If so, the New York Daily News is being rather artful about it:

Meanwhile, people have been speculating with vengeance since we told you about the former Davis escort who contends Spitzer wasn’t the only governor she romped with. On Friday, when Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell‘s spokesman Chuck Ardo resigned, Ardo insisted his retirement had nothing to do with Gawker and other sites putting Rendell on their short list of pols who may be Governor X. Ardo told The D.C. Write Up that Rendell is not the new luv guv – “no way, no how, no place, no time.”

Many seem to be aching for X to be Arnold Schwarzenneger. While we’re continuing to investigate the escort’s highly detailed story of her three “dates” with him, we won’t identify the chief exec with the prominent wife. But we will say this: it ain’t California‘s Governator.

So Gov. Rendell’s former PR flack’s denial that his former boss patronizes prostitutes gets reported without comment – while unnamed rumors that it was actually Gov. Schwarzenegger get firmly and unequivocally debunked.  Either way, absolutely deniable on the Daily News’ part.

Meanwhile, I’m curious about something.  Gov. Rendell was of course on everyone’s list for being a possible Vice Presidential candidate in the last election; his adamant refusal at the end of February 2008 to put himself into consideration for either that job, or any hypothetical Cabinet post could be easily enough seen as merely a sign of his dedication to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  Given that there were rumors involving Spitzer for months prior to that, then if Rendell is in fact Governor X it then becomes reasonable to ask if other individuals in the Democratic party were aware of the situation.

After all, we already know that then-DCCC chair (and current CoS) Rahm Emanuel helped cover up [Rep] Tim Mahoney’s adultery for as long as it could, the better from keeping it from wrecking the Democrats’ narrative for the 2008 election.  It would have obviously been a problem if two sitting Democratic governors had been forced to resign for patronizing prostitutes, particularly if one of them had been the governor of a crucial swing state.  And, given the nature of American politics, it seems highly unlikely that anybody in power – including sitting governors – would have been caught by surprise by the Spitzer press conference.  So if Rendell was Governor X, and if Spitzer was about to resign for patronizing the same prostitute as he had, it seems eminently plausible that Rendell would have to tell somebody.  And then that somebody then kept his or her mouth shut about it to this day.  I find that very, very interesting, but not as interesting as I would that hypothetical person’s name.

If ‘Fast Eddie’ Rendell actually is Governor X, of course.

Moe Lane

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.