Paterson: N.Y. Government Moving Forward

NEW YORK -- The man taking over Monday from disgraced New York Governor Eliot Spitzer said state government is moving along smoothly despite the explosive sex scandal that prompted Spitzer to resign.

New York Times Coverage | Dupre's MySpace page

Lt. Gov. David Paterson said if legislators can pass the budget on time, the state will be back on track.

Paterson is known for a bipartisan approach, as opposed to Spitzer's abrasive style. Some of Spitzer's top aides have turned in their own letters of resignation for Paterson to consider.

Others are expected to stay in their jobs.

Paterson said he has spoken with Spitzer, who resigned after being linked to a call girl ring. He said he told Spitzer that he was sorry about what's happened and that Spitzer is still an inspiration to him.

He will become New York's first black governor and the first legally blind chief executive in the nation.

Spitzer Call Girl Gains Support

People have posted messages of support on the MySpace page of the 22-year-old aspiring musician identified as the call girl at the center of the scandal.

The New York Times reported that the real name of the prostitute -- identified as "Kristen" in court papers alleging that Spitzer paid more than $4,000 for her services -- is Ashley Alexandra Dupre.

She briefly spoke to the Times about the Spitzer scandal. Law enforcement officials identified the governor as a "Client 9" who had a Feb. 13 tryst with "Kristen" and paid her $4,300, according to court papers.

"I just don't want to be thought of as a monster," Dupre told the Times. "This has been a very difficult time. It's complicated."

She told the newspaper she had slept very little since the allegations against Spitzer were revealed.

Dupre's MySpace page provides a window into her life as she went from a broken home in New Jersey to a music career in the city.

"I have been alone. I have abused drugs. I have been broke and homeless. But, I survived, on my own. I am here, in NY because of my music," she wrote.

She wrote that she was 17 when she left her "broken home."

"Learned what it was like to have everything and lose it, again and again," she wrote. "Learned what it was like to wake up one day and have the people you care about most gone.

"But I made it," she continued. "I'm still here and I love who I am. If I never went through the hard times, I would not be able to appreciate the good ones. Clich?, yes, but I know it's true."

In an Aug. 30 blog posting on MySpace, she wrote: "The past few months have been a roller coaster with so called friends, lovers, and family ... but its something you have to deal with and confront in order to move on ..."

"What destroys me strengthens me" is the slogan next to a Dupre photograph. The photos show her at various places, including in a bikini on a boat in a tropical locale. The number of hits to the page soared by the tens of thousands after the story broke.

Don D. Buchwald, a New York lawyer, confirmed to The Associated Press that he represents Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the same woman in the Times story. "That's as far as I can go," he said.

A man who answered the phone at the home of the woman's mother in New Jersey and identified himself as Dupre's brother, Kyle, told the AP he did not know why Dupre would agree to be interviewed about the scandal.

"I've talked to my sister every five minutes since this happened, and I'm not going to comment on it," he said. "She's just trying to get through this."

Dupre describes her favorite musical artists as Etta James, Aretha Franklin, Celine Dion, Christina Aguilera and Frank Sinatra, among many others.

Her Web site boasts a recording of a song, "What We Want." "I know what you want, you got what I want. I know what you need. Can you handle me?" she sings. By Thursday morning, the song had received more than 440,000 plays.

Dupre told the Times she worried about paying her rent in a ninth-floor Manhattan apartment after her boyfriend recently left her. She said she was considering moving back in with her family in New Jersey.

Records show that Dupre lives in Manhattan on West 25th Street, where a gaggle of reporters and TV trucks quickly gathered Wednesday night. It is a luxury rental skyscraper called The Chelsea Landmark where rents start at $3,500 a month for a small studio, neighbors said. The 35-story building opened less than a year ago.

She declined to comment when asked by the Times when she first met Spitzer and how many times they had been together.

Dupre apparently appeared in federal court Monday as a witness in the case against four people accused of operating the Emperors Club VIP prostitution ring.

Born Ashley R. Youmans, she changed her legal name to Ashley Rae Maika DiPietro, according to records in Monmouth County Superior Court, the Times reported. She told the times she took her stepfather's surname since she regarded him as "the only father I have known." However, she referred to herself as Ashley Alexandra Dupre in the Times interview.

The Times also spoke with Dupre's mother, Carolyn Capalbo, 46, who said that she was "shell-shocked" when her daughter told her last week that she had been working as an escort. She said she was not sure that Dupre realized who Spitzer was when he was her client.

"She is a very bright girl who can handle someone like the governor," Capalbo said. "But she also is a 22-year-old, not a 32-year-old or a 42-year-old, and she obviously got involved in something much larger than her."