Former Gov. David Paterson is at peace with the past

In the midst of a financial crisis and state scandal, David Paterson found himself in 2008 thrust into the historic position of New York’s first Black governor. The son of a Harlem power broker, Paterson had at one point envisioned himself becoming a U.S. senator. He had already made history when he became the first Black leader in the state Legislature as the state Senate minority leader. And becoming former Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s running mate – defeating another candidate his father had backed – could have been his ticket to Washington, D.C.

Instead, Spitzer resigned over a prostitution scandal, leaving Paterson in the hot seat. It was a rough tenure for the sudden governor, facing his own investigations, a coup in the state Senate, a massive budget deficit and poor poll numbers. In the end, Paterson opted not to run for reelection, bringing to an end his life in elected office.

In the nearly two decades since then, Paterson has had a lot of time to reflect on his tenure while watching, and sometimes opining on, his successors. He offered City & State a retrospective of his career as the state enters yet another era of turbulence. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

It’s been over 15 years since you became governor, with a historic but turbulent governorship. Looking back now, how do you feel about your time in government, both as governor and in the state Senate?

Looking back on it now, there are obviously some – I would do some things differently than I did at the time. What I would say about the Senate was that, just like when I became governor, I was in the right place at the right time. Our state senator, whose name was Leon Bogues, passed away. So of course, there’s all this gossip about who’s going to take his place. And I got a call from one of the old sort of leaders, a friend of my father’s, actually, and he said to me, “David, if I were you, I would run for that seat.” And I said, “No, I got to go back and take the bar exam. And we can talk about that kind of thing.” And he said, “Listen, by the time you pass the bar exam, the seat will not be available. I don’t think you’ll win, but I think that people will notice you, and I think that this will pay off for you down the road.” Well, the only thing he got wrong is that I did win. So here I am in Albany, like in a special session in October, and I’m sitting there shaking my head. I can’t believe that I’m there from where I was earlier in the year. And that would almost, in a lot of ways, mirror what happened in 2008, when I’m sitting in my office, and I get this phone call telling me that the governor is going to resign in an hour and a half, and you’re going to be the governor. So I have been either blessed or just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

You’ve held multiple historic roles, as the first nonwhite Democratic leader in the state Senate, the first Black governor and the first legally blind governor. What do you think about your historic positions and their impact on your governance?

I am actually very humbled by it. My other, you know, first blind something was that I was the first blind student to attend public school in Long Island. And that was because my mother basically threatened everybody at the board of education out there when I first went there. So I really was hoping, particularly when I became a state senator, that I would be an example to not just other blind people, but people with a hearing disability. I got on the board of the League for the Hard of Hearing, so that when I fought for the disabled, I wouldn’t just be fighting for blind people. I was always very proud of that, and still am. When I was governor, it’s a different game. And maybe I was a little naive about what was going to happen, because there came a point where any time any little thing went wrong, it was traced to my disability. Real cheap shots that I believe I allowed to bother me more so than I actually did when I was younger. Looking back on it now, I have found some of the association with my disability, and I can actually laugh at the whole thing.

How do you feel now about the way you were treated while you were governor, and the decisions that were made prior to you dropping out of the governor’s race in 2010?

There’s this man who just got elected president for a second time, and he’s still fighting over that he thinks he won the (last) time, and so I don’t want to get compared to that. But what was very clear to me early on is that my becoming governor opened the door for attempts to make sure that my service was interrupted with all types of accusations – scandals and that kind of thing. And I came to the conclusion in 2010 that I should drop out of the race, because if I didn’t, I would be indicted. My former wife said to me, “What are you going to be indicted on?” I said, “I haven’t the slightest idea, but it’s going to happen.” And looking to the rest of my life, I really don’t feel like having that on my record. I didn’t do anything wrong, and I did go through an investigation process that cleared me. So I just felt that that was the best course at the time. I think once I left office, there was a little period of bitterness, because I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I was being portrayed that way. The interesting thing is that karma has a way of visiting the people who caused it for other people, and that’s made me feel 100% better.

What are some examples of that karma?

When he resigned in 2021, Andrew Cuomo had all these complaints to make about the attorney general’s office overstepping its boundaries. Well, his office overstepped his boundaries way more than Tish James did. Because actually, when I asked him to investigate a domestic violence situation, his statement was that the attorney general will investigate the governor. And so when I heard that he did that, I had a press conference, and I said, “How can the attorney general investigate the governor when he’s running against him?” His poll numbers dropped, I think, 13 points in that two-week period. With those types of situations where people try to take advantage of you, when you’re in a difficult situation, and it’s not any type of situation that I would want visited on anyone else.

What was your reaction when Eliot Spitzer approached you about being lieutenant governor?

Well, I was quite touched by it. There were all these rumors about who it would be, and when he asked me if I would do it, I had told him I’ll think about it. But I told him within two days I would do it. I went to see him, and before I could tell him yes, he said, “Who do you think is going to win the presidential race in 2008?” I said, “My guess would be our senator, Hillary Clinton, will win the presidency.” So he said, “What do you think happens after that?” I said, “Oh, I guess the governor has to pick a new senator.” And he said, “You think you’d like to be that new senator?” I said, “Sure.” He said, “Well, then just keep your head down. Stay out of trouble and we’re covered.” And so I agreed to be lieutenant governor because both of us thought that it’d be another opportunity for me. But the reality was that the physician should have healed thyself first.

Your governorship was short, turbulent and certainly had some negatives, but what would you consider your proudest accomplishment, the crowning moment?

Right in the middle of (the summer legislative session), I get a message that (Wisconsin) Gov. Jim Doyle would like to speak to me. I call him and he says, “Governor, there is a major bond holder in the state of Wisconsin. It’s called Travel Guard insurance company. If AIG goes down, then the state of Wisconsin could go into default.” I hear what he said, and obviously I’m thinking, that’s terrible, but what does that have to do with me? He says, “I need you to call the secretary of the Treasury and tell him that they’ve got to bail out AIG or the state of Wisconsin suffers logarithmically.” So I said, “OK, I’ll do that. But I have a question for you. You happen to be a governor, why don’t you call him?” And he said, “But governor, you’re the governor of New York. He has to talk to you.” I called. (Then-Treasury Secretary Hank) Paulson called me back and he says to me, “We’re not really interested in doing that.” And I said, “Would you least tell President (George W.) Bush that that’s what I’m asking?” So he calls me back the next day, and he says, “We’ve decided we’re going to put $40 billion to $60 billion in to save AIG. He’s going to speak at 7:30 tonight, and we would like to arrange for you to respond and thank the president for everything he’s done.” I got this resounding applause for helping the state of Wisconsin and being part of the conversation. And Bush actually mentioned me in his speech, and to me, like, that night when I went to sleep, I thought, “It can’t get better than this.” And it didn’t.

You made some major decisions while governor, probably the biggest of which was choosing a new senator, someone who is still serving today. A lot of names were in the mix, how are you feeling now about the decision you made?

During the process, every time I saw (former New York City) Mayor (Mike) Bloomberg, he said, “You have a lifeline. Take it and leave.” But something just told me, “Don’t do it.” And I looked at the other candidates. Andrew Cuomo, he’s doing this right now. Every three days I get a poll that someone’s taken that says that he’s going to beat Adams, he’s going to beat Scott Stringer, he’s going to beat everyone. And this is exactly what he was doing in those days. This was how he would beat Caroline Kennedy in a primary. There’s no way that he and Caroline Kennedy would ever run against each other in a primary. But everybody was putting their two cents in. But Kirsten Gillibrand was, at one point before she ran for Congress, almost ran for the state Senate to try to help us win the majority. That’s how I got to know her. She would have been the youngest U.S. senator at the time. I thought that also upstate never got a senator, and that Senate seat that she held was once the seat of Charles Goodell, who had been appointed by Gov. (Nelson) Rockefeller to be U.S. senator back after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. And a woman to be U.S. senator. I thought that that added up for her, and she was really moved at the opportunity. And 16 years later, she’s still there.

Do you feel like you were persecuted during your time in office, whether for your race or disability or simply as a sacrificial lamb during a trying time for Democrats?

I don’t feel that I was persecuted for the way I was running the state. I thought I was persecuted because I was in other people’s way. Going back, I’ve thought over and over that if I had perhaps used a different group of people to be my team, that might not have happened. We had a secretary of the (state) Senate, and people would come in and say, “So and so is doing this, so and so doing that.” And he would always say, “Ah, that’s nothing.” Well, it turned out to be something. He turned out to be working for the new governor. Because it was beyond my ability to psychically figure out exactly what was happening. I found it to be quite annoying. But I definitely thought that I made a mark in the time that I was there. And pretty soon after I was out of there a number of people who were kind of egging it on started to see maybe it wasn’t the best idea for me to leave.

You’re the son of a Harlem giant and you’re living up to a legacy he left behind. How do you think about your own legacy, and how does it compare to how you think New Yorkers see it?

We had been trying for years to get a viable minority- and women-owned business plan, and never seemed to work. Gov. Mario Cuomo had started, it looked like they were off to a good track. But then-Gov. (George) Pataki basically took everything he did and threw it out in the time he was there. Remember that I actually started it. I think there was certainly some periods where I really stared the Legislature down over the fact that we had a $21.3 billion deficit in the middle of a fiscal crisis, and somehow we closed that gap. I don’t think anybody’s come close to doing that since then. We really, in many respects, tried to respect certain regions of the state that hadn’t gotten services or supplies. And I think I can rest on that, and some of the major events of that time period being the fiscal crisis, the presidential race in 2008, having our own senator be part of that race and supporting her. That was, when I look back on (it), a really exciting time, and the fact that everything didn’t go exactly the way I probably would have liked it doesn’t really bother me anymore.