Before she was known as "Kristen", the woman at the center of the prostitution scandal that forced New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's resignation, 22-year-old Ashley Alexandra Dupré was simply Ashley Youmans, a small town girl from the New Jersey shore who yearned for her father and struggled with her family's split. After her parents, William Youmans and Carolyn Capalbo, broke up, Ashley "used to cry about that and say how much she missed him," childhood friend Erica Kane tells PEOPLE. Adding to the heartache was her older brother Kyle, 26, who was incarcerated after a 2000 drug arrest, according to the Asbury Park Press. (More recently, on Monday, Kyle pleaded guilty to heroin charges and is expected to be sentenced to probation on April 14, according the newspaper.) But after her mother married oral surgeon Michael DiPietro, Ashley, who was in elementary school at the time, would say even more so "how much she missed her dad. She always used to talk about that," says Kane. "[Her life] looked perfect. She was a beautiful girl, boys thought she was pretty and she got along with everybody. But she wanted her real family. She wanted her real father and her mother together and her brother back in the house. She wanted everybody under the same roof."

Before she was known as "Kristen", the woman at the center of the prostitution scandal that forced New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's resignation, 22-year-old Ashley Alexandra Dupré was simply Ashley Youmans, a small town girl from the New Jersey shore who yearned for her father and struggled with her family's split. After her parents, William Youmans and Carolyn Capalbo, broke up, Ashley "used to cry about that and say how much she missed him," childhood friend Erica Kane tells PEOPLE. Adding to the heartache was her older brother Kyle, 26, who was incarcerated after a 2000 drug arrest, according to the Asbury Park Press. (More recently, on Monday, Kyle pleaded guilty to heroin charges and is expected to be sentenced to probation on April 14, according the newspaper.) But after her mother married oral surgeon Michael DiPietro, Ashley, who was in elementary school at the time, would say even more so "how much she missed her dad. She always used to talk about that," says Kane. "[Her life] looked perfect. She was a beautiful girl, boys thought she was pretty and she got along with everybody. But she wanted her real family. She wanted her real father and her mother together and her brother back in the house. She wanted everybody under the same roof."

ELIOT SPITZER'S campaign slogan was “Day One, Everything Changes”. On Day 439, everything finally did. The famously self-righteous Mr Spitzer stepped down as governor of New York because of allegations that he had had sex with expensive prostitutes and was possibly facing federal charges. David Paterson, his lieutenant, was sworn in as the state's first black governor on March 17th.

Mr Paterson is nothing like his steamrollering ex-boss. He is unabashedly candid: he and his wife, he said, have had affairs and, when asked whether he had ever employed a prostitute, he smiled and said: “Only the lobbyists.” He is self-effacing about himself, even his blindness. His swearing-in speech to the state Assembly and Senate demonstrated this; it was humorous, full of gentle jibes and calls for compromise. He joked that when Joe Bruno, the formidable majority leader of the state Senate, invited him to dinner he accepted, but vowed to take a food-taster with him.

New Yorkers elected Mr Spitzer, an Albany outsider, on a mandate to battle corruption and to clean up state affairs. Mr Paterson, by contrast, is an Albany insider and has been in state government for two decades. His father is a former New York state secretary. His audience were plainly happy to have one of their own in charge. And it was clear that the legislature is eager to move on from what, even by Albany's standards, has been a rough week, not to mention a vitriolic year. Mr Spitzer's abrasive style alienated many people and did much to paralyse his own efforts at reform.

With a reputation as a good negotiator and compromise-finder, Mr Paterson may create the bipartisan consensus Mr Spitzer needed. But E.J. McMahon, of the Empire Centre for New York State Policy, predicts that goodwill will take him only so far. Mr Paterson will need every ounce of charm to pass a $124 billion budget and to close a $4.4 billion deficit by April 1st. Although he has said he will remain committed to the budget plan's outlines, he has not ruled out raising taxes. He must also convince the state to approve New York City's congestion-pricing plan by the end of the month or risk losing $350m in federal funding. It is not clear how much of the rest of Mr Spitzer's agenda he will keep.

Mr Paterson's legislative record gives only a hint of what his own plans may be. As an assemblyman, he introduced a number of bills (most of which went nowhere), including one that would have made it a crime for the police to shoot to kill a suspect. He considered extending voting rights to some illegal immigrants. He wanted to increase state income tax, and is a good friend to unions. Mr McMahon reckons Mr Paterson could well be the most left-of-centre governor New York has ever had. But he also admits it is difficult to predict what he will actually do now he is the state's chief executive.

Doug Muzzio, a politics professor at Baruch College, thinks Mr Paterson may get a bit of help from state lawmakers, who are anxious to show they are not dysfunctional. But if they don't, will Mr Paterson be tough enough to force his former colleagues to behave? And what about Mr Spitzer's plans to clean up Albany? For all his charm, Mr Paterson may well be too much of an insider to be effective.

The spectacular and bizarre release of secret FBI wiretap data to the New York Times exposing the tryst of New York State governor Eliot Spitzer, the now-infamous client "No 9", with an upmarket call-girl had relatively little to do with the George W Bush administration’s pursuit of high moral standards for public servants. Spitzer was likely the target of a White House and Wall Street dirty tricks operation to silence one of the most dangerous and vocal critics of their handling of the current financial market crisis.

A useful rule of thumb in evaluating spectacular scandals around prominent public figures is to ask who might want to eliminate that person. In the case of former governor Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, it is clear that the spectacular "leak" of the government's FBI wiretap records showing that Spitzer paid a high-cost prostitute US$4,300 for what amounted to about an hour’s personal entertainment, was politically motivated.

The press has almost solely focused on the salacious aspects of the affair, not least the hefty fee Spitzer apparently paid. Why the scandal breaks now is the more interesting question.

Spitzer became governor of New York following a high-profile record as a relentless state attorney general going after financial crimes such as the Enron fraud, and corruption by Wall Street investment banks during the 2002 dotcom bubble era. Spitzer made powerful enemies by all accounts. The former head of the large AIG insurance group, Hank Greenburg, was among his detractors. He was bitterly hated on Wall Street. He had made his political career on being ruthless against financial corruption.

Most recently, from his position as governor of the nation’s second largest state, home to its financial industry, Spitzer had begun making high-profile attacks on the complicity of the Bush administration in covertly arranging bailouts of its Wall Street friends at the expense of ordinary homeowners and citizens, all paid for by taxpayer funds.

Curiously, Spitzer, who had been elected governor in 2006, defeating a Republican by winning nearly 70% of the vote, has not been charged with any crime. However, the day the scandal broke, New York Assembly Republicans immediately announced plans to impeach Spitzer or put him on public trial were he to refuse to resign. Spitzer could be asked to testify in any trial involving the Emperors Club prostitution ring. But so far he hasn’t been charged with a crime.

Prostitution is illegal in most US states, but clients of prostitutes are almost never charged, nor are their names usually leaked in a case in process. The Spitzer case is in the hands of Washington and not state authorities, underscoring the clear political nature of the Spitzer "Watergate".

The New York Times said Spitzer was an individual identified as Client 9 in court papers filed last week. Client 9 arranged to meet with "Kristen", a prostitute who officially charged $1,000 an hour, on February 13 in a Washington hotel. Whatever transpired, Spitzer paid her $4,300, according to the official documents. The case is clearly political when compared with more egregious recent cases involving Republicans. Republican Mark Foley was exposed propositioning male interns in Congress and Rudolph Giuliani was discovered cheating on his wife, but no or few Republican calls for resignations were heard.

Why the attack now?
Spitzer had become increasingly public in blaming the Bush administration for the nation’s current financial and economic disaster. He testified in Washington in mid-February before the US House of Representatives Financial Services subcommittee on the problems in New York-based specialized insurance companies, known as "monoline" insurers. In a national CNBC TV interview the same day, he laid blame for the crisis and its broader economic fallout on the Bush administration.

Spitzer recalled that several years ago the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) went to court and blocked New York State efforts to investigate the mortgage activities of national banks. Spitzer argued that the OCC did not put a stop to questionable loan marketing practices or uphold higher underwriting standards.

"This could have been avoided if the OCC had done its job," Spitzer said in the interview. "The OCC did nothing. The Bush administration let the housing bubble inflate and now that it's deflating we're dealing with the consequences. The real failure, the genesis, the germ that has spread, was the subprime scandal," Spitzer said.

Fraudulent marketing and very low "teaser" mortgage rates that later ballooned higher, were practices that should have been stopped, he argued. "When mortgages are being marketed, there is a marketplace obligation to ensure the borrower can afford to pay back the debt," he said.

That TV interview was only one instance of Spitzer laying blame on the Bush Republicans. On February 14, Spitzer published a signed article in the influential Washington Post titled, "Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime: How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers."

That article, laying clear blame on the administration for the development of the subprime crisis, appeared the day after his ill-fated tryst with the prostitute at the Mayflower Hotel. Just a coincidence? Spitzer wrote, "In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act pre-empting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks."

In his article, Spitzer charged, "Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye."

Bush, said Spitzer right in the headline, was the "predator lenders' partner in crime". The president, said Spitzer, was a fugitive from justice. And Spitzer was in Washington to launch a campaign to take on the Bush regime and the biggest financial powers on the planet. Spitzer wrote, "When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners the Bush administration will not be judged favorably."

IT is unlikely that anyone's downfall has brought so much joy to so many in so short a time as that of the erstwhile governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer.

For years, with his long chin jutting out, this tall and lanky New Yorker threatened and achieved the ruin of many a Wall Streeter and in more recent years, of prostitution circles. Nobody disagreed that he was enforcing laws that were on the books. It was the way he did it: it was with a childlike grin, but that of the bully, who was holier than thou. But apparently the slogan he was telling himself was "catch me if you can".

He was having sex with the women he was seeking to be sent to jail. And no doubt the family fortune which was the backdrop of his arrogance continued to increase because of the insider trading that he was prosecuting.

Is there a road to redemption for Spitzer? What on earth can he do next after so spectacular a downfall? There is an almost exact parallel from Britain, played out 45 years ago. John Profumo was the minister of defence in the long-serving government of Harold Macmillan, and was even in the Privy Council.

But he had had an affair with a beautiful young lady named Christine Keeler, who, alas, had also been sleeping with a Russian spy.

In March 1963, Profumo insisted that there was "no impropriety whatever" in his relationship with Keeler. But the facts came out that he had done something far worse than an affair: he had lied to the House of Commons. It ended his career and helped to end Macmillan's.

I arrived in Oxford at about this time, and nobody could talk about anything else.

Well, poor old Profumo, who died just a few years ago, redeemed himself somewhat by working in a variety of East End slums, but his name remained synonymous with sex scandal.

Right now, the pundits in America are getting much needed relief from the Obama-Clinton spectacular, for example suggesting that we now have the ultimate source of global warming -- a certain special part of Eliot Spitzer's anatomy. But it is nothing as compared with the Brits in 1963.

A TV show parodied an old ditty like this: see him in the House of Commons; making laws to put the blame; while the object of his passion; walks the streets to hide her shame. We Americans can never catch up with the Brits in the realm of language.

What made Spitzer do it? If he wanted more sex than his marriage provided, there are traditional ways of going about this that are not even illegal. He was not only flouting the law, he was flaunting his ability to ride high above it. When you are paying US$5,000 an hour and flying to the most prestigious hotel in Washington for your fun, there must be something else going on.

There seems to be a psychological phenomenon where high flyers must test their power in order to believe it's real. Gary Hart had the democratic presidential nomination in the palm of his hands in the 1990s, until he dared the press to catch him in an infidelity. And catch him they did, on a boat ride to Bimini. Some people are saying right now that power equals sex, but it's a lot more complicated. Sex is just one of the tests for one's power. One can test it after all by seeing how many slums you can clean up, the way former President Ramos did in the Philippines, but that's unusual. His successor came to power on the shoulders of the poor, and then ruthlessly exploited them through his corruption that drained the national finances and worsened the plight of the poor. It is doubtful that the all-night orgies, in which the price of admission was usually a few bottles of Petrus at US$1,000 a throw, helped the poor much either.

Somehow, I doubt that Spitzer will try a humble comeback in the slums of New York. His fall from grace is just too dramatic and pathetic. I think there are several more rounds to come before the gods of hubris and nemesis have had their fill.

The Spitzer bombshell must be both anguishing and oddly exhilarating for Hillary Clinton. Anguishing, because it recalls so luridly the nadir of her partnership with husband Bill - the revelation of his White House dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. Exhilarating, because it reaffirms the truism that, in politics, it ain't over till it's over - and that, right up to that final moment, almost anything can happen to alter the outcome.

Clinton, hanging on by her fingernails. has already escaped extinction twice during this Democratic primary season. She trails in the delegate count. But if she can take Pennsylvania next month, as well as some sort of replay in the outcast states Florida and Michigan, then watch out. The race will extend to the convention in August, and who knows what might happen?

Barack Obama could get hit by a Frisbee, his sourpuss wife, Michelle, might repeat her disparaging comments about America, more dubious acquaintances might surface in seamy Chicago, war and terrorism could rewrite the leadership equation, the candidate might say something stupid or a grisly skeleton tumble out of a closet. If Eliot Spitzer, Crusader of the Year, political dynamo, family man and potential future prez can be shot down and picked clean in a week, then nothing is out of the question.

Consider our two American cases. Spitzer is finished in public life, hoist on his own hypocrisy. He is as broken, politically, as John Profumo, the British cabinet minister who bedded Christine Keeler in a 1960s scandal that makes this latest one look like the Children's Hour.

(Sex, celebrities, Soviet espionage, prime ministerial fumbling, more sex, lies in the House - Profumo et al was one for the ages. It made those of us studying in England at the time proud to be part of the Empire. It ranks right up there with Charles Parnell and Kitty O'Shea, or Caesar and Cleopatra - or Antony and Cleopatra; the lady did get around. Spitzer and the girls of the Emperors Club are but a footnote in the great annals of scandal, ranking somewhere below our own delicious tale of Colonel Pierre Sévigny and Gerda Munsinger. But we digress.)

John Profumo eventually redeemed himself by devoting his life to social work in east London. It's hard to see the arrogant Spitzer spending selfless decades on the Bowery. There will be no comeback.

And all for what? "Love Client Number 9" purchased delights dispensed by high-class hookers - hypocritical, reprehensible even, but hardly the sort of thing to shake society and bring into play the full enforcement might of what seems increasingly, below the border, to be turning toward a police-and-imprisonment state.

Harvard law professor Alan M. Dershowitz, in the Wall Street Journal, reports that the authorities wiretapped 5,000 phone conversations and intercepted 6,000 emails in this case - using "surveillance and undercover tactics that are more appropriate for trapping terrorists than entrapping johns." That's bringing out the elephant gun to shoot a canary. Was it really necessary?

A bunch of pictures up from a photo shoot Ashley Alexandra Dupré did here in Manhattan. They're the clearest shots so far of "Kristen," in which she looks more like an individual human being than Any Girl From Southern New Jersey, and will probably make it a lot harder for her to walk around on the street. The Post is kind of misleading about the origins of the photos — they make it sound like she posed for them when in reality they purchased the pictures from Wesley Mann, a New York–based photographer who we couldn't reach but who is probably cackling at his good fortune right about now. And thus, the Dupré flesh trade continues.

Last night, Ashley Alexandra Dupré, a.k.a. "Kristen," told the New York Times she was worried about paying her rent in the fancy Flatiron district building in which she lives. But in fact, in the less than 24 hours since that interview took place, Dupre's personal wealth has increased considerably. The two songs on her Amie Street profile, which each cost 98 cents, have reportedly been downloaded more than two million times, and according to that site's business model, Dupré should receive 70 percent of the total profit. Plus! Playboy and Penthouse are both reportedly interested in setting up photo shoots. "We've already discussed some options," Penthouse publisher Diane Silberstein tells Radar, adding that they'd pay in the "high six figures." Book publishers, however, are dragging their feet. "I don't think it's worth anything," HarperCollins publisher Jonathan Burnham tells Portfolio today, making us want to wrap our hands around his neck and administer a light throttle. "There's no story there." Seriously? Does no one remember for instance the best-selling Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, soon to be an HBO series with Darren Star? Hookers are so hot right now.

Anyway, the point is: Dupre shouldn't have to worry about rent money, now. Although she might want to worry a little bit about her neighbors, one of whom was just on NY1 sounding a little judgmental. "She'd be gone for, like, periods of time?" one, called Christina Wang, told the station. "And I don't know where she would be? It's weird." Let's just hope Dupre doesn't own her place. We all know how co-op boards can be.

A star was born earlier this week, and she was fortunate enough to already have decent-quality products available on the Internet.
TV programs are also in the hunt. Dupre's aspiring music career is getting a boost, too. Her song 'What We Want' was played on national radio. The song was free before but now it's soared to 98 cents a download.

The price of Ashley Alexandra Dupre's Amie Street songs instantly soared from pennies to $0.98, and now, according to the Post, has settled around $0.68. And that just the beginning for this very physical digital entrepreneur.

Highlights from the Post:

• $200,000+ from song sales so far (300,000+ downloads)
• $1 million offer from Hustler magazine
• Offers from Penthouse, et al
• $1 million offer from Kick Ass Pictures for a starring role
• Expected $1 million offer for a book deal.
• Hypothetical "Client No. 9" perfume deal
• "Six figure" offer from Georgi Vodka to star in their butts-on-buses campaign ("She's probably got the most popular butt in America right now," a Georgi executive says). Georgi also wants to create a new product around her called "Vodka No. 9."
• Commercials, tabloid-TV shows, a sexy clothing line, and more.

The Post's expert estimates that Ashley could coin $2.5 to $5 million off this publicity bonanza and calculates that she "would have to service Spitzer 581 to 1,162 times at her going rate of $4,300 for four hours to earn the same amount of money."

The downside: Her new business success will make her ineligible for further representation by her public defender. Also, the 22-year old will be besieged by reps, managers, advisors, acquaintances, and agents of all types, some of whom will no doubt persuade her that she can't afford not to pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. In the moment, this will seem like pennies, but if her career trajectory follows that of other instant web stars, will soon leave her penniless again.

SHE left a broken home on the Jersey Shore at 17 and came to New York to work in nightclubs as a rhythm-and-blues singer. Now, at 22, she is the unwitting and as yet unseen star of the seamy drama that is the downfall of Governor Eliot Spitzer.
Kristen, the high-priced prostitute described in a federal affidavit as having a February 13 rendezvous with Mr Spitzer at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, has spent the last few days in the expensive ninth floor apartment she rents in Manhattan's Flatiron district. She appeared briefly in court on Monday as a witness in the case against four people charged with running the prostitution ring, Emperor's Club VIP.
In a series of telephone interviews on Tuesday night, she said she had slept very little over the past week due to the stress from the case. "I just don't want to be thought of as a monster," she said as she told the tiniest titbits of her story.
Born Ashley Youmans but now known as Ashley Alexandra Dupre, she spoke softly and with good humour as she added, with significant understatement: "This has been a very difficult time. It is complicated."
She has not been charged. The lawyer appointed to represent her, Don Buchwald, told a magistrate in court on Monday she had been subpoenaed to testify in a grand jury investigation.
A person with knowledge of the Emperor's Club operation confirmed that Ms Dupre is the woman identified as Kristen in the affidavit. Mr Buchwald confirmed various details of her background but would not discuss the contents of the affidavit.
Ms Dupre said on the phone on Tuesday night that she was worried about how she would pay her rent, since the man she was living with "walked out on me" after she discovered he had fathered two children. She said she was considering working at a friend's restaurant or, after the lease on her apartment expires, moving back with her family in New Jersey "to relax".
She did not say when she had started working for Emperor's Club, or how often she had liaisons. Asked when she met Mr Spitzer and how many times they had seen each other, Ms Dupre said she had no comment.

On her MySpace page as it appeared on Wednesday morning, Ms Dupre described her "odyssey to New York from New Jersey through North Carolina, Miami, DC, Virginia and Austin, Texas." Public records show that she lived in Monmouth County, New Jersey, in 2001 and in North Carolina in 2003.
Music is her first love, and on the MySpace page Ms Dupre mentions Patsy Cline, Frank Sinatra, Christina Aguilera and Lauryn Hill among a long list of influences, including her brother, Kyle. (She also lists Madonna, Mary J. Blige and Amy Winehouse as her top MySpace friends.)

THE prostitute at the centre of the sex scandal that forced the resignation of Eliot Spitzer as Governor of New York is a 22-year-old aspiring blues singer who comes from a broken home, has abused drugs and is now worried about how she'll pay the rent on her apartment

Ashley Alexandra Dupre, known to Mr Spitzer as the $US1000-an-hour hooker "Kristen", is also the prosecution's key witness in the case against four people accused of operating the Emperors Club VIP prostitution ring.
Her real identity emerged after Mr Spitzer yesterday resigned the governorship he won in a landslide 18 months ago, a victory many believed had set up the former Wall Street crime buster for a tilt at the White House in the years ahead.
Now Mr Spitzer's political career is over and the ambitions of the man once dubbed "Mr Clean" and the "Eliot Ness of the 21st century" are limited to avoiding a string of possible felony prosecutions that could put him behind bars and cost him his certificate to practise law.
Prima facie, Mr Spitzer is in breach of the Mann Act, which makes transportation of someone across a US state line for the purposes of prostitution a federal crime.
The law is rarely used to prosecute the clients of prostitutes, known in US slang as "johns", but the notable exceptions include silent-film era actor-comedian Charlie Chaplin, mass murderer Charles Manson and rock 'n' roll legend Chuck Berry.
Mr Spitzer, who has reportedly spent $US80,000 ($85,000) on Emperors Club prostitutes over the past eight months, was caught on a federal phone tap arranging a meeting with Ms Dupre at a luxury Washington DC hotel on the evening of February 13.
He is identified as "Client 9" in a federal affidavit outlining the case against the four Emperors Club principals.
Mr Spitzer paid Ms Dupre a total of $US4300 on February 13. Some of the money was for services rendered that night; the rest was a down payment on future trysts.
With his tragically forlorn wife, Silda, at his side sharing the public humiliation, Mr Spitzer resigned as governor before a packed press conference in New York late on Wednesday, 48 hours after news of his links with prostitutes first broke on The New York Times website. Yesterday the Times had another scoop when it identified Ms Dupre and managed to interview her.
"I just don't want to be thought of as a monster," she said. "This has been a very difficult time. It's complicated."
Ms Dupre said she had slept little since the scandal erupted and was worried about paying the rent on her ninth-floor Manhattan apartment after her boyfriend recently left her.
She declined to say when she first met Mr Spitzer and how many times they had been together.
In resigning, Mr Spitzer said he had failed to meet the standards expected by his family and the community. "I have been given much: the love of my family, the faith and trust of the people of New York, and the chance to lead this state," he said.
"I am deeply sorry that I did not live up to what was expected of me. I sincerely apologise.
"I cannot allow my private failings to disrupt the people's work. Over the course of my public life, I have insisted, I believe correctly, that people, regardless of their position or power, take responsibility for their conduct.
"I can and will ask no less of myself. For this reason, I am resigning from the office of governor."
The resignation is effective from Monday when Lieutenant Governor David Paterson will be sworn in.
Mr Paterson will be the first blind man to lead a US state, and New York's first African-American governor.
Speculation that Mr Spitzer's resignation was part of a plea-bargain deal with prosecutors was dismissed when the US Attorney's Office issued a statement saying no deal had been discussed.
"There is no agreement between this office and Governor Eliot Spitzer, relating to his resignation or any other matter," US Attorney Michael Garcia said.
Mr Spitzer's resignation followed two days of angry calls for him to step aside and threats by Republican leaders of impeachment proceedings if he didn't.
Ironically, Mr Spitzer seems to have been caught out by changes to banking regulations he helped implement that were aimed at increasing surveillance of suspicious money transfers in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Mr Spitzer came under notice when the North Fork Bank noticed frequent cash transfers from several accounts into a shelf company linked to the prostitution ring.
A suspicious-activity report was filed with the Internal Revenue Service and wiretaps begun.