Downfall could tarnish a legacy

NEW YORK — The job of New York attorney general over the past two decades has proved to be a launching pad for aspiring politicians who used their legal authority to go after Wall Street hucksters, corrupt politicians and real estate scofflaws.

It was a strategy laid out by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer and by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who had both held the role. And Eric Schneiderman showed no reservation in following a similar playbook when he went after banks for mortgage abuses and the ride-hailing company Uber for its use of customer data.

Schneiderman’s confrontations with President Donald Trump, mainly through lawsuits to counter the administration’s attempts to roll back environmental and financial regulation, bolstered his national profile and played especially well in progressive political circles.

Now his legacy is in tatters, after he said he would resign in the wake of a report in The New Yorker about allegations that he physically assaulted four women he had dated.

Before his sudden downfall this month, there was no denying that Schneiderman, 63, had a knack for getting results and getting attention during his more than seven years as attorney general.

The eclectic nature of Schneiderman’s cases is indicative of the broad mandate of the New York attorney general. But critics say it also suggests a scattershot approach that tried to do too much and spread him thin.

Schneiderman’s big accomplishment in going after Wall Street were the billions of dollars in penalties that he helped secure from big banks that had sold flawed mortgagebacked bonds during the runup to the financial crisis. He ensured that some of that money went to help communities across the state that were overrun by abandoned houses and foreclosures — referred to as “zombie homes.”

Three years ago, he opened an investigation with the Massachusetts attorney general into whether Exxon Mobil deliberately misled the public and investors about the impact of climate change.

There was a time when the position of New York attorney general was a rather sleepy one and did not garner the kind of national media attention it now often does.

But the job took on a different cast with the 1998 election of Spitzer, a Democrat who dusted off a little-known state law called the Martin Act to aggressively pursue allegations of criminal and civil wrongdoing on Wall Street.

Spitzer used the post to launch his successful campaign for governor, an office he was forced to quit over the fallout from a federal investigation into secretive payments he allegedly made to several prostitutes.

Cuomo also used the attorney general’s office to catapult him into the governor’s mansion.