Albany Starts To Wonder at Paterson

Concern is growing in Albany over the prospect that, even as Governor Paterson races to get on top of the budget crisis, the disclosures of his private sexual affairs have damaged — perhaps irreparably — his capacity to execute the state's highest office.

Dogged by suspicions that his campaign expenditures and his extramarital relationships were improperly entangled, Mr. Paterson heads into his second week on the job no longer the fresh face who symbolized a return to civility, but a weakened politician.

"Paterson's persona has been really damaged," a politics professor at Baruch College, Doug Muzzio, said. "On Monday, he was sitting on top of the world. It was, 'I am David Paterson and I am governor of New York.' It now becomes, 'I am David Paterson and I am this philandering, pay-for-it-with-other-people's-money type of guy,'"

For the third consecutive day, Mr. Paterson struggled to account for a 2002 payment, billed to the credit card of his campaign committee, for an Upper West Side hotel room where Mr. Paterson had a sexual liaison.

The governor, who served as lieutenant governor under Eliot Spitzer, has also been unable to explain the circumstances behind a $500 campaign payment to a woman with whom he was romantically involved.

Meanwhile, Paterson officials sought to provide details about more than $11,000 in payments that his campaign committee made between 2002 and 2007 to a 45-year-old woman, April Robbins-Bobyn, whose connection to Mr. Paterson is not clear.

A spokesman for Mr. Paterson identified her as a woman who served as a staffer in Mr. Paterson's Senate Democratic office in Manhattan when Mr. Paterson served as Senate minority leader. The spokesman later said he was mistaken and that the woman was a campaign aide.

A receptionist who picked up the phone at the Senate Democratic office, however, said Ms. Robbins-Bobyn "no longer" works there. A blog posting from 2006 lists her as "director of special events" for Senator Paterson, with a government e-mail address of bobyn@senate.state.ny.us.

State records show that Mr. Paterson's campaign committees — Friends of David A. Paterson and Paterson for New York — made more than a dozen payments to Ms. Robbins-Bobyn over the five-year period.

The payments were listed as unspecified reimbursement, travel expenses, office expenses (including an $1,840.23 expenditure), constituent services, wages, and a bonus of $2,500.

Ms. Robbins-Bobyn, a Bronx resident, yesterday told a New York Sun reporter to go away.

Mr. Paterson's inability to put to rest questions about his personal life has become a major distraction for his administration, which has 10 days left to hammer out a budget deal with legislative leaders.

"He's just getting picked apart," a long-time Democratic operative said.

Not only was Mr. Paterson deprived of much of a transition period before stepping into Mr. Spitzer's shoes, Mr. Paterson was also stripped of the grace period that the public and press normally extend to a new leader in the spirit of goodwill.

His honeymoon clocked in at around 7 hours — from the moment he recited the oath of office before a jubilant, political star-studded audience to when the first report of his infidelities broke online.

Mr. Paterson finds himself lumped together with two disgraced former state leaders, Eliot Spitzer and James McGreevey, as charter members of the "Governors Gone Wild" club.

Albany lawmakers are now questioning the political wisdom of his decision to hold a press conference on Tuesday, at which he invited the Albany press corps to quiz him on his sex life for half an hour.

On a person level, the governor said he wanted to clear his conscience. Administration officials also hoped that by owning up to extramarital affairs, Mr. Paterson, whom many believe will run for office in 2010, would boost his immunity to possible sex scandals in the future.

The vaccine, however, may have been too strong. Three days later, the governor has been unable to shake questions about possible links between his campaign committee funds and his romantic engagements.

If Mr. Paterson intended to put to rest rumors, that effort has backfired. It seems only to have fueled them.

The paramour guessing game has also preoccupied legislative staffers and lobbyists, who say they can't recall another time when Albany seemed so loopy.

"Clearly his ability to do the state's business is compromised the longer this goes on," Mr. Muzzio said.

Administration officials are inviting reporters to meet today with Mr. Paterson's campaign lawyer, Henry Berger, and said he would answer questions about the governor's campaign records and offer a viewing of receipts and other documents.

On Wednesday, Mr. Paterson told the Daily News that purpose of a $500 expenditure to a girlfriend in 2002 that had been listed on campaign forms as "professional services" was to reimburse her for a donation she made on his behalf to the gubernatorial campaign of Carl McCall.

Yesterday, the administration acknowledged that the woman, Lila Kirton, an executive chamber aide who served under Mr. Spitzer when he was attorney general and governor and now works for Mr. Paterson, never donated money to the McCall campaign.

A spokesman said the purpose of Mr. Paterson's campaign payment to Ms. Kirton was unclear.

Mr. Paterson, who was in Rochester yesterday, told reporters that he "never knowingly used any campaign funds for any purposes other than what related to campaigns."