Recently, Mayor Bloomberg — the same guy who wavered on a presidential run for about three years — told David Paterson to hurry up and make a decision about filling Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat already. Then yesterday, Sheldon Silver, the most intractable personality in the world, indicated that he would support Caroline Kennedy’s bid for the spot, supposedly because he thinks she’ll get it anyway, but perhaps because he simply wants to speed things along. Paterson, meanwhile, is dismissing suggestions that if he can’t make a real decision, maybe he should just appoint a caretaker senator to run out the clock on the seat (that is, until the 2010 special election). Someone like Bill Clinton, or Mario Cuomo, because we know only three families in this state of 20 million people are truly eligible.
But even as Paterson refuted that idea and asked for patience yesterday, he showed signs that the speculation was getting to him. For one, he joked that his New Year’s resolution was “to try not to talk about the Senate,” which, like all New Year’s resolutions, didn’t last for more than a couple of hours. He also displayed some nervous humor when welcoming a little girl, Caroline Spore of Delmar, into the Executive Mansion during an open house for New York’s hoi polloi. “Caroline is here, everybody!” he shouted. “She’s 7. And she’s ready to go to the Senate.”
Governor Says He’s Undecided on Senate Pick and Is Still Interviewing [NYT]
