Incumbent Paterson acting like the outsider

Off goes Gov. David Paterson, against all odds, in search of New York's top political prize.

Paterson used his kickoff speech in Hempstead Saturday morning to roll out a personal theme. "This governor is not going to quit!" he told a few hundred guests in the Sondra and David S. Mack Student Center.

Hempstead Village Mayor Wayne Hall, who introduced Paterson, later cited numerous invitations sent out around the governor's old stomping grounds.

Nassau is home to state Democratic chairman Jay Jacobs, who emceed the event with its red-white-and-blue "We Luv Our Gov" signs and a couple of brief, genial warm-up chants of "Day-VID" and "PAT-erson."

There was upbeat call and response - with many a line in the governor's address greeted by a shouted "Yes!" or "All right" or a loud laugh at a punch line.

The announcement venue seemed to shelter Paterson from the political cold.

Ordinarily, governors maintain tight command of the state party, a big fundraising advantage, an ability to steer the news narrative, and the clout to browbeat legislators.

But as of Sunday, some Democrats soberly wonder if Paterson can even muster 25 percent of the weighted vote needed at the party's spring convention to make the primary ballot without circulating petitions.

Paterson proved Saturday that nothing makes a career elected official channel his inner "outsider" like low approval ratings and voter unease.

Early in the day, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Paterson appointee, issued a schedule that brought her to Manhattan for a Run for Haiti benefit, and to Flushing for a Lunar New Year Parade, but not Hofstra.

But Richard Fife, the governor's campaign manager, was quick to douse suspicion of any slight in her, or anyone else's, skipping Hempstead. No, Fife insisted, a separate event will involve elected supporters.

Some well-known local Democrats did show, including: county legislators Robert Troiano, Wayne Wink and Joseph Scannell; lawyer Frederick K. Brewington; Assembly candidate Jeffrey Toback; Hempstead village deputy mayor Henry Conyers and trustee Perry Pettus; Hempstead town council member Dorothy Goosby, and Nassau Surrogate's Court Judge John Riordan.

They heard Paterson boast that he staved off fiscal disaster, and reformed the Rockefeller-era drug laws. They heard him take a veiled shot at his likely primary rival, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, evoking an unidentified "candidate that's always telling the special interests what they want to hear, but never told the people of New York what they're going to do."

At times, the governor deployed his trademark humor, but at others, he echoed the febrile Eliot Spitzer by claiming to have "done more in my two years as governor than most governors have done in two terms."

Paterson tweaked rumormongers, "politicians and pundits," negative coverage - and ignorance, bigotry and privilege in general. Before and after the remarks, the sound system came around repeatedly to Bob Marley's "Get Up Stand Up" and Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'."

For the governor, this is all about playing the outsider - without becoming an outcast.