A Curious State of Affairs

It's unclear if this is simply good old tabloid chum, but the governor's underlings have been forced to spend a whole lot of time this week on work that has little to do with governing. Like chasing down receipts.

"We're talking about a couple hundred bucks, max, from six years ago," says a senior administration official in Paterson's office. "And if we can't figure out what happened, we'll just reimburse the campaign, with interest."

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Well, talk about an awkward introduction. Though he's the son of Basil Paterson, a former New York secretary of state and a dominant figure in Harlem politics in the '60s and '70s, David Paterson was all but unknown to most New Yorkers until last week, when it became clear that the nattily dressed, teddy-bearish fellow who always seemed to be standing behind Spitzer and squinting into the middle distance was about to ascend to the top job in the state. The role of lieutenant governor in New York is pretty much ceremonial, so there was never much reason to notice him until now.

So voters here are getting a crash course in David Paterson. The question on Monday -- how long will this honeymoon last? -- seemed only too apt when, a day later, the electorate learned that the groom had already strayed.

In the state capitol, however, it is still hard to find a discouraging word about Paterson. The lack of flak is only partly about the specifics of his adultery, though that's certainly crucial. Spitzer broke the law when he hired a prostitute, and he outed himself as a hypocrite, given his prostitution-ring-busting past. Paterson, on the other hand, had the kind of marriage trouble that most people here say falls under the category of "unsavory but none of our business."

It's true, also, that few in Albany would want a gig where "Did you cheat on your spouse?" is part of the job interview. Too many powerful people have taken what are informally known here as "Albany wives" to submit to that line of questioning.

"Ever heard of something called the Tappan Zee compact?" asks Steve Greenberg, who spent 12 years in the Assembly as a press secretary and now works in public relations. "It basically says that 'what happens north of the Tappan Zee Bridge stays north of the Tappan Zee Bridge.' I'm not pointing fingers, but it is assumed that some of the more significant figures in state politics have some things similar to what David Paterson has admitted to, and they don't want the press inquiring about their own situations."

But what protects Paterson more than the fear of scrutiny, at least for now, is affection from both sides of the aisle. Until Monday, of course, he never wielded much power -- and powerless people have fewer opportunities to create foes. Maybe as he and Assembly and Senate leaders hurry to negotiate a budget, due in the next two weeks, it'll end in fisticuffs.

But that seems unlikely. If there's a knock against Paterson, it's that he's confrontation-averse and could get rolled by the wily Mr. Bruno. He might also be candid to a fault: He once volunteered to a reporter that he'd underpaid his taxes, and he's already expressed some regret about confessing all -- or nearly all -- about his extramarital affairs, which he discussed at length with the Daily News on Monday apparently because, well, a reporter asked him about it.

On the other hand, maybe a natural-born mediator is exactly the anti-Spitzer that New York needs right now. The case for Paterson you hear over and over is that he's a consensus builder and genuinely decent.

"We had an agreement that when we appeared at the same events, he'd praise me and I'd praise him, and he was clearly better at it than I was," says Mark Green, who beat Paterson in the campaign for New York's public advocate in 1993. "I've met politicians who are smart and I've met politicians who are mensches. But I've rarely met a politician who is both."