Governor David Paterson will Not seek Reelection

The Governor's domestic violence scandal has led him to this... He is no longer seeking reelection.

Gov. David A. Paterson, his administration caught up in a whirlwind of allegations about its intervention in a domestic violence episode involving a top aide, is set to announce that he is suspending his election campaign and will not run in November, according to a person told about the plans.

Mr. Paterson is expected to make the announcement Friday afternoon. It would end his campaign less than a week after it officially began, with an angry speech at Hofstra University on Long Island. There, on the campus where he had gone to law school, the man who has been the state’s top official for 23 months — and had been a state senator for more than 20 years before that — presented himself as something of an outsider tiliting against special interests in Albany.

By Friday, some newspaper editorial writers were demanding something more than an end to his campaign: they were calling for his resignation. That only added to the increasing sense that it would be nearly impossible for him to run the state and the campaign with the abuse case in the background.

This is a sad ending to a man who stood his ground and stuck to his beliefs.

source

Interesting Quote: Sen. Ruben Diaz

“The Governor went out on a limb for the gay community in his efforts to support marriage equality and to bring that bill to the Senate floor, even though he knew it did not have sufficient votes to pass and that thousandsof people in New York State did not want it and will not support him for election because of that issue. Where is the gay community now that the Governor needs them?”

Senator Diaz mocking Governor David Paterson.

But does he have a point?

Obama thinks Gov. Paterson should bow Out of the 2010 election

He is not playing around.

Obama has sent word for Gov. Paterson to withdraw from the New York governor’s race. The reasons come from the mess Paterson has made like: the renegade senators flip flopping across the board and failed initiatives.

The decision to ask Mr. Paterson to step aside was proposed by political advisers to Mr. Obama, but approved by the president himself, one of the administration officials said.

“Is there concern about the situation in New York? Absolutely,” the second administration official said Saturday evening. “Has that concern been conveyed to the governor? Yes.”

The administration officials and the Democratic operative spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions with the governor were intended to be confidential.

The president’s request was conveyed to the Mr. Paterson by Representative Gregory W. Meeks, a Queens Democrat, who has developed a strong relationship with the Obama administration, they said.

The move against a sitting Democratic governor represents an extraordinary intervention into a state political race by the president, and is a delicate one, given that Mr. Paterson is one of only two African-American governors in the nation. But Mr. Obama’s political team and other party leaders have grown increasingly worried that the governor’s unpopularity could drag down Democratic members of Congress in New York, as well as the Democratic-controlled Legislature, in next fall’s election.

I'm surprised about the president getting involved with this issue. Is there something we are missing here? Is there something bigger going down? Stay Tuned.

source