Ex-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer made a surprise revelation on Thursday when he said during an interview that the 2008 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign pressured him to drop a proposal to grant driver’s licenses to illegal aliens because it put then-Sen. Clinton in a tough political position.
“You can’t be a presidential candidate — as I think Hillary Clinton is — who has shifted position on every major issue leading up to this campaign,” Spitzer told former Obama aide David Axelrod during an interview for “The Axe Files” podcast.
An example of that vacillation, he said, was Clinton’s flip-flop on the issue of driver’s licenses for illegal aliens. Clinton’s public shift derailed her campaign, leading her team to demand that Spitzer table the issue.
“We heard from folks who said, we want this issue gone,” said Spitzer, who resigned from office in 2009 after he became embroiled in a prostitution scandal.
“You were also were ceding to a request from the Clinton campaign?” Axelrod asked.
“Yes, yes,” said Spitzer.
Early in 2007, then-New York Sen. Clinton said she thought that Spitzer’s driver’s license proposal was a good idea. But her support was much less enthusiastic during the Democratic presidential debates.
In one of the more infamous moments of those debates, Clinton’s fellow candidates called her out on her inconsistent position.
“She literally gave three different answers in 30 seconds,” recalled Spitzer, who acknowledged during the interview that he is supporting former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley for president. Spitzer is also dating O’Malley’s campaign manager.
“She waffled and waffled and waffled,” Spitzer added.
Asked why Clinton changed her position, Spitzer said “it was a politically tough issue.”
“It didn’t poll well, but there was no ambiguity about what was right. And if you look at where we are now as a nation on this very issue It’s the law of the land, I think, in California, a slew of states, and it’s not controversial because people know it’s right and it works. But at the time it was controversial. And because it was controversial she hemmed and she hawed.”
In her current run for the White House, Clinton has said she supports granting driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. She’s gone far to the left on immigration, saying that she will go even farther than President Obama’s amnesty initiatives.
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