All week while continuing to avoiding writing my Harold Ford piece, I’ve been receiving the same inquiry again and again in different forms.
A friend writes:
"What do you hear about the DP NY Times story? [unnamed Times Reporters] told me in 2008 that they had identified 17 women on gov. payroll who did DP. But, they would not write since NYT doesn't do sex lives. They were desperately searching for use of gov. or campaign money paying for hotels, etc. [Name withheld] and others would not talk since they had been promised jobs by the new Gov.
Rumors all over Albany have DP's resignation imminent. One source claims Times found DP owes big bucks to [unnamed major investor in AEG] for gambling debts. I knew he did [unnamed cola product], screwed around with women on the payroll, drank too much and didn't like to go to work, lied freely, etc. But, I can't believe he was a gambler (still don't). Rumor says DP made [unnamed Chief of Staff] call [unnamed Times publisher] and threaten to release [unnamed Times publisher's] affair with [unnamed daughter of Dead President]. [Unnamed Chief of Staff and Counsel], etc. are looking to bail out.”
A reporter friends asks:
JIMMY OLSEN: So does Paterson make it through the week? Does Brooklyn gain from his departure?
GATE: You should be asking The Times the first question. As to the second, it depends how you define Brooklyn. While Vito will be happy, as he's been an early Paterson skeptic, I defy you to find a single Paterson supporter in the Borough.
But, Vito may also be happy because Paterson's implosion may increase the demand for a black US Senator.
Right now, the only person in NY who wants Paterson to be the Democratic nominee is Rick Lazio.
JIMMY: I think it will take a real bombshell for him to resign, as everyone knows about his weaknesses. Heck, I even know at least two people with personal knowledge. One person now has a job thanks to her run-ins with the good guv’nor, so the Times story could be about that aspect of it. But again, i think a good # of women on payroll have their positions cuz they threatened to speak out.
There once was a time when a hot story would be one about a politician coming out of the closet, rather than coming inside of one (which was old back when Warren Harding did it).
Frankly, I thought we’d already been through all the variations. It was wrong for Eliot Spitzer, because he’d seen a prostitute, engaged in legally questionable efforts to hide his extra-marital conduct and he wore socks. None of these apply to Paterson; he did not pay for it (except perhaps with your tax dollars), there are no allegations about his attire and he surely engaged in no strenuous efforts to hide who and what he had done.
Unlike McGreevey, there are as yet no allegations the Governor hired incompetents solely to facilitate his sexual pleasure. Rather, it is clear that the Governor hired incompetents for any and every number of reasons, and sometimes for no reason at all.
Unlike the Governor of South Carolina (ironically enough, once alleged to be the site of an out of State booty call for Paterson back when he was LG), Governor Paterson appears neither to have left the country (which, since September, would have at least left the state in more capable hands) or fallen in love.
Perhaps this is an attempt at misdirection.
As I once noted, a few years ago a Jersey contractor was told that if the Governor was in on some sleazy deal, he would use the word “Machiavelli” in conversation. The Governor, one James McGreevey, was later caught on a wire asking the gentleman if it was true he was reading “The Prince”. Shortly thereafter, rather than allowing the disgrace of his non-sexually oriented corruption to overtake him, McGreevey used his resignation speech as an opportunity for low-level political heroism by declaring himself a “Gay American”.
McGreevey ended up a best-selling author, appearing on television peddling to the public semi-pornographic stories of his affinity with the “People of Israel”, as he recounted the details of how he categorically refused to withdraw from Golan, even as his wife lay in a hospital bed recuperating from a problematic caesarian after giving birth to his child.
McGreevey’s tale of grabbing celebrity from the jaws of incarceration stands as proof that it is now less of a disgrace to admit one’s homosexuality than to be revealed to be a common grifter and grafter (who says our society is incapable of making progress).
Now, let me ask [putting aside, for a moment, the fact that the NY State Government is in total chaos both financially, and in its ability to deal with the day to problems of governance], has anyone noticed that a real scandal, involving what may actually amount to corrupt behavior beyond the scope normally tolerated as a matter of course, is in the midst of breaking?
Would it not be better to leave office as The Stud Gov and write one’s best seller, rather than to leave as "Blogo With a Natural"? Blogo had to settle for reality shows–David Paterson could end up a regular on Saturday Night Live.
Still, one needs to wonder, why is anyone surprised by this stuff?
Give or take a couple of details about location and frequency, there is virtually nothing in the rumors circulating that Paterson hasn't already been publicly accused of by members of the state legislature. And even then, they were old hat.
Shortly after Paterson took office, rumors of this nature came to the fore, and the Governor’s response was basically, “Yes, it is true, and I also took some drugs.”
As I noted back then, despite competition from his nose and nether regions, the bodily organs which have so far caused the Governor the most damage are his mouth and tongue.
And, in fact, even before the beginning of his administration, there had been allegations that the Governor’s extracurricular activities had been paid for by either the taxpayers or his campaign committee.
I find the second allegation baseless—if David Paterson was really using his campaign funds to finance urges which are apparently uncontrollable, would he not be a bit more aggressive in his fundraising?
But, as I’ve noted before, it seems to this observer that such allegations also suffer from a lack of plausible scienter. Clearly, David Paterson had no intent to pay for his booty calls using state or campaign funds.
First of all, he has a Governor’s mansion.
Moreover, as was clear at the time he became Governor, David Paterson was utterly indifferent whether the card he used was his own, his campaign’s, or that of the State of New York. Charge it all now and let God or his election lawyer sort it out later.
Personally, I am not all that concerned about the illegal misuse of campaign funds, although the rules seem so elastic that it almost requires an effort in order to violate the applicable laws. And, why shouldn’t a bar tab be a legitimate campaign expense anyway? I’ve done some of my best campaign work from a bar stool.
As I’ve noted, contributions to candidates and parties buy "access" no matter what the money is spent on. The evil remains the same regardless. And since most of the donors got what they bought, they were not cheated.
The sad fact is though, that very few seem to want access to this Governor, except perhaps for some underlings of the fair sex.
I might be concerned about Paterson squandering such funds if there were any possibility he were going to be the candidate of my party in the fall, but I’m not losing any sleep over that prospect.
Of course, Public Funds are a different matter, and despite the lack of a smoking credit card back when I first wrote about this, the matter seems likely to once rear its ugly head.
However, there are gray areas.
A Governor is a busy man, and surely requires a driver. But even busy men have personal matters they must deal with, whether it be buying the milk or structuring a payment to an escort service.
If a Governor or Senate Minority Leader finds a spare hour in the middle of his day to work out at the gym or the Day’s Inn, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to ask the chauffeur to do the pick ups and drop offs between the legitimate business. Seems far less egregious than going to the trouble of creating legitimate business to provide cover for those trips, especially when the real reason involves an act of prostitution (like raising funds for the Republican State Senate Campaign Committee).
The question which is really begged here, is why such rumors, which were always present, killed off Spitzer, but did not initially flatten Paterson, but are in the process of doing so now?
Why is it that some politicians can survive such things, and worse, and others cannot?
I think the difference is that Eliot Spitzer governed by fear, and the minute he was vulnerable, he found no one behind him. All he had was his reputation, which was already eroding; once that was gone, there was nothing left. By contrast, Paterson’s ascension was the subject of widespread celebration by the Albany ruling class.
As I noted then, in an unprecedented fit of ingratitude to those who had brung him, Eliot Spitzer suffered a psychotic delusion which caused him to believe he was actually obligated to fulfill the promises he had made. His vision was so distorted by the light of his own virtue that he could not comprehend that using State helicopters to travel to New York City for fundraising events was perfectly legal, while using the State’s law enforcement apparatus to expose such activities was a crime.
With Paterson’s ascension, the old order had triumphed. We once again had a Governor whose ability to see the Albany light seemed to be is 20/20. Shortly after assuming the trapping of power, our new Governor got up in front of Albany’s assembled establishment and told them "Your short local nightmare has ended”. All of New York’s political establishment then joined together in cooperation in order to foster the return of normalcy.
Normalcy in New York is a thing much misunderstood. It is not about cooperation in the sense of ending gridlock. It is about cooperation in creating and managing gridlock The pillars of the Albany bi-partisan iron triangle do not necessarily get along with each other, but they are united as one in their efforts to see that no one outside the triangle can ever disturb “this thing of ours.”
Yes, Governor Paterson has, from time to time, made some proposals that would, if implemented, discomfort nearly discomfort nearly everyone. His periodic calls for fiscal conservatism have sometimes discomforted both the tax and spend liberals, and borrow and spend “conservatives”, who inhabit Albany; the specifics of his proposals perhaps even more so.
Paterson has often shown a policy wonk’s inclination to violate the unwritten taboos of public discussion by considering expenditures through the tax code to be just as susceptible to the meat ax as expenditures through the appropriation process.
While the Governor’s fiscal conservatism does not go so far as to acknowledge that expenditures equaling revenues is a goal so important that it is time to consider a millionaire’s tax, some of his proposals, if enacted, would have had a revolutionary impact upon State Government.
But never during his tenure has the Governor shown even one iota of intent to actually expend the political capital necessary to bring such programs to fruition.
And now, he has no political capital left.
Eliot Spitzer could not survive a sex scandal because he had made everyone fear him. David Paterson cannot survive one, because nobody fears him.
The only people who fear David Paterson are the folks who may actually have to appear down-ballot from him.
Trying to destroy David Paterson with a newspaper article is as pointless as an assassination attempt upon Ariel Sharon (not that I would put that beyond Hamas).
The Governor says "The only way I'm not going to be governor next year is at the ballot box and the only way that I'll be leaving office before is in a box,"
Let's think outside the box.