Free Republic

New York Gov. David Paterson, a Democrat, is conceding that Republicans "probably" have won control of the New York state Senate, which GOP leaders say has important implications for the long-term balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives. No official winner has been named in three senate races in the Empire State. Republicans lead in two of those outstanding contests. New York Republicans, including the current minority leader, Sen. Dean G. Skelos, have said they expect to take over the Legislative gavel in the next session. According to a Friday report in the New York Post, Paterson told...

Chaos and anarchy. That's what New York Gov. David Paterson is warning if he's forced to shut down the government in a few days. The clowns in the state Legislature, now deadlocked for 71 days on the budget, are ready to take down the "big tent" and bring state government to a standstill. At least that's what Paterson thinks. "No one knows the full ramifications of a government shutdown," said Paterson. "It would create unimaginable chaos around the state and the greater metropolitan areas." Such chaos includes closing all state parks, motor vehicles offices, courts, and even the lottery. Public...

Gov. David Paterson's press secretary is resigning, making her the fourth top staffer to resign amid scandals that threaten the administration. Press Secretary Marissa Shorenstein says she is quitting because her reported role in one of the scandals makes her unable to do her job effectively... Paterson's communications director, deputy public safety secretary and state police superintendent have also resigned.

New York Governor David Paterson attempted to suppress an investigation into an aide’s alleged beating of said aide’s girlfriend, and lied to an ethics panel about the free tickets he scored to the World Series. In this, he follows Eliot Spitzer, whom he succeeded after Spitzer attempted to convince a banker to contravene federal banking laws (that is actually why he had to resign, not because he hired a prostitute, but since prosecutors decided for unclear reasons not to indict him, that part is forgotten). Paterson, in his sure-to-fail attempt to hold on to power for a few more months,...

Patrick Gaspard, considered one of the most powerful figures in the Obama White House, is a "longtime ACORN operative" and former union official, according to a report posted Monday on the American Spectator's online blog. Gaspard's name recently surfaced as the official President Obama dispatched to urge beleaguered New York Gov. David Paterson not to run for another term. Paterson insists he'll continue to run for governor even without Obama's support. Gaspard has extensive ties to organized labor and community-organizing groups. One measure of his influence in the White House: He holds the same "political affairs director" title that belonged...

Today's Marist poll finds 62 percent of New Yorkers think it was wrong for President Obama to stick his nose into local politics and pressure Gov. David Paterson not to run in 2010.

News that Gov. Paterson’s plan to have Richard Ravitch as his lieutenant governor was torpedoed by the court was quickly overshadowed by reports that he was embroiled in a yet another controversy. Appearing on New York Daily News’ reporter Errol Louis radio show on WWRL-AM last week, Paterson let his interviewer know that he wasn’t pleased that Dominic Carter, host of “Road to City Hall”on NY1, had chosen to discuss with the Rev. Al Sharpton his alleged late night outing. After refuting the rumor, Paterson tore into Carter, suggesting that such reportage was an example of the negative media coverage...

By FREDRIC U. DICKER, STATE EDITOR ALBANY -- Gov. Paterson gets more grim political news today, as another statewide poll shows Attorney General Andrew Cuomo trouncing him by 4 to 1 in a hypothetical primary match next year. Democrats, by nearly 2 to 1, said that New York's accidental governor doesn't deserve to be elected on his own...

David Paterson , the accidental governor of New York State, is making it easier and easier for the Republicans to win back the governorship in 2010. At first he drew high approval numbers for the way he stepped into the state's highest office after Elliot Spitzer, his predecessor and fellow Democrat, resigned from office over issues related to his dalliance in a Washington, D.C., hotel room with a paid escort. And people took his side when NBC's Saturday Night Live, sometimes the arbiter of the nation's political humor, poked fun at his being legally blind in a sketch that was...

ALBANY -- Gov. Paterson, who raised state taxes by $8 billion last month, just cost state taxpayers $300,000 more. The state has secretly settled an embarrassing federal racial-discrimination lawsuit, The Post has learned. The suit accused Paterson, back when he was Senate minority leader in 2003, of firing a white Senate photographer in order to replace him with an African-American. The lawsuit had been scheduled to go to trial in federal court Monday in Syracuse, with Paterson, the state's first black governor, as a key witness. The case was settled earlier in the week, although a few glitches delayed the...

Gov. David Paterson introduced a bill Thursday to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, comparing the effort to the fight for the abolition of slavery. Paterson, whose job approval rating has plunged below 30 percent, is making a political gamble that he can ride the momentum of other states that have recently allowed the practice, and it's unclear how the legislation will play in New York. The proposal is the same bill the Democratic-controlled state Assembly passed in 2007 before it died in the Senate, where the Republican majority kept it from going to a vote. Democrats now control the...

ALBANY, N.Y., March 25 (UPI) -- New York state's $16 billion budget shortfall may force 9,000 layoffs in the wake of failed negotiations with union workers, the governor said. New York Gov. David Paterson said Tuesday that layoffs would begin in July but the announcement may have been a signal to the unions that it was time to respond to the state's call for negotiations, The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) reported Wednesday. In concessions that apply to all state employees, except those working for the university system, the governor has asked workers to skip raises for a year and defer...

A bombshell secret report sizing up David Paterson's leadership when he was Senate minority leader found his office mired in chaos, lacking clear lines of communication and hobbled by dysfunction and indecisiveness. The 2005 report, based on interviews with key aides, is a devastating early look at the bumbling management style that would come to define Paterson's first year as governor. "Leader Paterson has a restaurant maitre d' style of management - whatever the members want," Jonathan Rosen, then a top staffer for Senate Democrats, told a Paterson aide who was tapped to interview staffers and compile their opinions."Paterson is...

Gov. Paterson's job performance ratings have crashed thorough the floor, with less than one in five New Yorkers saying he's doing well, a new poll shows. Just 19% of those polled gave him a positive rating, while 78% turned thumbs down, the Siena College poll found. That's down from 51% positive and 45% negative in the same poll just two months ago. How bad have things gone for a governor? New York's first black governor trails Attorney General Andrew Cuomo 55-22% among black voters in a potential 2010 primary. Overall, he would lose to Cuomo 67% to 17%, the poll...

A new poll released Tuesday shows Gov. David Paterson slumping to the lowest job approval and favorability ratings since he took office almost a year ago. The Siena College Research Institute also looked at potential 2010 election matchups and found the Democrat trailing Republican Rudy Giuliani — 51% to 36% — despite a 2-to-1 enrollment advantage for Democrats in New York. They were in a dead heat a month ago. The poll shows Democratic Attorney General Andrew Cuomo leading Paterson 51 to 38% in another possible contest. Neither Mr. Giuliani nor Mr. Cuomo have said they will challenge Mr. Paterson...

Gov. David A. Paterson has begun paving the way for the return of his former chief adviser, Charles J. O’Byrne, who resigned four months ago in a tax scandal that proved deeply embarrassing to the administration. In recent days, Mr. Paterson has privately sounded out trusted political operatives and state officials about the wisdom of bringing Mr. O’Byrne back, according to two Democrats familiar with the discussions. “He is exasperated by bad press and by the perception of an administration in disarray,” one of the Democrats said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the...

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo wants to reinvent New York government. And maybe take it over. His speech today, at a breakfast in the Regency Hotel hosted by the Citizens Budget Commission, was about his proposal to consolidate the state’s more than 10,000 local government bodies and taxing authorities. Cuomo has said, with reason, that they are the cause of higher taxes and a less efficient government. But intermingled in Cuomo's pitch for this most technocratic of ideas, there was stirring rhetoric—of a sort easily recognizable to anyone who was around for his run for governor in 2002—about returning competence to...

Drew Friedman ALBANY-A week before the process to appoint New York's junior U.S. senator reached its messy end, Governor David Paterson stood onstage at an event with Hillary Clinton and compared his experience in the state's highest office to a dirty movie. "I've been governor for nine and a half months," Mr. Paterson jokingly told the crowd at the Town Hall Theater on Jan. 15. "And it feels like it's been 9 1/2 Weeks." In the subsequent weeks, many Democrats have taken to another characterization. "The words ‘shit show' are being thrown around a lot," said one Democratic operative. Mr....

Governor Paterson tried to show he's listening today by cancelling one bad idea -- the tax-payer-financed junket he'd planned to the glitzy World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. But the poor guy can't catch a break: A new poll has his would-be rival, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, just two points behind him in a potential pimary contest -- a big catch-up for Cuomo who was trailing the gov by 23 percent just last month. The Siena Research Institute survey also found that most New Yorkers dislike Paterson's nibble taxes -- the added levies he seeks on fattening drinks, movie tickets,...

It was a classic case of lèse majesté, and it left Andrea Mitchell fuming. The NBC correspondent, first on Today and later on Morning Joe, expressed outrage over the unkind words about Caroline Kennedy that New York Governor David Paterson let leak after JFK’s daughter withdrew her name from consideration for appointment to Hillary’s open Senate seat. There was a whiff of the liberal elite circling the wagons around one of their own to the way Mitchell, with an assist from Mike Barnicle, went about denouncing David Paterson. MIKA BRZEZINSKI: So Andrea, how would you characterize the emotions that the...