Last-Gasp Petition Drive Fails to Rescue Spitzer

Governor Spitzer has not been completely without supporters in a week during which he faced an onslaught of anger and disgust following news of his alleged links to a high-priced prostitution ring.

Even as members of his own party distanced themselves from him and reporters searched mostly in vain for sympathy among pundits and other New Yorkers, a Save Spitzer campaign went live Tuesday night on the Internet with a petition that gathered more than 1,000 signatures by morning. The petition was launched by Bob Fertik, president of the Web site democrats.com, which bills itself as a forum for "aggressive progressives" and advocates for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

"Considering that it was 11 last night, word got around fast," Mr. Fertik said in a telephone interview early yesterday from his Jackson Heights home, where he runs the Web site. "Overnight, that's pretty good."

The petition is written as a letter addressed to Mr. Spitzer, and urges him in its first sentence: "Don't let the Republicans and the right-wing media drive you out of office!"

The letter went on to call the investigation into Mr. Spitzer's finances, which yielded information that he was the client of a Web-based prostitution service, a "naked partisan Republican assault."

"The FBI never investigates johns — so why are they investigating you?" the petition asked. The answer, the next sentence suggests, is that President Bush and his former chief strategist, Karl Rove, interfered. That the governor had "made a lot of powerful enemies" in his career as attorney general didn't help his cause, the letter says.

In the interview, Mr. Fertik said he believed the push for Mr. Spitzer's resignation was hypocritical, as Republicans in similar situations, including Senator Craig of Idaho, who pleaded guilty in an airport bathroom sex sting, and Senator Vitter of Louisiana, who was connected to a prostitution ring in Washington, D.C., have not resigned from their positions.

About 90% of the people who signed the petition are from New York State, Mr. Fertik said, although he did not release their identities. A Marist poll released yesterday suggested that the petitioners weren't alone in their support of the embattled governor — 20% of voters said Mr. Spitzer shouldn't step down.

In the end, the petition didn't convince its intended recipient. Mr. Spitzer announced his resignation yesterday morning.

His supporters weren't deterred. The number of petitioners continued to tick upward throughout the afternoon, reaching 1,275 by 5 p.m., and Mr. Fertik, speaking before the governor's scheduled 11:30 a.m. announcement, suggested that if Mr. Spitzer did resign, senators Vitter and Craig "should be gone by 11:31."