To who did Spitzer make this promise to while campaigning?
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October 31, 2007
Chertoff Push Over Licenses Led to a Shift
By DANNY HAKIM
ALBANY, Oct. 30 — The phone call from a top aide to Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, came two weeks ago, and the message was clear: The department was concerned that Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s plan to grant driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants would undermine a federal initiative to roll out a new highly secure, nationally recognized license.

The prospect of Mr. Chertoff coming out publicly against Mr. Spitzer’s plan caused deep anxiety among Spitzer administration officials, said Michael A. L. Balboni, the governor’s deputy secretary for public safety, who received the call.

The governor and his aides felt they had few options.

The license plan had already set off angry attacks from Republicans and unease among Democratic allies, and had made the governor a target of national groups rallying for tougher immigration policies.

Mr. Spitzer agreed with Mr. Chertoff to a compromise plan on Friday under which the state would offer three levels of driver’s licenses beginning next year, including a limited license that illegal immigrants could obtain but that could not be used to board airplanes or cross borders.

The announcement has done little to quiet the fury Mr. Spitzer set off Sept. 21 when he declared, without consulting with the Legislature, that New York would offer driver’s licenses to the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants living in the state, as a way of making the roads safer and bringing them “out of the shadows.â€