NY Governor to Successor: "YOU WILL FAIL"
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By JACOB GERSHMAN
ALBANY—David Paterson, the current governor of New York, has a message for his successor: You're doomed to fail.
In a 70-minute interview with The Wall Street Journal, the governor cast himself as a scapegoat for the state's problems, blamed an "organized smear campaign" for ruining his political career and pinned his inability to repair New York's ailing finances on a dysfunctional budget process.
"Whether the governor is David Paterson or Rick Lazio or Andrew Cuomo or Superman, we don't have a structure that empowers a single leader to get his or her state out of a major conflict," said Mr. Paterson, who isn't running in November. "It's kind of like being in quicksand. You can move around a lot, but it just makes the problem worse."
Without the power to declare a fiscal emergency and unilaterally freeze wages of state employees, Mr. Paterson contended New York governors are at the mercy of the Legislature.
"Mark my words, they are going to say it about the next governor. They're going to try make the next governor's personality, effectiveness or engagement—or where the next governor eats dinner—the issue."
Credit: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum for The Wall Street Journal
Gov. David Paterson contends that without the power to declare a fiscal emergency or unilaterally freeze wages, New York governors are at the mercy of the Legislature.
Mr. Paterson, whose administration has tried fruitlessly to pass a budget, accused lawmakers of using him as an excuse. "They have perpetuated this rumor that I'm waiting all year and don't care," he said. "Every week, I try to get them together and nobody wants to come. Then they turn around and actually try to pretend that it's me who doesn't want to have these meetings. It's completely political."
Democrats in Albany said they sympathized with Mr. Paterson—but only to an extent. "Right up until the last day that George Pataki was in office, he was the governor. No one doubted that. And with Gov. Paterson, it's almost as if he's already gone," said Sen. Diane Savino, a Democrat from Staten Island.
"The executive in New York has a tremendous amount of power, but it requires political will and the desire to use it," she said.
Mr. Paterson's remarks come at a pivotal moment for New York. The gubernatorial race is about to begin in earnest as Mr. Cuomo, the Democratic attorney general, readies to announce his candidacy and square off against a fractious but emboldened Republican Party determined to end Democratic control of Albany.
And the state is bracing for what could be the roughest patch of the fiscal crisis.
It's also a tense moment for Mr. Paterson, 55, who is expected to testify soon before an independent counsel probing allegations that he lied under oath about soliciting tickets to the 2009 World Series and interfered with a witness in a domestic-abuse case involving a staffer.
Timeline
"I know in my heart I didn't do anything wrong," Mr. Paterson said about the swirling allegations that forced him to give up his campaign for a full term.
Sen. Craig Johnson, a Democrat from Port Washington, said the governor's legal problems have directly affected his ability to finalize a budget: "You have to have credibility when you're negotiating a budget. His credibility has been significantly diminished based on his own alleged actions."
Mr. Paterson—branded "the accidental governor" after we was elevated from lieutenant governor two years ago when Eliot Spitzer resigned in a prostitution scandal—dismissed the perception that he was overwhelmed by the office. Repeatedly, he blamed his struggles not on himself, but on the limitations of the job.
"I wasn't nervous about being the governor. What agitated me is that I didn't have the tools to take responsibility. I didn't have the authority that other governors have to address emergencies. That had a profound effect on me," he said. "In other words, a firefighter isn't afraid to run into a building to fight a fire. A firefighter would be afraid to run into a building to fight a fire without a hose. That's how I felt."
At the darkest stretches of his administration, Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch, whom the governor appointed last year, tried to reassure him that the storm of bad of press would pass, Mr. Paterson said. But the governor said he couldn't "get out from under the rumors, innuendos, and lies," the sources of which he said remained a mystery.
Mr. Paterson, reflecting on his legal troubles, said he was having a conversation with a young woman recently about Muhammad Ali and was asked why the boxer went to jail. The question struck a nerve.
"He didn't go to jail. He was tried. See what I'm saying? I realized that if you just litter the airwaves with innuendo about a person, you can take them out," Mr. Paterson said. "I realize now that it is formidable, when there's that level of organized smear campaign. And I have no idea who did it. I just have no idea why that happened."
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