New York Note: More Andrew

David Paterson and Andrew Cuomo, election night 2010. Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images via Politico.

Governor David Paterson (who succeeded after Eliot Spitzer was forced to resign) on the radio talking about the Cuomo-Hochul situation tells some great stories about Cuomo, in particular:

When word began circulating that Spitzer (then attorney general) was going to choose Paterson (then Senate minority leader) as running mate in the 2006 gubernatorial election, which was a huge public surprise, Cuomo gave him a call: "You can't pick David Paterson, he's got all this baggage that's bound to come out, an African American is going to bring down the ticket," etc., etc. Then, after the choice was announced, he called back to say, "Don't tell David I said that!"

"Sorry," said Spitzer, "we already told him." Immediately Cuomo was on the phone to Paterson, saying, "David, David, it's not true, I never said that!"

Which was sort of a tell (how, in that case, would Cuomo have known that he was accused of saying it?). "I never trusted Andrew for anything after that," Paterson said. 

It's possible, IMO, and hinted at here, that in the 2010 campaign, which started off with Attorney General Cuomo investigating Governor Paterson over an incident in which Paterson may have pressured a woman to drop her domestic violence case against an aide of his, David Johnson, continued with President Obama asking Paterson to drop out of the governor race, and finished with Cuomo running, successfully, for governor himself, Cuomo played a pretty unsavory role in bringing about this result (LA Times reported after Paterson dropped out that Cuomo was "practicing cartwheels in Albany today"). He certainly didn't continue the investigation of Paterson, which he should have done if he really believed Paterson might have been tampering with a witness in a criminal case.

Paterson was unpopular (not with me!) and seemed likely to lose to Rudolph Giuliani in the November election (except Giuliani ended up not running), so in terms of the politics I guess it was OK that Paterson was forced out, but I do wonder about that. At this point there isn't much ill you can say about Andrew that I'm not willing to believe.