NEW YORK | In a stunningly swift fall from grace, Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned Wednesday amid a call-girl scandal that left him facing the prospect of criminal charges and perhaps disbarment.
He made his announcement without securing a plea bargain with federal prosecutors, though one law enforcement official said the former governor was believed to be negotiating one. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.
Spitzer will be succeeded on Monday by Lt. Gov. David Paterson, a fellow Democrat who becomes New York’s first black governor and the nation’s first legally blind chief executive.
Announcing his resignation, Spitzer said: “I cannot allow my private failings to disrupt the people’s work.”
Among the possible charges that law enforcement authorities said could be brought against the former governor: soliciting and paying for sex; violating the Mann Act, the 1910 federal law that makes it a crime to take someone across state lines for immoral purposes; violating bans on interstate travel with intent to commit a crime; and illegally arranging cash transactions to conceal their purpose.
Conviction on some of the charges could carry a prison term of more than five years.
In a statement issued after Spitzer quit, U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia, the chief federal prosecutor in New York, said: “There is no agreement between this office and Gov. Eliot Spitzer relating to his resignation or any other matter.”

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