http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/david_a_paterson/index.html?inline=nyt-per
David A. Paterson

Stewart Cairns for The New York Times
David A. Paterson was elected lieutenant governor of New York in November 2006 on the ticket led by Eliot Spitzer. Previously, Mr. Paterson had served as the minority leader of the state Senate. The scion of a prominent Harlem political family, Mr. Paterson was born legally blind and worked as a prosecutor before entering politics.

Mr. Paterson's decision to become Mr. Spitzer's running mate stunned many in Albany. With the growing strength of Democrats in statewide elections, it seemed only a matter of time before his party took over the chamber, allowing him to join the ruling triumvirate in Albany and take his seat with the governor and the Assembly speaker to decide between them how New York State is governed. By contrast, the lieutenant governor's post brings with it no power and little prestige.


Mr. Paterson explained the decision in terms the few lieutenant governors who had been given a real role, saying he wanted to be an "extension'' of Mr. Spitzer. Others close to him spoke of the enviable position he would be in if there was a chance to move up. If, for instance, Hillary Clinton were to become president, Mr. Spitzer would appoint a replacement to complete her term. Mr. Paterson has demonstrated political skills and good timing in the past; he became the minority leader in the Senate by pulling off a coup, which is a rare feat in Albany.

As the leader of the Democratic minority in the Senate, Mr. Paterson has tried to make up for his lack of power with wit, flurries of reform proposals and unusual bursts of candor, a combination that has made him a quotable presence in a Capitol where such leaders are often ignored as irrelevant. He worked on making inroads with national Democrats, traveling to Washington to meet with Congressional leaders. And here, where much of what passes for legislative humor is of the backslapping variety, Mr. Paterson's stands out.

Take his request at a recent news conference on government reform. "Anyone else in this Capitol that's telling you about the reform that they're doing, I want you to give me their names, we're going to bring them to this conference room, and we're going to beat them up," he said, with a straight face.

Mr. Paterson was born to politics. His father, Basil, represented the same Harlem district that his son later did, and ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 1970. The younger Mr. Paterson was raised at the knees of much of Harlem's old guard. He also grew up legally blind, after an infection as an infant that left him totally without sight in his left eye and with severely limited sight in his right. His family moved to Long Island, where they found a school that agreed to educate him in regular classrooms. He graduated from high school in three years, went to college at Columbia and graduated from Hofstra Law School.

When he was elected Senate minority leader, Mr. Paterson recalled the discrimination he had suffered because he is disabled. “So I have had this desire my whole life to prove people wrong, to show them I could do things they didn’t think I could do,” he said. “This is just another.”

--March 10, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/nyregion/11paterson.html?ref=nyregion
Paterson’s Reflections on Projecting Strength, Despite the
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: March 11, 2008
Most New Yorkers know little about Lt. Gov. David A. Paterson, who would ascend to the governor’s chair if Eliot Spitzer were to resign.

Mr. Paterson is the son of a Harlem political legend, Basil A. Paterson, who was the first black to serve as New York’s secretary of state.

David Paterson, who is legally blind since infancy, was born in New York City but moved to Hempstead, on Long Island, so he could be mainstreamed in public school classrooms. He was the leader of the Democratic minority in the State Senate, and worked as a prosecutor before entering politics.

Mr. Paterson still considers Harlem home, and he and his wife, Michelle, also have an upstate residence in Guilderland, N.Y., outside Schenectady. They have two children, Ashley, 19, and Alex, 13.

Danny Hakim, the Albany bureau chief of The New York Times, interviewed Mr. Paterson on Jan. 29 for a story about how he was one of the most prominent black supporters in Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential bid. They talked for about an hour and a half in the lieutenant governor’s chambers on the third floor of the State Capitol, about his physical disability and his ability to reach across the partisan divide; about his father’s political legacy; and about his own ambition and personal struggles.

Here are excerpts (questions are paraphrased):

Q: Should Bill Clinton take a lower profile?

A: When I ran for the Senate, the State Senate, my father had just stepped down three years earlier as the first African-American secretary of state. He’d been deputy mayor of the city, and it was a year after he was thought to be a candidate for mayor, so he was a pretty well-known political figure in that day. And I found him intimidating, not because — in other words, just trying to live up to such a celebrated and effective public servant. And I even remember, when I went to a couple of meetings, people said about me, “He’s not Basil.” I wasn’t trying to be Basil. I was trying to be better than the people who were running. And I think that, you know, we’ve seen this happen with Peyton Manning, and the question is whether, who’s the Giants’ quarterback — Eli. See? I’m a Jets fan — whether Eli is living up to Peyton, when we’re now finding out he may be better than most of the other quarterbacks.

Q: On Mrs. Clinton not backing down:

A: As a disabled person, there’s certain times that I don’t want to appear to need that much help. When I was in college, when I was at Columbia, I had a professor — I actually Googled him, he passed away in 1986 and his name was Basil Rauch, and he was a professor of history at Barnard College, and he showed me a picture of Franklin Delano Roosevelt being carried into the 1932 Democratic convention. And he said that Roosevelt by 1932 was still able to walk a certain distance, but not quickly, and he wanted to walk in, he wanted the country to see him standing, and but what happened was, when he started to walk, and he got toward the end, he was starting to be a little jittery, that a bunch of supporters, thinking they were helping him, grabbed him and picked him up and carried him in. And you see in this picture — and I couldn’t really see it, but he described it to me — he has this stern, angry look, because they messed up his moment.

And I know what he was feeling. Because sometimes you want to project a certain amount of strength. And you can project it if you’re a woman, you can project it if you’re disabled, you can project it, but often the people who love you don’t see the need for you to project it.

I remember when I was in the D.A.’s office, and I conducted a hearing and it had to do with a stalker who was bothering this woman. And I got to feeling when the woman saw me holding the file up to my face and that kind of thing, and the stalker’s looking at her, and she’s kind of — I got that she didn’t really know if I was able to handle this.

And I went over to her and I said, “Listen, just in case we lose this hearing, don’t worry, because when he goes outside, I’m going to kick his butt.” I said that to her because I wanted her to know that I’m in charge of her case. And that’s what I’m saying about projection.

Q: Did you always think, with your disability, that you could follow your father into politics, or was that something you came to over time?

A: When I was 10 years old I watched Robert Kennedy speak at the Democratic National Convention and I wished I was him. And I think, again, there was that family connection — he was following in the footsteps of John, Hillary follows in the footsteps of Bill, so I always relate to that, you know, kind of family member who has to deal with that shadow.

When I was in college, though I had academic ability, I don’t know that I was all that socially developed, or had a real difficult problem asking people for assistance, and had a lot of problems as a result of that. And I think as I had more problems, my ideas about being in politics, or following my father dwindled. I didn’t see myself as — I think my self-esteem really suffered from that. ...

Q: In terms of your vision, how much can you see?

A: I am legally blind in my right eye, and totally blind in my left eye. I’m looking at Armen [Meyer, a press aide who was in the room]. I know he has a white shirt on, I know he has a tie on, but from this distance I can’t tell you what color it is. I think it’s a darker color. ...

When I am in places where I am familiar, I will appear to see better than in places where I’m not. If I walked around my house, and you didn’t know, you’d probably think I have no vision problems.

When I say I saw something, it’s more like I sensed it. So when I said that we were on a plane with the Clintons, and we’re all eating pizza, I knew that I was eating pizza and I knew they took pizza off the tray, so I assume they’re eating it. I think people’s perception of me sometimes is that I see more than I actually do.

But I play basketball, and I’ve done things that people with my vision aren’t supposed to do. I’m in this interesting sort of zone between the sighted and the unsighted, and have never really met anyone who I visually relate to, I’ve never met anyone who is kind of like me. ...

My truest disability has been my ability to overcome my physical disability. So in other words, as soon as people see that I can be independent, then they hold me to the standard that everyone else is. So I remember once I told the airlines that I had a sight problem, and they put me on this bus to go to a hotel because there were no other flights out of the airport that night, and I gave up my seat to everyone got on and they passed me, and then like this 90-year-old woman, who was trying to get up the steps, and I couldn’t take it anymore so I helped her up the steps, gave her my seat and took another seat. First stop, the bus driver tells me to get off. And I know that he’s doing this now because he thinks I have no problem. He goes, “Go that way.” And I almost fell in the wishing well in front of this hotel. That’s because he saw me able to fend for myself.

And I think that’s been my greatest disability, that as I’ve overcome my physical disability, it just leads to other problems. So I think I have now learned — and I’m not doing this to be deceptive — but I don’t act the way I did when I was 17, like I can do everything myself, because I realized the minute I do that, no one helps me. So I learned to be a little more pragmatic about life.

Q: How much outreach do you do to the Senate Republicans? How hands on are you, or are you not at this point?

A: I would say that it hasn’t been a part of my portfolio, but in specific situations, they’ve called and asked: “Can we go talk to Malcolm Smith about something? How are you and, say, for instance, Assemblyman Brodsky?” — he had some objections to the stem cell bill, I went and talked to him about that. So it’ll be a situation where there’s some turbulence, and they’re thinking that maybe I might have some history or some understanding about a political person. So it’s not on a regular basis, like, I don’t get a list every week, you know, “Call these people,” it’s more on a case-by-case.

Q: Reflect on State Senator Joseph L. Bruno, the state’s top Republican.

A: When I came to the Senate minority, I thought that we were very bellicose and very antagonistic at times out of frustration of failure. So what I followed with Senator Bruno was something I actually read in “The Godfather,” in the actual book, that you should have your friends underestimating your strengths, and having your adversaries overestimating your weaknesses. So I always acted as if I was trying to — and I sincerely was trying — to have a more collegial atmosphere in the institution.

So, Bruno didn’t like long debates, so we shortened them. Bruno especially hated when we would extend the session the night the Republicans were having a fund-raiser. So I would come up, and they’d say, “Could we be done by 4?” I’d be done by 3:30. Bruno would ask for little gestures of cooperation and I would always redouble them. Bruno would have asked that I not build the political organization I did, but he didn’t ask, so I didn’t have to. So even when I took three seats from him in 2004, I went to see him, and I said, “I’m almost afraid to come in here because I think our friendship is over.” And he said to me: “There’s a time to campaign and there’s a time to govern. Now we’re getting back to governing.”

In 2005, and this is all on the record, at the end of session -- I think I remember the date, June 24th, the last day of session, 2005 -- I congratulated the Republicans who could have been really, really nasty and done some really evil things, after we had beaten them so badly in ’04, but didn’t do it. So we had a, I mean, everything is political in the end. But we tried to keep it out of the chamber. ...

I’ll even go as far as to say, a member of my family was in an accident a few weeks ago and Bruno sent him a plant when he heard about it. But as much as our friendship — we’d collaborated on a number of issues; he made me the first person who was ever appointed to a Senate task force who was from another party; he appointed me to his health care task force. So as much as we, as far as we went in terms of collaboration, I know that when he heard Eliot Spitzer picked me to become lieutenant governor, that they were cracking Champagne in his office. He always said “Congratulations.”

Q: It sounds as if part of your message to Governor Spitzer and his staff has been, “We could use a little more of that approach, as opposed to beating people over the head.”

A: Well, I think that the governor is very resilient, and I think that like a lot of governors, he had first-year issues. But what I think, where the governor has come back in the second year and really demonstrated some leadership and some resiliency, is that he is aware that, no matter whatever happens to an individual, that the institution is still there. If Joe Bruno had left the Legislature in 2007, there would be a new majority leader, and that majority leader would have to be accorded all the respect Bruno is used to.

Transcribed by Jennifer Mascia and Tanzina Vega.


Next Article in New York Region (14 of 20) »

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/nyregion/12paterson.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
The Spitzer Scandal
Lieutenant Governor Has a History of Defying the Public’s Expectations

By SAM ROBERTS
Published: March 12, 2008
On Tuesday, Lt. Gov. David A. Paterson waited. Around noon, he was driven from his home outside Albany to the Capitol, raising expectations that Gov. Eliot Spitzer would soon resign and that Mr. Paterson was about to become the state’s 55th governor — and the first African-American to hold the post.

Neither happened. Mr. Paterson returned home and waited some more.

With Mr. Spitzer’s political future in grave doubt, Mr. Paterson, 53, a Brooklyn-born and Harlem-bred politician, has become Albany’s man of the moment. Widely considered smart, amiable and disarmingly candid, he is also largely untested.

In 2006, Mr. Paterson surprised the Democratic establishment by giving up the possibility of becoming majority leader if the Democrats captured the State Senate — one of Albany’s muscular three men in the room — to run for lieutenant governor, a largely ceremonial post.

But this week, Mr. Paterson’s political gamble suddenly appeared to be on the brink of paying off, if in an unexpected and unintended way. If Mr. Spitzer resigns, Mr. Paterson would become only the third black governor of any state since Reconstruction.

From the time he refused to learn Braille as a child, Mr. Paterson, who is legally blind, has been defying expectations. Former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo recalled playing basketball against him in a charity game a decade ago.

“David was on the other side,” Mr. Cuomo said. “I said: ‘What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be blind.’ He said, ‘I’m guarding you.’ Just what I wanted: a blind guy to guard me. The second time down the court, he stole the ball.”

Fellow Democrats and Republicans consider him to be more liberal than Mr. Spitzer and also a more deft politician, capable of healing the rancor that has driven Albany into gridlock.

“He’s got a wonderful sense of humor, a very gentle man,” said Betsy Gotbaum, the New York City public advocate. “In that sense, he’s the opposite of Eliot.”

But some people who have applauded Mr. Spitzer’s combative style and ambitious reform agenda wonder whether Mr. Paterson is too accommodating, perhaps too gentle, to change Albany.

Mr. Cuomo said he thought Mr. Paterson “will make a more than good governor.” But, he added: “I think in his heart of hearts he’d rather be a legislator. It’s easier to intellectualize, to deal with problems as a senator, because you don’t have to solve them.”

David Alexander Paterson was born in Brooklyn on May 20, 1954, the scion of a powerful Harlem political fraternity that would become known as the Gang of Four. It included his father, Basil, a former state senator who in 1970 became the first black nominee for lieutenant governor and later served as deputy mayor to Mayor Edward I. Koch and secretary of state to Gov. Hugh L. Carey; Percy E. Sutton, the former Manhattan borough president; United States Rep. Charles B. Rangel; and David N. Dinkins, the city’s first black mayor.

As an infant, Mr. Paterson developed an infection that left him blind in his left eye and with severely limited sight in the other.

Because the public schools in New York City could not guarantee him an education without placing him in special education classes, his parents bought a house in Hempstead, on Long Island, where he became the first legally disabled person to attend the district’s public schools. He did well enough to be admitted to Columbia University — he graduated in 1977 with a degree in history — and Hofstra Law School.

His impaired vision has helped make him a good listener. Aides brief him by leaving lengthy voice mail messages. He memorizes his speeches.

“When I say I saw something, it’s more like I sensed it,” he said in a recent interview. “I think people’s perception of me sometimes is that I see more than I actually do.”

He and his wife, the former Michelle Paige, have a son, Alex, 13, and Mrs. Paterson has a daughter, Ashley, 19, from a previous marriage.

Mr. Paterson, who has completed the New York City Marathon, has said that his “truest disability has been my ability to overcome my physical disability.”

“As soon as people see that I can be independent, then they hold me to the standard that everyone else is,” he said. As a result, “I don’t act the way I did when I was 17, like I can do everything myself, because I realized the minute I do that, no one helps me. So I learned to be a little more pragmatic about life.”

He remembers becoming furious when Shirley Chisholm, the former congresswoman from Brooklyn, said she had encountered more bias because she was a woman than because she was black.

“Internally, I probably felt myself more discriminated against as a disabled person,” Mr. Paterson said in 2006. “And when I would experience discrimination from another African-American I would go ballistic. I thought black people were supposed to understand.”

After a stint with the Queens district attorney’s office, he joined Mr. Dinkins’s campaign for Manhattan borough president, then was anointed in 1985 to fill the Senate seat from Harlem, once occupied by his father, that had been left open by the death of Leon Bogues.

Mr. Paterson said that he sometimes felt intimidated by his father’s reputation as a public servant and that he used to bristle at comparisons. “When I went to a couple of meetings, people said about me, ‘He’s not Basil,’ ” Mr. Paterson said. “I wasn’t trying to be Basil. I was trying to be better than the people who were running against me.”

In 1993, he sought the Democratic nomination for New York City public advocate, rejecting his Harlem elders’ advice that another black candidate on the citywide ballot might jeopardize Mr. Dinkins’s re-election as mayor. Mr. Paterson lost the nomination to Mark Green, but retained his Senate seat. In 2002, he became Senate minority leader by staging a coup — a rare event in Albany — against Senator Martin Connor of Brooklyn.

As minority leader, he borrowed a page from Mario Puzo in dealing with the Republican majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno.

“When I came to the Senate minority, I thought that we were very bellicose and very antagonistic at times out of frustration of failure,” Mr. Paterson said. “So what I followed with Senator Bruno was something I read in ‘The Godfather,’ in the actual book, that you should have your friends underestimating your strengths and have your adversaries overestimating your weaknesses. So I always acted as if I was trying to — and I sincerely was trying — to have a more collegial atmosphere in the institution.”

In the Senate, Mr. Paterson offered small gestures to Mr. Bruno that helped smooth their ideological differences, agreeing to adjourn early on days when Republicans were holding fund-raisers and to shorten debates. But he also helped orchestrate campaigns in 2004 that cost the Republicans three seats.

When Mr. Spitzer asked Mr. Paterson to run for lieutenant governor, many people — including his father and son — were wary. “I know a bad deal when I see one,” his son said, noting that the salary, staff and other perquisites of the minority leader were better.

As lieutenant governor, Mr. Paterson has advanced his own agenda, focusing on stem-cell research, domestic violence and improving opportunities for women and minorities in business.

Asked what kind of governor Mr. Paterson would be, Mr. Green, who befriended him during the 1993 campaign, replied: “One word: different. Obviously, Eliot Spitzer got where he is by being pugnacious. David has gotten where he is by being accommodating.”

But he cautioned that while Mr. Paterson had the “innate talent to be a successful governor,” he would need “a strong staff to keep him focused and organized.”

Mr. Paterson is no stranger to skeptics. “I have had this desire my whole life to prove people wrong, to show them I could do things they didn’t think I could do,” he said when he became minority leader. “This is just another.”

http://www.silive.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news-24/1205476143209160.xml&storylist=simetro&thispage=2


Legally blind man's rise to NY governor inspiring to disabled
3/14/2008, 1:22 a.m. ET
By FRANK ELTMAN
The Associated Press
SANDS POINT, N.Y. (AP) — When David Paterson takes the oath of office Monday to become the nation's first legally blind governor, among those watching with the greatest interest will be those who cannot see.

Paterson's rise to governor has served as a great source of inspiration to blind Americans, who believe his newfound power will make the country more open-minded about disabilities.

"We don't see a lot of people with disabilities in positions that important," said Suzanne Ressa, the marketing and development director at the Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults on Long Island.

"He could be a great role model to all those individuals who are transitioning into the work world because he's saying, 'Yeah, I'm making it happen.' You know, 'If I can hold this leadership position, so can other people.'"

Although estimates vary, there are approximately 10 million blind and visually impaired people in the United States, and about 1.3 million of them are legally blind, according to the American Foundation for the Blind.

Paterson, who lost sight in his left eye and much of the sight in his right eye after an infection as an infant, joins a minuscule fraternity of blind politicians to attain high office. Thomas Pryor Gore was totally blind and served as a U.S. senator from Oklahoma from 1907 to 1921 and from 1931 until 1937. Minnesota had a blind congressman and senator, Thomas David Schall, who served from 1915 until his death in 1935.

Paterson, 53, also is the state's first disabled governor since Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was stricken with polio several years before he was elected to the position in 1928.

Though his sight is limited, Paterson walks the halls of the state Capitol unaided. He recognizes people at conversational distance and can memorize whole speeches. He has played pickup basketball games, once ran the New York City Marathon and can read for short periods of time, though he usually has aides read to him.

Maricar Marquez hopes that Paterson's new prominence will help change people's opinions about disabilities. Marquez, 36, is deaf and blind and communicates with the aid of two interpreters, but she still manages to work as an instructor at the Helen Keller center.

"Maybe with this happening, the government will be more sensitive to people with disabilities and provide better services for rehabilitation, education and maybe be more willing to be open-minded and understanding of the needs of people with disabilities," she said.

Dr. Marc Maurer, president of the Baltimore-based National Federation of the Blind, said Paterson's ascension to the governor's mansion can only help shatter misconceptions and stereotypes.

"He will serve as constant proof to the citizens of New York and the nation that blind people can perform any task, from an entry-level position to leading one of the largest states in the nation," Maurer said.

Vincent Norbury, a 19-year-old student from Queens who attends the Helen Keller Center, had some suggestions for the incoming governor:

"I think he should put Braille on more street signs and make some way that people with no vision can tell if the lights are changing in the street."

Tracey Gilbert-Dallow of Port Washington, a Helen Keller instructor who gets around with her guide dog, a large poodle named Marley, predicted Paterson "will have a big influence not just on blind people, but everyone."

"He had all these challenges, and look where he is today. Just because you have sight don't mean you can see. You see within yourself."

___

On the Net:

National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults: http://www.helenkeller.org/national

American Foundation for the Blind: http://www.afb.org

National Federation of the Blind: http://www.nfb.org

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved.