The tryst with a prostitute that has imperiled New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s political career is the latest sex scandal to unfold in the plush confines of a swank Washington address.

Client No. 9 as Spitzer is reportedly identified in an FBI affidavit, joins the ranks of Sen. David Vitter, R-La., Clinton political guru Dick Morris and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., in D.C.’s political history of sex-for-pay episodes.

The arrangements for the rendezvous at a Washington hotel were caught on a federal wiretap recording last month and laid out in legal papers that reveal the intricacies involved in hiring a $1,200-an-hour call girl and sending her to D.C. from New York.

The tale of Client No. 9’s Mayflower Hotel encounter, as richly detailed in federal court documents, echoes previous career-damaging collisions occurring at the intersection of lust and power.

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Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the “D.C. Madam” linked to Vitter last year, told The Examiner, that the Spitzer case reinforces her belief that investigations into escort services are politically motivated.

“In a politically charged presidential election year, [it] is just one more indication to me that escort and adult service businesses – which cater to powerful and influential clientele – are now being used as the weapon of choice in American politics,” Palfrey said in a statement.

Frank’s career survived an admission that he allowed a male prostitute to operate out of his Capitol Hill home in 1989. Morris came clean about his peccadilloes with a call girl at the Jefferson Hotel while he was a top Clinton White house adviser. And last year, Vitter admitted that he had used the “massage” services provided by Palfrey’s escorts.

Spitzer’s encounter, the legal papers suggest, was not the first time the governor used the Emperors Club VIP, an Internet service that arranges for wealthy clients to hook up with women in D.C. and around the world.

The former New York attorney general who was once labeled a modern-day Eliot Ness, called the service two days before his D.C. visit, days before the Democratic governor was to testify before Congress about the effects of the subprime mortgage crisis.

After discussing the payment and arrangement, Client No. 9 said, “Yup, same as in the past.”

Kristen, described by her boss as a very pretty American brunette, was instructed to take an Amtrak train from New York to D.C., arriving in Union Station at 9 p.m.

She was told to grab a cab to the Mayflower Hotel, 1127 Connecticut Ave. NW, where basic rooms regularly exceed $400 a night. She was to grab a key at the desk and go to Room 871.

He showed up shortly after she let herself in, and left shortly after midnight. Jennifer called her boss to say that she collected $4,300. Client No. 9 also paid all related costs for the tryst, the FBI affidavit said, including travel, hotel room and any use of the mini bar.

Burned by old flames

» July 2007: Louisiana Senator David Vitter admitted that he had sinned after his phone number appeared in the phone records of the alleged D.C. Madam.

» 1996: Former Bill Clinton aide Dick Morris was photographed in the Jefferson Hotel with $200-an-hour call girl, and reportedly enjoyed sucking her toes.

» 1989: Rep: Barney Frank hired Steve Gobie, a male prostitute, in 1985 to live in his home and work as his personal assistant. Frank said he did not know that Gobie was running a male prostitution ring out of the home after Gobie was busted.

smccabe@dcexaminer.com