"When then-Lt. Gov. David Paterson took over in 2008 after a prostitution scandal forced out Gov. Eliot Spitzer, he’d served in the state Senate for decades, including as minority leader."

"Hochul has years in local government, a term in Congress and seven years as Cuomo’s rarely consulted LG. (Ironically, she led the gov’s 'Enough is Enough' sexual-assault-prevention initiative.)"

The New York Post editors write, in "Kathy Hochul’s huge challenge as New York’s next gov."

Did you remember the last time New York had to move on to its Lieutenant Governor — and that it was another sex-focused scandal? Paterson had a lot more relevant experience, but he was not a successful governor.

"I'm not talking to them. They sent me a message. They sent that budget that was out of balance."

NY Governor David Paterson is about to veto 6,900 bills.

ADDED: A song for the occasion:

The NYT big story about New York Governor David Paterson — focusing on his "closest confidant" David Johnson — is pretty much of a fizzle.

But what's the big deal here? He rose quickly, there are 2 felony drug arrests that date back to his teen years, and there were 3 "altercations with women, two of which led to calls to the police." And:

Some heads of significant government agencies have said they feel they have to go through Mr. Johnson, often known as D. J., to get to the governor. And several current and former administration officials said that Mr. Johnson’s dressing down of the governor’s Washington office in September contributed to the departure of several seasoned people from the office.

“I started getting messages from D. J. telling me to call certain players in my industry,” said one former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing the governor.

Mr. Johnson, the official said, started to manage administration press conferences, dictating the order and seating of speakers and calling agencies to request they draft statements on particular issues.

“We were all quite surprised about D. J. taking more of a policy role,” another former official said. “It seemed like it was a long way to come in a short period of time for a guy who had been the governor’s wing man.”

Is this the big exposé we've been hearing about? Saturn Smith says:

See, this piece was supposed to be a whopper... It was supposed, over the past two weeks, to be The Story that was going to force New York's inefficient, disorganized governor into becoming the second governor in a row to resign....

... I'm kind of hard pressed to do much more than give a cheer for a guy who has risen from being twice arrested for drug crimes as a teenager in in early-90s Spanish Harlem to being the closest aide of New York's governor....

So then, the big deal here must be the behavior towards women. And yes, it might be appalling. You can kind of sense that the New York Times wanted to just write, THIS IS APPALLING. Unfortunately, they were unable to do so....

The Times is trying to show a pattern of behavior without anything to go on but the word of one witness against the word of several others....

There's an extended section in the middle that is comprised almost completely of strange, neutral quotes about Johnson and how he's recently been seen to take over -- ably -- management of many political and even policy-oriented tasks. No one is quoted saying anything blatantly negative about Johnson's influence in the entire 2,175 word piece....

The piece then charges forward with some stunningly sour-grapes sounding quote...

Was there more to this story that wasn't fit to print?

"We’re not in the postracial period," says NY governor David Paterson.

"My feeling is it’s being orchestrated, it’s a game, and people who pay attention know that."

"It" = the opposition to his running for (can't call it re-)election as NY governor. Why, if he was never chosen for governor in the first place, does he assume he should be more popular? And, of course, he can't possibly think that this complaint will increase his popularit. Is he giving up?

"What Maureen Dowd misses is that both Blagojevich and Paterson rolled Obama on Senate picks. And rubbed it in, hard."

Exactly.

Kirsten E. Gillibrand will be the new New York Senator!

The NYT reports.

It had to be a woman. Tough luck, Andy!

ADDED: "Ten Things You Didn't Know About Kirsten Gillibrand." They pretty much all boil down to: She's conservative!

The Senate has the power to exclude Roland Burris, say lawprofs Akhil Reed Amar and Josh Chafetz.

They look at Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution — which makes each house of Congress "the Judge of the Elections, Returns, and Qualifications of its own members" — and find a power to judge the Blagojevich appointment:

At the founding, Senators were elected by state legislatures. If the Senate believed that legislators in a given state had been bribed into voting for a particular candidate, the Senate could refuse to seat him.

Because of the word "returns" in Section 5, what is true of elected Senators is equally true of appointed Senators. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a "Return" in the time of the framers involved a report of an appointment made by a sheriff or other official. If the Senate may refuse to seat a person picked in a corrupt election, it likewise may refuse to seat a person picked in a corrupt appointment process.

Amar and Chafetz need to deal with Powell v. McCormack, in which the Supreme Court said that the House did not have the power under Article I, Section 5 to refuse to seat Adam Clayton Powell. That case focuses on judging "qualifications," and the Court said that only relates to the qualifications specified in the Constitution — age, citizenship, and residency. Beyond those 3 qualifications, the people had the power to choose the representative they wanted. But Powell was clearly the people's choice, so what do you do with Powell when the governor appoints the new member? For an accurate analogy for the Burris appointment, imagine if the problem with Powell hadn't been that the members of Congress thought he was corrupt, but that they thought there had been a fraud in the election.

Now, the Powell case was about whether Powell could use the courts to override the decision to exclude him. The argument on the other side was that the House had the final call about the scope of the power to judge the qualifications of their own members. In that view, which the Court rejected, a vote to exclude already embodied the constitutional interpretation that they had the power. Our current discussion of the question of the scope of the power to exclude Burris will affect how the Senators think about the scope of their power, and articles like Amar and Chafetz's should embolden the Senators, and they may vote to exclude him. If that happens, Burris may sue in federal court, and then the court will have to decide whether the Senators' assessment of their own power is the final answer about the meaning of the Constitution.

But doubts about the scope of the Senate's power to look into the circumstances of the appointment may give the Senators pause. The vote to exclude Burris may fail — because of these constitutional doubts and for other reasons. If that happens, Burris will be seated and there will be no occasion for a court to discuss the scope of the exclusion power.

To be sure, there are plenty of other reasons to seat Burris. For one thing, if we rely on the theory that the Senators have the power to exclude him because the appointment process was corrupt, they will need to go through some sort of factfinding process. Blagojevich faces his criminal trial, but he is the duly elected governor of Illinois, with the power to appoint the Senator. What sort of parallel process in the Senate will be needed to make the exclusion legitimate?

In this context, the Senate itself is a judge, in the words of the Constitution, and can decide facts for itself. It need not follow the rules of criminal courts. That means it need not find Blagojevich guilty beyond reasonable doubt, as a court would if his liberty were in jeopardy. It is enough for the Senate to reject Blagojevich's appointee if a majority of senators are firmly convinced that Blagojevich is corrupt and that any nomination he might make is inherently tainted by such corruption.

If the Senators exclude Burris because they simply feel quite certain the appointment is tainted and not because they've gone through some impressive and fair factfinding, when — if — Burris goes to court to override their decision, Burris's argument about the scope of the power to exclude will look much more appealing. The Senate will need to argue that the court should defer, but the court will think less of this notion of deference if the process to be deferred to is not very impressive. Amar and Chafetz recognize this reality of litigation:

To make sure its ruling sticks, the Senate should follow its own procedures with due deliberation. Burris' case can be referred to a committee for careful review. He need not be seated while this committee does its work, and it will be very hard for Burris to persuade any federal judge to interfere in the meantime, especially if Senate Democrats and Republicans unite. With any luck, Blagojevich will be out of office soon enough and a new appointments process (or a special election) can begin that would supersede the attempted Burris appointment.

The delay itself is effective, but it does mire the Senate in an investigation of the Democratic governor. The argument will be made that the effort to exclude is more of a power grab than the governor's attempt to fulfill what is, after all, a duty of his office. Should the Senate Democrats want that? What a nasty preoccupation for Congress at what should be the fresh beginning of a new administration!

Amar and Chafetz make a good argument about the power to exclude but in doing so, they expose the political disaster it would be to vote to exclude.

ADDED: Lawprof Sandy Levinson puts it well:

I don't see how one can mount a good-faith argument against seating Burris unless one is willing to open each and every gubernatorial appointment to some kind of "good-government" scrutiny....

Should the motives of Gov. Patterson [sic] be subjected to relentless scrutiny if he bows to pressure to name Caroline Kennedy as a tribute to a dying senator and, in addition, to get access to the Bloomberg and Kennedy donor list that presumably comes with that appointment?

Should Governor Paterson choose a caretaker Senator?

There's a new election for the Hillary Clinton Senate seat in 2010 (and then again in 2012), so why not let that field of candidates develop in a naturally competitive fashion by putting someone there now who will perform the function in a dignified, statesmanlike way?

Some are suggesting Bill Clinton or Mario Cuomo, but — even if one of them would do it – there's an obvious problem: Shouldn't a woman replace Hillary? There are some senior, statesmanlike women in New York, and I don't mean Caroline Kennedy.

The caretaker option was exercised last month by Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner, who picked a former aide to Vice President-elect Joe Biden to succeed him in the Senate until a new senator is elected in 2010. By then, Biden's son, state Attorney General Beau Biden, will have returned from a tour in Iraq with the National Guard — just in time to run for his father's seat.

Caroline Kennedy is in the Beau Biden category. I know he's delayed by his trip to Iraq, but aside from that, he wouldn't be properly respected if he didn't run for office. Let Caroline prove her stuff in a real competition for office. Perhaps she won't even try, if she's put that test. Deciding whether to run in a real competition is itself a test, and perhaps Princess Caroline would decline. I think the people of New York deserve to see if she would subject her royal self to the ordeal and, if she did, how she'd do debating scrappy politicians who haven't lived their lives swathed in adoration, wealth, and deference.

"Standing shoulder to shoulder with his grim-faced wife, Michelle, the governor said his 'conscience is clear'...."

Here's this character, newly arrived on the national stage, whom we haven't had 5 minutes to get to like, and he's already nothing but trouble. Is David Paterson really going to get to be the Governor of New York for the next 3 years?

Asked if he had ever used campaign funds for hotels or other personal expenses, he left himself some wiggle room - saying he never "knowingly" did so....

Meanwhile, since the press conference an Olympic gold-medalist has also come forward, claiming she had a "close relationship" with the Governor and allegedly tape recorded her phone conversations with him, according to a newspaper report.

Diane Dixon, a Brooklyn native who won medals in the 4x400-meter relay at the 1984 games in Los Angeles and the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, claimed that Paterson had assisted in helping her secure a Department of Education job in Crown Heights.

We barely know this guy and now we have to listen to his sex tapes?

IN THE COMMENTS: Madison Man says: "What is this with all the Michelles? Michelle Paterson. Michelle Obama. Jason sings Michelle." Ha ha. I know what he's talking about:




Jason Castro.