Paterson as governor: A stormy 30 months

When David Paterson first became governor following Eliot Spitzer's spectacular fall, colleagues praised his congeniality - the perfect antidote, they said, to Spitzer's abrasive style.

The honeymoon lasted barely a day.

From the day after his swearing-in, when Paterson acknowledged extramarital affairs at a news conference, his 30-month governorship was a wild ride, with scandals that took down some of his top officials and ethics probes dragging into his term's last days. His approval ratings plunged to rarely seen lows. He stunned the nation when he snubbed Caroline Kennedy, who withdrew her bid for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat after two months of campaigning. And throughout his tenure he was dogged by a state legislature that brought Albany to a halt with its political infighting.

"He didn't have a chance to catch his breath," said Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf. "In another setting he might have done better, but this was almost a tragic play from the outset."

Despite Albany's stalemate, Paterson managed to impose spending cuts on a ballooning budget, with increased oversight for New York's authorities and a new pension tier for incoming state workers. He appointed a lieutenant governor - the first time ever by a sitting New York governor. He is hailed by gay leaders for keeping their interests front and center.

"I think we have shown . . . if action is supposed to be taken and we think it's right, we're going to do it no matter what anybody says about it," Paterson told Newsday in a recent interview. "I think I'm proudest of the fact that I never ran away from a difficult situation and never put off to tomorrow what I could do today."

Paterson, 56, the son of an influential Harlem political leader, grew up in Hempstead, where Fulton Elementary School enrolled him in a mainstream class although he'd been legally blind since infancy. The school will be renamed in his honor.

In 1985, he won a Harlem State Senate seat in a special election. When Spitzer tapped him as his running mate in 2006, Paterson was the Democratic minority leader.

Thrust into the spotlight

But when Spitzer resigned amid a prostitution scandal, Paterson was suddenly in the spotlight as New York's first black governor - among a handful of black governors nationwide. He also is the state's first legally blind governor and the second in the nation.

The spotlight's glare turned out to be a harsh one. Soon after disclosing that he had cheated on his wife, Paterson admitted to past cocaine use. In October, as a contentious budget season loomed, his top adviser, Charles O'Byrne, resigned after it emerged that he had not filed tax returns from 2001 to 2005.

That December, Caroline Kennedy announced her interest in Hillary Clinton's Senate seat. As she campaigned across the state she was widely believed to be the front-runner, though Paterson criticized her in some interviews. She withdrew her name in January, prompting someone within the Paterson administration to tell reporters that tax problems prevented her appointment. That turned out to be an exaggeration, and three months later the Commission on Public Integrity launched a probe into the leaks.

"The watershed moment was when they decided to trash Caroline Kennedy - that's when they lost the public," said Blair Horner, legislative director of NYPIRG, who formerly worked for Governor-Elect Andrew Cuomo. "When the public is not with you, when you're an unelected governor, that's very hard to recover from . . ."

In June 2009 came another test: the defection to the Republican conference of two Democratic state senators, Pedro Espada and Hiram Monserrate. The coup paralyzed the legislature as the dispute over which party was in power stretched into months. Paterson managed to install a well-respected lieutenant governor, Richard Ravitch, to help break the deadlock, but critics said Paterson's weak position left him unable to do more to move the state forward.

"It turns out that a collegial relationship was of little value to a Senate that was paralyzed by an unwillingness to govern and partisan conflict," said Gerald Benjamin, a political science professor at SUNY New Paltz. "A lot of people were remembering that he's a very avuncular fellow, but the crisis offered him an opportunity and a receptive environment in which to lead, and he didn't seize it."

Approval ratings plunge

As the legislature's impasse ground on, Paterson's ratings suffered: by September, a Marist poll showed only 20 percent of New Yorkers approved of him. Yet Paterson, who maintains he is held to a harsher standard because of his race and disability, vowed to fight on.

"Being unelected, being the first African American governor and being the first legally blind governor (except for another who served for 11 days), I do think all three of those factors added up to the perception that I was not a serious leader," he said in the recent interview. He singled out "Saturday Night Live" skits that mocked his blindness as especially damaging.

In Hempstead on Feb. 20, 2010, he announced his candidacy for governor. But he ended his campaign six days after it began, following New York Times reports that he'd intervened in a domestic violence complaint against his close aide, David Johnson. Cuomo soon opened an investigation into the incident, tapping a former state chief judge, Judith Kaye, to oversee it to avoid conflict. In her report, Kaye said Paterson showed "errors in judgment," but did not recommend criminal charges.

Barely a week after Paterson withdrew his candidacy, the Commission on Public Integrity concluded he'd given false testimony about his acceptance of free Yankees tickets during the 2009 World Series. This month he was fined a record $62,125 for the lapse. The commission referred the matter to the Albany County district attorney, who has not said whether he intends to prosecute Paterson for perjury.

But amid the scandals, Paterson is credited with making needed budget cuts, and forcing the legislature to work on the budget through his novel use of emergency spending bills in June.

"His administration will be remembered in history for an expansion of the powers of the executive," Horner said. "Nobody had ever used to drive the budget agreement."

Advocates praise the governor for signing several gay-rights bills and pushing the issue of gay marriage, though it was defeated in the legislature. "I think he connected with LGBT issues at a more personal level than any governor we've had," said Ross Levi, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda.

As Paterson prepares to leave office, he's uncertain what his next job will be. He has expressed interest in teaching, hosting a radio show and lobbying on behalf of policy issues.

As for the criticism of his tenure, he said much of it was undeserved. "I'm just a person who works in government . . . who tried as best I could to fill a void when the void came in the face of a wild controversy," he said. "Did the best I could, and my conscience is clear, and I'll move on."

With Albany Bureau Chief James T. Madore