The man sworn in today as New York’s 55th governor may be virtually unknown to non-New Yorkers, but he is a seasoned political player and the scion of a legendary political clubhouse that has been a lever of black political power in the state.
With his ascension to governor, David A. Paterson also becomes the most powerful elected black official to support the presidential candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was among a slew of political leaders who traveled to Albany to attend the ceremony.
Paterson struck a confident, bipartisan tone in a 25-minute swearing-in speech, which was given from memory, rather than read from a teleprompter since he is legally blind. He made only indirect note of “the very difficult week” that New Yorkers had just come through, referring to the implosion of now-disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer in connection with a high-priced prostitution ring.
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Described by players on both sides of the political aisle as smart and personally engaging, the new governor will also be able to draw on a wealth of political connections in New York City, Albany and Washington.
His father, Basil, was New York’s secretary of state, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 1970 and the first African-American vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. The elder Paterson now works as a labor lawyer at Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein, where his clients include some of the most powerful unions in the nation, such as Teamsters Local 237, Local 1199 of the healthcare workers union and the United Federation of Teachers.
Paterson’s swearing-in also marks the ascendancy of the so-called Harlem Clubhouse, which besides his father and him, produced Rep. Charles Rangel, now one of the most powerful members of Congress as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, David Dinkins, New York City’s first black mayor, and Percy Sutton, a former Manhattan borough president.
The rise of both Paterson and Rangel gives the group new life after it had appeared to wane in power after H. Carl McCall lost his bid for governor in 2002 and black elector power was diffused to communities in Brooklyn and Queens.
One of Paterson’s first top appointments is said to be Luther Smith, now a top official in Bill Lynch’s political consulting firm in Harlem, and a former chief-of-staff to Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, both of whom are players in the Harlem Clubhouse. Lynch was a deputy mayor under Dinkins.
Those political connections, as well as Paterson’s past record, suggest that despite Paterson’s reputation as a consensus-builder, he is unlikely to be a pushover.
His cordial relationship with State Senate Leader Joseph Bruno, the state’s top Republican, for instance, belies the fact that as Senate minority leader, he helped Democrats win seats that have nearly closed the gap with Republicans.
The New York Times has reported that as Senate minority leader, Paterson did not hesitate to attack the leadership of the majorities in both chambers on the issue of accountability, accusing them of trying to hide details of how they used hundreds of millions of dollars in discretionary spending doled out by legislators.
He announced in April 2006 that he was making public the Senate Democrats’ member items, and said in a press release that he had issued guidelines two years earlier warning senators not to steer state money to organizations with which they or immediate family members were affiliated.
But he pressed the limits of those guidelines himself, according to reports in Newsday and the New York Times, by helping North General Hospital, a small, struggling private hospital in his district.
His wife, Michelle Paige Paterson, worked as North General’s director of government affairs from 2002 to 2005. Michelle Paterson became the authorized lobbyist for the hospital in August 2003, about eight months after her husband was named the Democratic leader in the Senate.
According to a report that North General filed with the state lobbying commission, Michelle Paterson lobbied the Legislature on budget issues in 2004. She left the hospital in January 2005.
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