A big story this week has been the report that President Obama, through the intermediary of Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), asked Gov. David Paterson (D-NY) to not run for re-election in light of his bad poll numbers and the potential danger to the Dem ticket in a big state.
Meeks appeared today on Bloomberg TV and soft-pedaled what happened — saying that he didn’t directly ask Paterson not to run. Meeks said something should be corrected: “And that is that the administration never said, ‘Go tell Gov. Paterson he should step down, he should not run for re-election,’ or anything of that nature.”
“The administration had indicated that they had some troubles — you know, looking at what the solution is, and we’re getting close to 2010, and they wanted to make sure that we go into 2010 as strong as possible,” Meeks explained. “And so there were some issues, and so basically I was just telling the governor, that there are some issues that the administration has, and that he needs to try to talk to some folks in the administration, and see if they can be resolved.”
Jake Tapper reported that when Obama traveled to New York and met with Paterson yesterday, Obama apologized for this whole thing becoming public.
I asked a Democratic source in Albany what impact this whole development was having in the Capitol — and surprisingly, the answer is that there’s not any impact to be had. “Honestly, it doesn’t change much. No one wants Paterson to run again except Paterson,” the source said. “And I think what may have triggered this was Paterson hiring campaign staff and gearing up as if he’s going into campaign mode.”
The polls have shown quite a bit of consensus on that question — that is, hardly anyone wants Paterson to run. A Siena poll from today found that only 14% of registered voters in New York would vote to elect him to a full term, with 71% saying they would prefer someone else. Among Democrats only, 17% say they would elect him, to 67% who want someone else. In a Democratic primary match-up against state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo gets 66% to Paterson’s 20%. So you can understand why there might be a desire to avoid any blood-letting, and just rally around Cuomo.
A big issue here is that Paterson could potentially lose to Rudy Giuliani on the Republican side, while Cuomo would still beat Rudy without much difficulty. The same Siena poll found Rudy thumping Paterson by 52%-35%, but Cuomo beating Rudy by 52%-39%.
