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer left office amid a prostitution scandal, but New York City voters are still not ready to forgive and forget, a poll released Wednesday showed.
Sixty-six percent of city voters do not want Spitzer, who’s been rehabilitating his image in recent months, to enter city politics and run for mayor in 2013, according to the latest Marist Poll.
But the rest of the state has taken a kinder view of the luv gov’s sexual transgressions, with only 58 percent of state voters saying they did not want Spitzer’s name on the ballot this year, down from 69 percent last September.
The poll was released just as news broke that Spitzer had reportedly spent more than $100,000 on call girls between 2006 and 2008, according to a new book, "Rough Justice" by Fortune editor-at-large Peter Elkind.
“Eliot Spitzer’s political scars remain, although for some New Yorkers, they may have faded a bit,” said Dr. Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. “Eventually, voters may go for the idea of Spitzer running for office but not yet.”
Spitzer fared better when state voters were asked is he should ever run for politics again, with 45 percent saying he should.
But just because some say the ex-governor still has as shot at politics doesn’t mean they like him.
Only 28 percent of voters have a good impression of Spitzer, while 50 percent said they have an unfavorable view of him, the poll said.
