Women for Spitzer

Last Saturday Eliot Spitzer's wife, Silda Wall, spoke to a group of about seventy Democratic women at a Ramada Inn brunch in Lansing. Ms Wall urged women in the audience to help more women get to the polls. "Set a goal," she said, "Five women." Sounds modest, but if we could all do just that, it would, well, quintuple the number of women voters.

Wall addressed Spitzer's position on issues important to women in New York including health care and the gender wage gap. Spitzer's website isolates the following topics: jobs, property taxes, education, reform, public safety, health care, transportation and environment. The site doesn't insult women by having a separate tab for "Women's Issues." They're all women's issues.

While Spitzer's "On Day One Everything Changes" speech is loaded with rhetoric suitable for the occasion of accepting the nomination, his statements on the website define specific achievable steps toward economic revitalization (including my personal favorite: universal broadband access - I should mention that not all the links work on Spitzer's website, but the pages load quickly. I appreciate that.)

Spitzer doesn't need a special flag for abortion issues. He's frankly pro-choice and a strong advocate for women's privacy. He doesn't need a special flag for gay rights. He plans to "draft and propose legislation to legalize gay marriage in New York State." (NY Times)

There are other single issues on which I don't agree with Spiter's position: the death penalty, the Iraq war. And I wonder why Spitzer's website is almost spectacularly silent about his running-mate, David Paterson.

Still, I support Eliot Spitzer. I thank Silda Wall for her work in spreading his message and for the "Women for Spitzer" mug - a gift for attending the brunch.