The first thing you notice about David Paterson—or the third thing, after you take note of his blackness and his blindness (as noted in his autobiography Black, Blind and In Charge)—is that he is funny. He is generous with his time and attention, so if you’re lucky enough to be near him, you will get to experience the pure joy of listening to him tell stories. The tales will spare no detail (or boldfaced name) and will be told with the ease of a man who never has to run for office again.
I interviewed Governor Paterson in the days after President Biden’s disastrous debate performance, when calls for him to step down as a candidate were just beginning to surface. The likelihood of Kamala Harris’s ascendency to the presidential candidacy was still slim, but the irony of the possibility of a black understudy suddenly rising to the highest job was lost on neither of us.
Governor Paterson came to his gubernatorial position in quite another unlikely, unexpected way. As Lieutenant Governor to then-Governor Eliot Spitzer, Paterson described his duties as such: “You wake up and call the governor. If he answers, your workday is over.”
Until one day in March of 2008, it wasn’t.
“I woke up one day and by noon, I was Governor,” he said.
Paterson came into the top job amidst an unparalleled political sex scandal surrounding his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer. Paterson, who graduated from Hofstra Law School, entered Democratic politics and had a successful run as he was first elected to the State Senate and then became Minority Leader, subsequently becoming Lt. Governor when Eliot Spitzer ran for Governor. Paterson comes from a prominent political pedigree. His father, Basil Paterson, a longtime political powerhouse in Harlem, was on the gubernatorial ticket in 1970 as Arthur Goldberg’s running mate. The Goldberg-Paterson team lost to the Republican incumbent, Nelson Rockefeller.
In the short two-year term he served, Paterson would be tasked with appointing Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to replace Hillary Clinton after President-elect Obama asked her to serve as Secretary of State, making major spending cuts to put forth an on-time budget that included mandate relief, an inflation-indexed property tax cap, and a school tax “circuit breaker,” and finally, navigating New York through the worst financial crisis the country had seen since the stock market crash of 1929.
Today, he serves as senior vice president of Sands New York, overseeing a project that, if approved, would be transformational for Long Island. Las Vegas Sands is competing for one of three downstate New York gaming licenses to pursue the development of a multi-billion-dollar flagship hospitality, entertainment, and casino project on Long Island. Recently, the Nassau County Legislature voted overwhelmingly to allow a lease transfer of the remaining 42 years of a 99-year lease to Las Vegas Sands, giving them control of more than 80 acres of land that still houses the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Next steps include an environmental review known as SEQRA, a development permitting process, and gaming commission license approval.
The proposed integrated resort would serve as both a love letter and a thank-you note from Governor Paterson to Long Island for embracing a blind kindergartner and giving him the foundation from which he rose to New York’s highest office.
“Should we win the license,” he told me, “I would see it as the final payment on what I feel I owe Long Island.”
Hempstead Roots
David Paterson was born in Brooklyn. However, when he was school age, the NYC public school system did not integrate disabled students into mainstream classrooms. Paterson’s mother, who was a third-grade teacher at PS 116 in Queens, was not having it. She went looking across the state for a public school that would accept a blind student and teach him among other fully abled children. Almost accidentally, her best friend moved to Hempstead. She told his mother, “I don’t think the people in Hempstead would have much of a problem with it.” After having conversations with the district, she discovered that they had been interested in assimilating students with disabilities.
“You bring your family to Hempstead,” school officials reportedly told her. “And we will put David in the school.” The family moved to Hempstead, where the new policy was thrust upon a teacher who was less than thrilled about the idea and nervous about how it would rile up the other young students. After some hiccups, Paterson settled into the school year as the first in a pilot program that would lead the way as rights began to expand for disabled children.
“I think in a lot of ways, my ability to get through that process opened the door for disabled students who came after me,” Paterson told Road Warriors. “There were some extraordinary ways that they were able to help me adjust that I never forgot. They really saved me. If I had wound up in one of those special schools, the problem is that they’re like you, but you’re not meeting the rest of the people that you’re inevitably going to socialize with and work with. So, I’ve always had this feeling for Long Island, but particularly Hempstead.”
Now he’s back in Hempstead, bringing economic opportunity and prosperity as part of his legacy.
Let’s Talk Infrastructure
In 2007, Governor Spitzer amended the infrastructure funding formula from being based on highway miles and registered vehicles to focus on mega projects in distinct regions of the state. Long Island, which used to receive 23 percent of the transportation funding in the state, has not seen a mega project the likes of which then-Governor Spitzer imagined since the 1990s when we installed the HOV lanes that necessitated rebuilding overpasses.
Currently, less than seven percent of the state’s current project lettings are allocated for Long Island even though Suffolk and Nassau Counties rank first and third, respectively, in lane miles out of New York’s 62 counties. Additionally, these are the only counties in the state with over one million registered vehicles each. Along with Westchester County, the downstate suburban roadways are ranked among the poorest in pavement conditions.
“I don’t recall him ever being a big fan of Long Island,” Paterson said of Governor Spitzer. “I can’t think of too many times he’d come here.”
Without majority representation in the region, it’s been a challenge to get those at the state level to pay attention to this disparity, let alone commit to rectifying it.
“I think the governor—and I think Spitzer did as well—they considered Long Island to be—just to be political for a moment—Republican territory,” Paterson opined. “And so, their thought was don’t mess with it. Go where you’re strong.”
Political advantages aside, this thought process has left Long Island in a poor position.
“I’ll never know why Andrew Cuomo didn’t try to address this,” Paterson continued. “Because he’s never really had a hook to hang his hat on in any part of the state, per se. He had to have known that this was going on as well. I didn’t realize what was going on until my last year in office, and I had other distractions at the time, so I couldn’t address it, but I knew what the result of it was by the time I came out.”
The “distractions” count among them a concerted effort to ensure that Paterson would not seek the nomination for a full term in the Governor’s seat, “free” Yankee tickets that ended up costing him $62,000 in fines, and the dawning of the Great Recession. His political career ended after he’d served out the remainder of Governor Spitzer’s term, which was followed by the ascension of Andrew Cuomo from Attorney General to his own stunted gubernatorial service.
As for David Paterson, he is free from the confines of elected office to put his vast intellect, political acumen, and gift of good humor to work as he sees fit. Right now, he sees his work with Sands New York as a homecoming.
“When Sands came to talk to me, I was like the son who left home and came back to clean out all the things he’d left,” he said. “Right now, the fact that the project exists is a tremendous opportunity for the governor—not only to give us the casino license to build up prosperity and support but to even out what was taken long ago. I think it’s a real strong argument to be awarded the integrated resort.”
The Sands project would bring more than 8,500 union construction jobs to the region for a sustained period of 18 months to two years. The company has worked to secure PLAs with local trades and labor organizations and is working with Nassau Community College to build out a hospitality and a variety of other degree programs to grow a workforce to support the resort’s needs. This will keep younger Long Islanders on the island, feeding the economy and the tax base, and growing older together right here.
Not a bad legacy for a little blind child whose mom had to fight for him to have a fair shot in Hempstead not so long ago.