Paterson, alleged ex-girlfriend, traveled recently

BY MELISSA MANSFIELD | melissa.mansfield@newsday.com

March 26, 2008

ALBANY - Gov. David A. Paterson traveled with an alleged ex-girlfriend while campaigning for Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential bid in Iowa and South Carolina in recent months, with Paterson aides saying she helped him with his visual limitations.

The trips, in November and January, respectively, were paid for by the Clinton campaign, officials said. Paterson spokesman Errol Cockfield said the woman, who has been identified as the governor's ex-girlfriend, Lila Kirton, helped Paterson during these two campaign trips with his sight - Paterson is legally blind.

Kirton, who is director of community affairs for the governor's office, also was involved with Women With Hillary and traveled on her personal time, not as part of her state job, he said.

Earlier this month, Paterson publicly acknowledged having affairs beginning about nine years ago while he and his wife, Michelle Paige Paterson, were going through a "rough patch" in their 15-year marriage. He said their affairs ended several years ago after he and his wife decided to recommit to their marriage.

Administration officials said they saw no impropriety in Kirton traveling with Paterson. "The governor has made it clear that his extramarital affairs ended several years ago, well before these campaign trips," Cockfield said.

The officials were responding to an article in the Times Union in Albany yesterday that erroneously said that Paterson and Kirton traveled to South Carolina in October, and that they campaigned for Clinton using state money.

A review of their state credit-card records shows, however, that both Paterson and Kirton went to city of Carolina, Puerto Rico, in November. Cockfield said they were both there separately to attend Somos El Futuro, a Puerto Rican and Hispanic legislative conference, which also attracts many of the state's elected leaders and staff.

Telephone calls to Kirton's White Plains home were not immediately returned. Times Union managing editor Mary Fran Gleason said that the article would be corrected in today's paper, and that the closeness of the trips to Puerto Rico and South Carolina caused "confusion."

The Times Union story also questioned the fact that both Paterson and Kirton used state credit cards to stay at the same Albany hotel, 74 State, on June 19, 2007, and Jan. 9, 2008.

Cockfield noted that on both occasions, there was a reason for both to be staying there. The first date was during the last week of regular legislative session, when marathon negotiations were taking place, he said, and the latter was this year's State of the State address by then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer.