Spitzer's Honeymoon Comes To An End As Stringer Goes Full-Out Negative

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- It didn't take long for the city comptroller race to hit the gutter.

With Eliot Spitzer leading in the polls, Scott Stringer has gone negative, even breaking a vow not to raise the ex-governor's prostitution scandal, CBS 2's Marcia Kramer reported Thursday.

Unlike the mayor's race, with Anthony Weiner recently revealed as "Carlos Danger" the sexting king, there are no new salacious details about the other lynchpin of love, Spitzer. And so his opponent is trying to re-tarnish him for patronizing prostitutes five years ago.

And then there's the whispering campaign.

"We know how this story ends. Why would we ever go back to that?" a new Stringer ad says.

Down in the polls by a whopping 17 points, comptroller candidate Stringer has launched a negative campaign ad against Spitzer that recalls how he was forced to resign as governor in a prostitution scandal, and attacks his stewardship of the state.

"Eliot Spitzer promised reform; instead he plunged Albany into political gridlock," the ad says.

It's typical for a candidate who is behind to go negative. Although, truth be told, Stringer promised not to talk about the prostitution scandal.

Spitzer is also the target of a whispering campaign -- that because his wife, Silda Wall, has not yet shown her face in the race, questions about his personal life, it appears, are fair game.

On Thursday he was asked if there is another woman.

"I am so tired of the, of the personal attacks. I've answered all those questions. The public cares about what I did in government. That's what I'm going to be talking about and that's what the public is going to vote based upon what I did in terms of trying to clean up Wall Street," Spitzer said during a campaign stop in Brooklyn.

Although women on the campaign trail were eager to pose for pictures with Spitzer, there have been constant questions about Wall: where she is, the state of his marriage and whether she supports his re-entry into politics.

The following was his response during the chaotic press conference he held on July 8, the day he got into the race:

"She will be with me," Spitzer said. "Where is she now? The office, I hope. We have not been separated."

Spitzer seemed to lose patience with Thursday's questions.

"We've said everything that we can say about that. These are attacks that are coming out of left field and, frankly, you know the public cares about what the public should care about. The public, frankly, is a lot smarter in this regard than some folks in the media," Spitzer said.

Team Spitzer insists that his family is behind his campaign. The candidate's people say his wife signed the petitions to get on the ballot, and that one of his daughters helped gather some of the 27,000 signatures collected to qualify for the race.

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