After the stunning defeat Attorney General Spitzer suffered at the hands of a New York jury yesterday in the case of Theodore C. Sihpol III, maybe attention will be paid to Mr. Spitzer’s own conception of political ethics. After all, “For integrity” is the phrase that greets those who open the front page of his own campaign Web site, and he began his campaign for governor by promising “real change” in Albany.

The politician who made his reputation by assailing conflicts of interest in the Wall Street research industry claims he is hewing to what the New York Times describes as “the highly unusual decision not to accept campaign contributions from people or companies with business before his office.” He’s already returned donations from Donald Trump and the CSX railroad company, according to the Times.

Well, if integrity and real change are what Mr. Spitzer is campaigning for, we invite our readers to regard the chart below listing but a sampling of his contributors. It shows that Mr. Spitzer has been raising hundreds of thousands of dollars from those he regulates in the financial industry and from lawyers with an interest in actions taken by his office.

It’s all legal, but Attorney General Spitzer regulates money managers and hedge funds, which are investment pools for institutions and wealthy private investors. “New York Attorney General and Securities and Exchange Commission Bring Criminal and Civil Actions Against Hedge Fund Executive” was the headline on one Spitzer press release from October 2, 2003. Another, from September of 2003, announced, “Attorney General Eliot Spitzer announced today that his office has obtained evidence of widespread illegal trading schemes that potentially cost mutual fund shareholders billions of dollars annually. Spitzer announced that one of the perpetrators of the schemes – a hedge fund and its managers – has agreed to make restitution $30 million in illegal profits generated from unlawful trading and pay a $10 million penalty.”

Yet Candidate Spitzer has been hauling in cash from hedge fund managers and their spouses. The president of the Clinton Group hedge fund, George Hall, and his wife, Lori, have lavished $62,407 on Mr. Spitzer’s campaign for governor. The Clinton Group came under scrutiny in 2003 and 2004 by the SEC and the CFTC, which took no action against it, and its assets plunged to $1 billion from $5.6 billion. Mr. Spitzer investigated the mutual-fund industry, yet took $50,100 in contributions from Neuberger Berman’s Robert McComsey and $24,000 from Gabelli Asset Management’s Mario Gabelli. Candidate Spitzer even accepted a $10,000 contribution directly from a Greenwich, Conn., hedge fund, Sagamore Hill Capital Management LP.

If any other financial regulator – say, the chairman of the SEC or the CFTC – were going around accepting campaign contributions from the businesses it regulated and from their individual general partners, there’d be an uproar. Yet Mr. Spitzer is getting a free ride from his political opponents and, for the most part, from usual watchdogs of the public performance of officialdom in the state.

The intersection between the business of Attorney General Spitzer and of Candidate Spitzer extends to law firms and individual lawyers. Attorney General Spitzer regulates the hedge fund industry; Candidate Spitzer accepted a $10,000 contribution from Jedd Wider, a partner at the law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, which specializes in representing hedge funds. Attorney General Spitzer regulates and investigates Goldman Sachs; Candidate Spitzer accepted a $10,000 contribution from Gandolfo DiBlasi, a partner in the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, who has represented Goldman Sachs and whose law firm biography states: “A substantial part of Mr. DiBlasi’s practice is focused on civil and criminal investigations involving the financial services industry.”

Candidate Spitzer is accepting contributions from plaintiff-side class-action law firms that are suing companies that Attorney General Spitzer is investigating. For example, on December 2, 2003, Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer LLP filed a class action suit against Marsh & McLennan Companies, Incorporated. On November 1, 2004, Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer donated $10,000 to Mr. Spitzer’s campaign for governor. And on January 31, 2005, Attorney General Spitzer issued a press release headlined “Insurance Broker Agrees To Sweeping Reforms; Marsh To Pay $850 Million in Restitution and Ban Contingent Commissions.”

Attorney General Spitzer is pursuing the former chairman of AIG, Maurice “Hank” Greenberg. Yet on January 10, Candidate Spitzer accepted a $10,000 contribution from a plaintiff-side class action law firm, Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz, which has an active lawsuit against AIG.

It’s not limited to the financial and legal industries. The overlap between Attorney General Spitzer’s regulatory powers and Candidate Spitzer’s fund-raising extends to pharmacists and auto dealers. On December 14, 2004, Mr. Spitzer’s campaign collected a $20,000 contribution from the Pharmacy Political Action Committee of New York State. On February 3, 2005, Attorney General Spitzer put out a press release headlined “Two Orange County Pharmacy Owners Caught in Billing Frauds.” On March 4, 2005, Attorney General Spitzer put out a press release headlined “Two New York City Pharmacies Caught in Billing Frauds.”

In remarks a few months ago at a reception that the Financial Times newspaper gave in his honor at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Manhattan, Mr. Spitzer recalled how the idea of probing Wall Street stock research came from auto dealers he was investigating who were hoping to direct his attention elsewhere. Attorney General Spitzer regulates the auto industry. In 2004, he issued press releases such as “L.I. Auto Dealerships Cited for Tricking Consumers into Paying for Unwanted ‘Extras'” (August 30); “More Auto Dealers Cited for Deceptive Sales of Former Rental Cars”(July 20); “Dutchess County Auto Dealer Settles State Investigation” (May 21); “Civil Penalties Levied Against North Country Auto Dealer” (May 19); “L.I. Auto Dealerships Settle Cases Stemming from Misleading Ads” (April 26), and “Capital Region Auto Dealer Agrees to Over $31,000 in Consumer Refunds” (January 8).

Yet on November 18, 2004, Candidate Spitzer accepted a $2,500 contribution from the Automobile Dealers of New York Political Action Committee.

We don’t blame any of these donors. They are exercising their First Amendment rights. Yet Mr. Spitzer has such power that the Wall Street Journal describes him as the Lord High Executioner of New York. Single-handedly he managed to take away from Mr. Greenberg control of the company he had devoted his life to building. A press release from Mr. Spitzer can send a stock tumbling, trigger investors to stampede toward the exits of a fund, and attract a swarm of piranha-like trial lawyers.

No one is suggesting he is purchasable. The managing director of Mr. Spitzer’s campaign, Cynthia Darrison, tells us that its policy is not to accept contributions from those “currently” dealing with the attorney general. She says that some of the donors, such as the Halls and Mr. DiBlasi, have histories of supporting Democratic candidates. She also claims that contributions from industry groups are not problematic because the industries themselves aren’t targets, just individual “bad apples.” “Campaign finance,” she said, “is a tricky proposition. We do our best.”

Well, his best – the siphoning in of these huge campaign contributions from the world he regulates – can only generate cynicism from ordinary New Yorkers. At a minimum, he is violating the standard he proclaims. The right move for him at this point would be to either step down from his role as regulator for the duration of the campaign or to cease raising money from those he regulates. And to look to the cases he’s bringing so that the next time his office goes before an actual jury, it doesn’t get a rebuff of his judgment as humiliating as the one delivered yesterday in the case against Mr. Sihpol. That’s how “integrity” and “real change” are made tangible.

Correction: Jedd Wider is a partner at the law firm Orrick,Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP who specializes in representing hedge funds. The law firm is a general corporate law firm. A front-page editorial in the June 10-12 New York Sun, “Meanwhile, Spitzer’s Fund-Raising,” incorrectly described the law firm.