SARATOGA SPRINGS—David Paterson made a surprise appearance at Scott Murphy's campaign wrap party at the Gideon Putnam hotel in Saratoga Spa State Park, and said he felt vindicated by Scott Murphy's slim finish ahead of Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco.
Paterson created the house vacancy when he elevated Kirsten Gillibrand to replace Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Senate. One political negative discussed at the time of her selection was the prospect of Republicans winning back her house seat. The district has a large Republican tilt, and the race was seen as Paterson's responsibility.
"I'm glad to see that the good ethical decision—meaning the decision that I wanted to make—ended up being a good political decision, because it appears that we will have won this seat," Paterson told me before jumping into a waiting S.U.V. "I picked the person who I thought would be the right senator, I knew the district would be hard to win, but I didn't think it should interfere with the person who I wanted to select because we might lose the seat because that would have then made the selection based on politics."
I asked him whether his low profile in the race, which Liz described this afternoon, had an effect, and whether he did enough to support Murphy.
"I did," Paterson said, "I had some events for him, and I made a lot of phone calls for him, yeah I did."
