Paterson's tenure reaches a bleak new stage
Gov. David A. Paterson, center, walks up the steps of the Capitol with aide David Johnson, left. According to police reports, during Halloween, Johnson became angry with his girlfriend over her costume, choked her and tried to rip clothing from her body. (June 19, 2008) Credit: AP File
The long goodbye of Gov. David A. Paterson has reached another bleak stage with yesterday's long-expected criminal charges against David Johnson. He's the close aide whose domestic dispute last Halloween ushered in the public storm that helped whisk his mentor right out of the campaign for governor.
Johnson was clearly destined for the role of this major scandal's lone criminal defendant July 28. After a probe of several months, the independent counsel to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo wrote: "No criminal charges should be brought against any other individual . . . " (emphasis added).
That is, the line of criminality - though not poor conduct or judgment - was drawn at Johnson's actions, with the findings of the investigation referred to the Bronx district attorney.
Four and a half months remain to an elected term that began on New Year's Day 2007 with Eliot Spitzer's inauguration as self-proclaimed change agent.
This latest court episode makes you realize that Spitzer's infamous departure from office has been echoed in a sense by his lieutenant and accidental successor.
That is, both men - in the course of a single, mutually elected term - were busted out of the governorship, then spared prosecution.
The parallel is easy to miss only because Spitzer and Paterson employed such different styles on the road to political Palookaville.
The sexual transgressions that famously drove Spitzer from the Executive Mansion were privileged, cold, surprising and transactional - set in luxury hotels and spiced with secret bank routing and expensive compensations.
The staggering blow to Paterson came from a less glitzy place - a clubhouse muddle of clumsy moves to insulate his office from charges against a friend who, in the classic patronage style, probably shouldn't have been in this innermost circle in the first place.
Even though she found no case for witness tampering and the like, Chief Judge Judith Kaye's 54-page report revealed a hefty share of sketchy and conflicting accounts.
There was the involvement of another close aide, Clemmie Harris. There was sworn testimony that right after the incident, Harris had expressed explicit concern about whether the complainant, Sherr-Una Booker, was filing a police report on Johnson. There were phone records indicating that Harris spoke with Paterson for 40 minutes around that time or shortly after.
And yet, Paterson testified he wasn't told in that conversation about the domestic incident. And Harris testified "the conversation concerned the events of the governor's day, mutual friends who were staying at the Governor's Mansion, the World Series and their respective plans for the evening."
In the Kaye report, the issue of State Police assisting the governor's goals beyond their proper role became - as it did early on under Spitzer - a key theme. So did Paterson's actions to squelch a politically damaging New York Times story about the Johnson case. These became an odd counterpoint to the Spitzer administration's much-hyped efforts to plant a damaging press story about then-state Sen. Joseph Bruno.
The Spitzer-Paterson term formally ends Dec. 31. You can be sure that the next administration in Albany will try its best to convince the public that everything changes on Day One - even if they don't put it exactly that way.
