Paterson

There's been some healthy discussion around the state Capitol about Eliot Spitzer's salty chat with an Assembly Republican in which he reportedly referred to himself as a "fucking steamroller."

The quote, which nobody is denying, is actually in keeping with Spitzer's combative style.

Lt. Governor David Paterson has also taken up the cudgel, saying in his last budget presentation that legislators should "confess" for the previous budgets they helped pass.

I caught up with Paterson, who was until recently a state Senator, and asked if he was serious about the "confession" remark.

"I'm real serious," Paterson told me in the concourse of the Capitol. "I mean, look at the results. We have poor performance scores in education in almost all our major cities. We're not graduating at the level we could be. We spend twice the national average for health care. This is not exactly a healthy state. And I think that one of the real honest ways to reignite the public trust is to recognize that you're part of a process. I voted for a lot of those budgets, so I'll take responsibility right now."

And how would a lawmaker actually going about confessing?

"I just did."

-- Azi Paybarah

The Post reports that David Paterson admits fault, and Mike Bloomberg goes to Washington.

The Times reports on Bill Weld's tax plan.

And the Albany Times Union reports on the tentative state budget agreement.

—Nicole Brydson

David Paterson was just on Fred Dicker’s show, pushing back against a couple of things written about him on The Politicker and in the Observer.

His basic case, which I more or less plead guilty to, is that reporters are over-obsessed with facts.

"There’s a difference between accuracy and memory," he said, saying out that he spent a lot of time in Harlem growing up and has a reasonable claim to having grown up there, as his official biography stated for a while. He said the report was "unfair to my parents" who had sent him to school on Long Island because that’s where the public schools would accomodate his disability.

In any case, in the fact-obsessed vein, I apparently have to correct a line from the item about Paterson’s plan to cut child support, reported yeterday.

His aide told me Paterson withdrew the bill; Paterson repeated that on air today -- "We immediately pulled the bill" -- then revised. "We just didn’t reintroduce it," he said.

He said the bill, as written by an unnamed staffer, was "slanted too much in favor of allowing too many fathers to get out of their responsibilities" and "went way, way, way beyond what I wanted to do."

Also, a little parting shot:

"I tripped a kid in the playground when I was 12 and the Observer and Ben Smith are going to do a story on it next week," he added.

Is that FOILable?

The Daily News reports that David Paterson claims no ties to League of Education Voter ads attacking Republicans in vulnerable senate districts.

The Post reports on the candidates vying to replace Sherwood Boehlert, and Mike Bloomberg’s new ally, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

The Times has a story on Dick Cheney and Tom Kean, Jr. missing each other at last night’s fundraiser.

And the Sun suggests that Larry Silverstein is looking past the Pataki administration in hiring Roberto Ramirez.

—Nicole Brydson

The State GOP's attempt to rope Eliot Spitzer into a debate over restoring the vote to felons (haven't yet heard from the Spitzer camp where Eliot stands on this), reminded me that Spitzer's running mate, David Paterson, has proposed a different plan for extending the franchise.

In 1995, Paterson was the prime sponsor of a bill (S3720) to extending voting rights to legal aliens. Under his plans, non-citizen permanent residents who have held green cards for three years, live in the state for three years, and applied for citizenship, would be allowed to vote in local elections in New York City and other locales that decide to extend the franchise.

The politics of this, statewide, seem a bit risky for Paterson and his running mate.

The policy argument is interesting though. At its root, it's "No taxation without representation," and non-citizens (if they were propertied white men) voted in the early days of the Republic. Some more background, on both sides, in this story, from when a charter commission briefly considered the issue.

Crains (no link) speculates today that Paterson aide Bill Batson might run for Roger Green's Assembly seat, which the Insider seems to assume he's vacating.

Batson has no comment.

Out in Rye Brook saturday, Westchester County Executive Andy Spano mused on the significance of the job of Lieutenant Governor:

"I used to think about Lieutenant Governor when I was younger," he said. "I was the county clerk.... Everyone used to ask me, 'What's your ambition?' I used to say county clerk, Lieutenant Governor, Vice President. I don't want to work my whole life."

Why did Paterson want that job again?

ALSO: You can listen to Spano's routine here. (This is my first shot at putting sound from my trusty digital recorder online. Hope to do more, and of more significance, as time goes on.)

"Patrick Healy doesn't get on the plane after that snotty thing. Cooper did that great profile. Cooper may be on the plane."

Paterson aide to Spitzer aide in Rye Brook Saturday. Times readers all.

A side-story to the Paterson pick, not worth much ink, but worth noting, is how hard the Spitzer and Paterson camps have been pushing the notion that Paterson was dragged to the altar here.

The fullest version of this is in Juan Gonzalez's column today:

"Two weeks ago, [Paterson] got a telephone call from Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.... During the phone call, Spitzer offered to back Paterson in a run for the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor.... The offer took Paterson, a mild-mannered but methodical planner, by complete surprise."

I'm not questioning the literal truth of that chronology. Or of the talking point a Spitzer aide gave again today: "Eliot asked David, and David said yes." Of course.  read more »

But a number of other sources uptown say Paterson has been pushing for this hard for a while, and first raised the issue in a conversation with Spitzer last fall, asking why he wasn't being considered for the job.

Why spin so hard on something like this? Well, the dissonance between the two stories might help explain the anger uptown. The whole thing's not entirely clear to me, but seems to have something to do with that wonderful place where politics meets...high school.

Eliot Spitzer's choice of a Harlem favorite son as his candidate for Lieutenant Governor might have been expected to put the Harlem establishment firmly in his camp.

Instead, they're furious.

A displeased Charlie Rangel told a group of women -- at an event for Lieutenant Governor candidate Leecia Eve this morning -- that Paterson had told him he wouldn't run against Eve, and that David had never discussed it with him, Percy Sutton, or David Dinkins.

"I'm hurt," Hazel Dukes, head of the New York State NAACP -- a representative (but on record) voice, who was also at the breakfast, told The Politicker. "He has every right [to run], but he knows that Leecia Eve has been to the community for the last five months talking to people, getting commitments to support her."  read more »

Sources around Eliot insist it's a done deal, but Harlemites still aren't sure David won't be talked out of it. They also note that when he ran for Public Advocate, he did so without support from Rangel -- or his father.

[Apologies: Observer.com went down, again, this afternoon. I'm told this has something to do with Wisconsin, though I'm inclined to connect it to the lamented departure of The Politicker's only tech-savvy contributor, Jess Bruder.]

Along with the prospect of a State Senate race in Harlem and of a contest to replace Paterson as Minority Leader, the question isn't so much why Eliot picked Paterson as why Paterson gave up the propsect of being Senate Majority Leader -- the second-most-powerful pol in the State -- for the prospect of becoming Lieutenant Governor, not the second, or third, or fourth, or fifteenth, most powerful person in the state.

One line of speculation: Paterson's eyes are on a future statewide run. For the other kind of Senate.

Also, Paterson's father, Basil, is a partner at Meyer, Suozzi, English, and Klein. And yes, the Suozzi is Joseph, father of Tom.  read more »

But that shouldn't be cause for workplace tension. After all, as a reader reminds me, Basil has already endorsed for Lieutenant Governor. He's backing Leecia Eve.

David Paterson aide Bill Batson has an art show. And Mark Green protege Corey Johnson plays gay football.  read more »

Steny Hoyer, the U.S. House Minority Whip, is in Albany today meeting State Senate Minority Leader David Paterson. We're told he's hoping that New York's Democrats can retake the State Senate and then oversee the kind of deeply partisan redistricting made popular by Tom DeLay, relieving both him and Paterson of their minority status.  read more »