Governor Paterson is going through kind of a rough patch, to put it generously. His approval rating still hovers around 30 percent, his head-to-head numbers against both Andrew Cuomo and Rudy Giuliani are pretty dreadful, and he just went through a week of awkward semi-apologies over his widely unappreciated claim that the media has it in for him because of his race. But he’s keeping a glass-half-full kind of outlook!
Paterson tells the Daily Beast that he’s almost definitely going to run for reelection (or election, we guess) — a nine out of ten on the scale of certainty. And he’s hopeful that eventually people will begin to realize, “you know something, he used his resources with the best possible facility, and there is really no one who could’ve been governor … who would’ve been much further away from the decisions that he made.” It’s possible! Even when a man approached Paterson at a state fair yesterday to criticize his recent comments about the racist media, Paterson took it in stride.
“He said, ‘I was real disappointed what I read about you.’ He said, ‘I’ve always thought you were better than that,’ ” Mr. Paterson said, describing the encounter. “I said, ‘Thank you.’ ”
And then Paterson stopped to check out a “giant butter cube sculptured into the shape of a dairy truck,” which we assume was awesome. Things are looking up!
Paterson’s Got a Bone to Pick [Daily Beast]
Crowds, Butter Sculpture and No Polls: State Fair Is a Pick-Me-Up for Paterson [NYT]
