Does Eliot Spitzer consider himself a feminist?
“Yes,” he said on Tuesday’s All In With Chris Hayes.
“I hate to hide behind the line [that] life is complicated,” Spitzer said on msnbc after being shown a video of N.O.W. New York president Sonia Ossorio criticizing him for participating in “sustaining an industry that has a history of exploiting women and girls.”
“What I’ve said to the voters is ‘look at the totality of my record,’” said the former New York attorney general and former governor. Spitzer recently announced his plans to run for New York City comptroller. Polls show him ahead of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.
“I’ve been forthright and direct. I resigned five years ago and done a great deal between now and then… The record I had was one of devout dedication to women’s rights, on the issues of choice and the issues of equal pay or issues of anti-discrimination, both as attorney general where we were fervent in pursuing those cases; [and] where we were fervent in governing and legislation.”
Hayes also grilled Spitzer about his refusal to release his full tax returns after having called out candidate Mitt Romney during the 2012 campaign. On his Current TV show, Spitzer said: Romney has now made paying taxes the litmus test for good moral standing in our community. He has done this by so avowedly dismissing the 47% as dependents and slackers. So while I had grown tired and lost interest in Mitt’s tax returns, I have a sudden, new-found interest in examining them. If payment is the ticket to moral uprightness, I want to see if Mitt has punched his own ticket. Spitzer said that the partial return reveals his properties, revenue, and an effective tax rate of 49% in 2011 and 39.5% in 2012, but that a full return would contain “data about other people that simply and cannot be revealed.” According to the Wall Street Journal, Spitzer missed the deadline for filing the required ethics form with the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board; he has a week’s grace period.
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