ALBANY—David Paterson—affable colleague, funny orator, passive and heretofore ineffective governor—is trying to show that he can be a fighter, after all.
In recent days, as polls continue to show him getting destroyed in a hypothetical primary next year against Andrew Cuomo, he has attemped to warn off would-be challengers from his base in Harlem, staked a claim to the suburban vote with a plan to curb property taxes, attempted to take possession, finally, of Albany’s efforts to produce a plan to bridge the M.T.A. deficit, and aggressively rebutted a leaked report that good-government groups want an investigation into the leaks about Caroline Kennedy.
