Spitzer prepares to take over

ALBANY - Calling himself “the new CEO of the state,” Eliot Spitzer says he has a “sense of excitement and anticipation” as he prepares to take over as the state's 54th governor on New Year's Day.

That doesn't mean there aren't tough times ahead for the man who gained fame by taking on powerful Wall Street interests as the state's hard-charging attorney general, Spitzer told The Associated Press in a wide-ranging interview on the eve of his elevation to New York's top state government job.

“You don't run for an office like this without preparing yourself for both the enormity of it and the difficulty of it, but that doesn't mean you don't break out in a cold sweat sometimes,” the millionaire lawyer from New York City told the AP.