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Paterson Says It Sucked Being Governor, Raspberries Albany
By
Ben Yakas
Published Dec 1, 2010
Modified Dec 1, 2010
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Dec 1, 2010
Modified Dec 1, 2010
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Governor David Paterson is a lame duck, what with the State Legislature ignoring his requests to balance a budget, and we imagine he's just sort of going through the motions at this point; even his staff's secret internal emails turned out to be kind of meh. But on the plus side, he can spend his last weeks in office getting progressively more unhinged day-by-day. Paterson had a farewell tour interview on WFAN sports radio this afternoon, and he ended up just shooting the shit about how much it sucked to be Governor: "It's been very challenging, very difficult, very painful at times."
During a five hour interview with WFAN host Mike Franscesa, Paterson discussed his blindness, the lack of leadership in NY government, and the Mets, among other things. He said he thought his blindness, and the portrayal of him on SNL by Fred Armisen, was perceived negatively by the public. About the dysfunctional state of Albany, he scorched the state senate with his burn: "The caliber of people I worked with 25 years ago in Albany is far superior to those that are there now." And he worried whether he had become too reliant on his staff and security: "So many duties that I would perform are really performed for me. I haven't done it for so long I think I've lost my sense of instinctive reaction and I'm actually thinking I'm going to have to go back to one of the services for the blind and be retrained."
But his sense of humor is still intact: Franscesa joked that Paterson had "gotten soft," to which he laughed and replied, "I'm a shell, a shell of the man I was before I became governor." Paterson will be co-hosting today until 6:30 p.m.
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Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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