Paterson: Gillibrand first, Ford second

by Mark Silva

It's been one of those years for New York Gov. David Paterson, who replaced the disgraced former governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, who was cavorting with call girls.

First the White House tries to talk Paterson out of seeking election this year, then Saturday Night Live makes fun of his blindness, then former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. of Tennessee starts talking about taking on the governor's appointee for the former Senate seat of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Kirsten Gillibrand, in her bid for election, and then the governor's teenage son gets picked up for playing dice.

Fifteen-year-old Alex Paterson was taken in for questioning by New York City police after he was allegedly caught playing a game of dice with four friends near his Upper West Side high school. Police said they found a credit card on him that was either lost or stolen. A police official said a juvenile report was issued, a form kept in station houses that police and juvenile officers can refer to if other trouble arises involving the juvenile.

The incident came as the governor was in Buffalo to deliver a version of his State of the State address from last week. He learned of his son's problems during the event.

"He was not arrested,'' Paterson said today on FOX Business Network's Imus in the Morning. " He was questioned and released about a matter...There were a bunch of kids that were playing a dice game. The principal said the kids play this game all the time. No money was involved -- it wasn't gambling....

"Apparently he was with a friend and the friend found this debit card and they thought it was thrown away because it was by a garbage can in the subway,'' the governor added. "No one had put any charges on the card."

Paterson maintained today that, for all the reported pressure on him not to seek election, President Barack Obama had not told him not to run.

"No, he didn't say that."

He even expects Obama to campaign for him: "Since I'm going to be the Democratic candidate, I think he will."

As for Gillibrand and the Senate: "I don't think anyone really understands the issues better than Sen. Gillibrand...I think she's uniquely qualified...Whenever you go from a district to a statewide service, there are going to be issues that you're going to have to confront...so there's a learning curve whenever that happens and I think she's mastered it very well."

On suggestions that Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, the senior senator from New York, has Gillibrand under his control: "That's certainly a perception that her detractors have tried to create. I work with Senator Schumer and he's always got a point of view, and sometimes it's right.... She's independent-minded."

On Ford's potential candidacy in the party's primary: "I picked Senator Gillibrand --I'd be supporting her... New York has had a tradition of allowing outer-staters to come out and represent us. If he thinks he is worthy of that, then he should take on Sen. Gillibrand in the primary."

And if Ford won that primary, the governor would be happy to support him as well: "Absolutely. Harold Ford was an excellent congressman."

On that SNL skit:

"I can take a joke about my disability...and, by the way, I don't bounce off walls and if anyone at Saturday Night Live would like to have me on, we could find out. Maybe I could bounce a few left hands off of them...

"With a 37 percent unemployment rate in the disabled community nationally, to just be ridiculing a person who has a disability like you're in the third grade...they can ridicule me all they want,'' he said. "I'm the governor -- I have a job, but there are so many people out there who don't."