Paterson Sees ‘a Little Desperation’ in Clinton

ALBANY — Governor Paterson, who is a superdelegate supporting Senator Clinton, said he hopes she will end her effort to count Michigan and Florida votes to save her presidential campaign.In his latest round of radio interviews statewide, Mr. Paterson also said today that he’s beginning to see “a little desperation,” on Mrs. Clinton’s part.The Democratic governor said he doubts his home-state senator would get the edge in the popular vote over front-running Senator Obama for his party’s nomination, even if the two states’ votes were counted.The governor says Mrs. Clinton shouldn’t derail the process in which the Democratic National Committee disallowed results from the Michigan and Florida primaries because they were held too early.A Clinton spokesman declined comment.“I would say at this point we’re starting to see a little desperation on the part of a woman I still support and will support until she makes a different determination,” Mr. Paterson told WAMC-FM in Albany. “Candidates have to be cautious in their zeal to win that they don’t trample on the process.”He said he wouldn’t agree with other Mrs. Clinton supporters who say her effort to capture disallowed votes in Michigan and Florida is akin to a civil rights fight. No candidates objected to the decision by party leaders to penalize the states for holding primaries before the New Hampshire primary, Mr. Paterson noted. New Hampshire has for decades been the nation’s first presidential primary.Mr. Paterson, before he replaced Governor Spitzer who was identified in a prostitution investigation, had played a prominent role in the Clinton campaign. Now New York’s first black governor, Mr. Paterson continues to support Mrs. Clinton and has tried to appeal to black voters who are drawn to Mr. Obama.Mr. Paterson also said he has extended the life of a New York commission created to devise a property tax cap so it can explore more and faster ways to reduce taxes. The commission headed by the Nassau County Executive, Tom Suozzi, was to have reported its recommendations today.Mr. Paterson said the state should scrap or drastically change the STAR tax subsidy program. STAR now provides $5 billion a year to schools to reduce property taxes, but school taxes have continued to climb because there is no cap on spending.He said New York must “smash the sacred cows of Albany” to reduce the nation’s highest tax burden quickly and dramatically.Mr. Paterson also said he’s anxious about his scheduled surgery tomorrow on the only eye in which he has sight.Mr. Paterson, who is legally blind, was diagnosed with acute glaucoma in his left eye on Tuesday and underwent a routine, outpatient laser procedure to relieve pressure on that eye. Mr. Paterson will return to The Mount Sinai Medical Center tomorrow to have another procedure to prevent glaucoma from appearing in his right eye.Because of an infection when he was three months old, he can’t see out of his left eye and can see only images in his right. He can read only for short periods of time through his right eye.“So believe me, I do have a little anxiety before this procedure,” he said.He also said the eye pain that drove him to the hospital, after he declined his wife’s urging to seek help three times, was intense.“They are giving you the strongest pain relief there is and they are having absolutely no effect,” Mr. Paterson said.Still, he flashed his well-known sense of humor when referring to the pain, the latest problem in his sightless eye: “It’s always the ironic twist of my life.”He said the cause of Tuesday’s hospitalization was eye strain — he had been trying to read the instructions for the iPod his daughter had given him for his 54th birthday, which was Tuesday. He said he knew from experience that the pain was from eye strain and insisted all along that was the cause.“I read I went to the hospital (because) I had migraines,” Mr. Paterson chuckled at the mistake. “I didn’t say that, I said I had eye strain.”It was his own office’s press release that initially said Mr. Paterson was being treated for symptoms of a migraine.

Paterson Sees ‘a Little Desperation’ in Clinton

Paterson Sees ‘a Little Desperation’ in Clinton

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