NY State attorney general Eliot Spitzer has been so eager to take on Wall Street moguls and run for governor that he missed the lesbian sneaking up behind him.
New York- STAFFERS at the engineering firm owned by Bernard Spitzer – the father of state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer – are accused of driving the office’s lesbian receptionist positively batty.
Evelyn Quinones was fired from her job answering phones at Spitzer’s Fifth Avenue firm last January. She has since filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that four female staffers at Spitzer Engineering harassed her so badly, she suffered panic attacks and had to check into a psychiatric ward.
Now her girlfriend, legal aide Lisa Padilla, charges in a letter to PAGE SIX that Eliot Spitzer is unfit for office because his “campaigns and lifestyle have been financed by his father . . . Since the younger Mr. Spitzer is attempting to build support in the gay and lesbian community for his gubernatorial run, it is akin to an abolitonist running for office financed by slavers.”
Bernard Spitzer told PAGE SIX yesterday: “There is no truth whatsoever to any of [Quinones’] claims. We completely deny any discriminatory act by anyone in our office. It’s completely contrary to our policies.”
In her EEOC complaint, Quinones names office manager Betty Chan as her principal tormentor. Quinones says that when staffer Judy Anderson complained that a “perfume, soap or lotion” Quinones wore was inflaming her allergies, “Betty Chan told me, ‘you must bring in all your perfumes so Judy can smell them, so we can see which one you are allowed to wear to the office.’ ”
Quinones continues: “If it were not my perfume it was my shoes. Betty Chan would state to me that ‘the noise of your shoes is annoying and distracting,’ yet the floors are marble so everyone’s shoes make noise, but I was the only one reprimanded.”
Somehow, the nitpicking by Chan and three other staffers caused Quinones to suffer a series of panic attacks that culminated in her checking into an Elmhurst Hospital Center psychiatric ward in December 2003. Quinones claims that when Padilla called the office to advise Chan of Quinones’ condition, Chan “interrogated” her as to how she was related to Quinones, who had told staffers that Padilla was her cousin.
“I was finally terminated via Federal Express mail on Feb. 9, 2004,” Quinones says in her complaint. “The determination came after I was removed on Jan. 22, 2004 via ambulance from Bernard Spitzer’s office . . . after being tormented by Betty Chan and associates, my body finally could take no more and I suffered a severe anxiety attack.”