Amy Sullivan at Swampland in Time:
Has Obama asked beleaguered and unpopular NY Governor David Paterson to drop out of the race to keep his seat? That’s what the New York Times is reporting. If true, this is fairly extraordinary. It’s highly unusual for a president to step in and tell a governor who is not facing something like a crippling scandal or imminent indictment that his time is up. And when it’s the first black president telling one of only two black governors to clear the way for someone else…that definitely falls into the category of Stories You Never Expected To Read.
A sitting president has long been considered the nominal “head” of his party. Obama seems to be taking that to its logical conclusion. There’s not really any reason he shouldn’t use his influence behind the scenes in this manner, although it’s yet another step down the rather depressing road of presidents thinking they actually “run the country” rather than just heading up one of three branches of the central government in a federal system.
Jazz Shaw at Moderate Voice:
The Paper of Record refers to this as “an extraordinary intervention into a state political race by the president,” and it certainly caught me by surprise, but I’m not sure it’s entirely out of line. After all, the moment a person takes a seat in the Oval Office, they become, in effect, the titular head of their party, and the Democrats may have plenty to worry about in New York next year. Absent a major sea change, a Giuliani – Paterson matchup would be a bloodbath with the GOP taking back the governor’s mansion. And this is a state full of people who are some of the most heavily taxed in the nation, largely unemployed and watching the state budget slowly bleed out while our stimulus money was almost entirely wasted. If they suddenly took it into their heads to go out and vote for Rudy, might they start pulling a few other levers in the “R” column, particularly when Kirsten Gillibrand will be in hard scrabble fight to hang on to Hillary’s Senate seat for two more years? Plus, the Dems’ newly found hold on the state senate has a paper thin margin and a change of two seats next year would flip the chamber back to the GOP, who held it for decades.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a cake walk, even under the most optimistic Republican dream conditions. As I pointed out in a recent column at PMJ, Siena pollsters found that New Yorkers are down on the Democrats, but they’re not particularly in love with the GOP yet either. And there’s still Andrew Cuomo out there, waiting to land like a fly in the soup.
Obama is definitely using his top dog Democrat status to intrude on a state race, and a delicate minefield of a race to be sure. But given the unrest across the land over his fiscal and health care initiatives, the Democrats really need to avoid as many black eyes as possible. Losing traditionally blue New York to the Republicans would be an ominous sign, and one Obama would like his party to avoid.
Clearly, the Democratic leadership would rather see Cuomo in the election against Giuliani than Paterson, and for very good reason. Paterson has no support in New York and would lose a general election against anyone but Donald Trump — and I wouldn’t count The Donald out entirely. Paterson would likely lose handily in a primary against Cuomo, but it would force Cuomo to spend money early and split the party when it is already in enough trouble.
Under those circumstances, it’s not unusual for a President to ask a governor of his own party to step aside. Usually, a President would find an appointment for the governor as a face-saving inducement, rather than send his minions to the press in a campaign of humiliation to make his point. Either Paterson didn’t respond to earlier nudges from the Oval Office, or the White House just decided to make themselves look incompetent and completely self-absorbed. In fact, those two options are not mutually exclusive.
Of course, if he resists long enough, the other half of the President’s message is emphatically clear — if Patterson does run for re-election, not only will he have a challenger for the nomination, most likely Andrew Cuomo, but that challenger will have the support of the national party.
Whether he likes it or not, Paterson is out.
