Clinton Seat Could Go to N.Y. Lieutenant Governor

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On the January night Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) lost the Iowa caucuses, she surrounded herself with prominent figures from her husband’s White House. One person on the stage with her, however, clearly wasn’t a Clinton administration veteran — or an Iowan: New York Lt. Gov. David Paterson (D).

That’s a name and face, New York political insiders will tell their Washington, D.C., counterparts, to get used to. If Clinton is elected president in November, many Empire State political observers believe that Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) will tap Paterson to succeed her in the Senate.

“He’ll probably appoint David Paterson,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute and a former political reporter in New York. “He’s his lieutenant governor, a black guy who’d be a breakthrough” appointment.

Paterson, a 52-year-old Columbia University graduate, isn’t the only name mentioned as a possibility to fill Clinton’s seat. The list is long — and includes a handful of Members of Congress.

Whoever gets the nod in 2009 would have to run a campaign in 2010 to fill the remaining two years of Clinton’s Senate term.

Spitzer has not said a word publicly about what he’d do if Clinton moved on to the White House. And it’s entirely possible that other powerful New York politicians — including Clinton and the state’s other Senator, Charles Schumer (D) — would weigh in.

“If Hillary’s nominated or president, you’d think she’d have a say in it too,” said one Washington, D.C.-based Democratic strategist with close ties to New York affairs.

What’s known is this: When Spitzer asked Paterson to be his running mate in 2006, many political observers believed that the two had struck some kind of deal. Gubernatorial candidates in New York don’t generally get to choose their running mates — those arrangements are often more like shotgun marriages, with the primary winners for governor and lieutenant governor teaming up for the general election.

But even though several Democrats were already in the race for lieutenant governor, Spitzer, the leading gubernatorial candidate, was able to clear the Democratic field when he persuaded Paterson to run for the No. 2 post. Paterson was then the state Senate Minority Leader, and with Democrats in New York close to taking control of that chamber for the first time in decades, he gambled away the potential for real political power to become Spitzer’s running mate and elevate his statewide profile.

That was the first clue to seasoned New York political observers that Paterson was at least contemplating the possibility of succeeding Clinton, if the opportunity were to present itself.

What’s more, Paterson has several powerful political patrons, starting with his father, Basil Paterson, a former New York secretary of state and the first black vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The elder Paterson is a lifelong friend of several other veteran Harlem politicians, including Rep. Charlie Rangel (D), former New York City Mayor David Dinkins (D) and former Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton (D), who is now an influential broadcasting mogul.

So by tapping David Paterson to be his running mate, Spitzer essentially was reaching out not just to a talented legislator but also to these powerful party leaders — at a time when Rangel in particular was criticizing the gubernatorial candidate’s brashness.

“I can’t believe that formally or informally there wasn’t some kind of promise made, that there weren’t some kind of expectations that Paterson would have first crack” at a Senate vacancy, said one veteran New York political observer. “This was a compact not just with David, but with the ‘Harlem Mafia.’”