Best Known As: Political Figure

Gist:  David Alexander Paterson (born May 20, 1954) is an American politician and the current Governor of New York. He is the first African American governor of New York and also the second legally blind governor of any U.S. state after Bob C. Riley, who was Governor of Arkansas for eleven days in January 1975.

After graduating from Hofstra Law School, Paterson worked in the District Attorney's office of Queens County, New York, and on the staff of Manhattan Borough President David Dinkins. In 1985, he was elected to the New York State Senate to a seat that was once held by his father, former New York Secretary of State Basil Paterson. In 2003, he rose to the position of Senate Minority Leader. Paterson was selected as running mate by then New York Attorney General and Democratic Party nominee Eliot Spitzer in the 2006 New York gubernatorial election.

They were elected in November 2006 with 69 percent of the vote, and Paterson took office as Lieutenant Governor on January 1, 2007.

When Spitzer resigned in the wake of a prostitution scandal, Paterson was sworn in as governor of New York on March 17, 2008.



Life Facts:  David Paterson was born in Brooklyn to Basil Paterson and his wife Portia. Basil Paterson was later a New York state senator and secretary of state, and served as deputy mayor of New York City.

According to a New York Now interview, Paterson traces his roots on his mother's side of the family to pre-Civil War African American slaves in the states of North Carolina and South Carolina. His father is half Jamaican. His paternal grandmother, Evangeline Rondon Paterson (1900–1985)

was secretary to Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey. His paternal grandfather was Leonard James Paterson (1894–1968),

a native of St. George's, Grenada

who arrived in the United States aboard the S.S. Vestris on May 16, 1917.

Paterson has recently undergone genetic genealogy testing. His father's side consists of ancestors from England, Ireland, and Scotland, while his mother's side includes eastern European Jewish ancestry as well as the Guinea-Bissau region of West Africa.



Since New York City public schools would not guarantee him an education without placing him in special education classes, his family bought a home in the Long Island suburb of South Hempstead so that he could attend mainstream classes there. Paterson was the first disabled student in the Hempstead public schools, and graduated from Hempstead High School in 1971.









Paterson received a BA in history from Columbia University in 1977 and a law degree from Hofstra Law School in 1983. After law school, he went to work for the Queens District Attorney's Office, but was unable to complete the New York bar examination, and so did not become an Attorney at law. He attributed his failing the New York bar to insufficient accommodation for his visual impairment, and has since advocated for changes in bar exam procedures.

Following Spitzer's resignation, Paterson was sworn in as the 55th Governor of New York, at the New York State Capitol on March 17, 2008, by New York Chief Judge Judith Kaye.

His swearing-in ceremony was attended by all members of the New York State Senate and New York State Assembly, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, New York Senators Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, former New York Governors George Pataki and Hugh Carey, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former New York City Mayors David Dinkins and Ed Koch, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, the entire New York Congressional delegation (both Democrats and Republicans), and Newark Mayor Cory Booker, among others. Former Governor Spitzer was not present.

With his swearing-in, Paterson became the first Lieutenant Governor elevated to the governorship in New York due to a vacancy since 1973, when Lieutenant Governor Malcolm Wilson became Governor when Nelson Rockefeller resigned in order to serve as Vice-President of the United States in the administration of President Gerald R. Ford..

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Paterson is the first black Governor of New York and the fourth in any U.S. state (following Reconstruction-era Louisiana Gov. P. B. S. Pinchback, former Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder, and current Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick). The Lieutenant Governor's office will remain vacant until 2010, when the current term expires. Under the state's constitution, the president pro tempore of the state senate, Malcolm Smith, would be next in the line of succession for the Governor's office.

Paterson has used Global Strategy Group consultants for political advice as governor. His relationship with the firm began earlier. When he was lieutenant governor, GSG executives advised him on how to make the job more prominent, and the firm again advised him during the transition and afterward. Soon after becoming governor, Paterson hired former Risa B. Heller from GSG as his director of communications. As of September 2008, Paterson and the state Democratic Party were each paying GSG a retainer of $15,000 a month in addition to costs associated with polling and political advertising.

On July 17, 2008, Paterson was the keynote speaker addressing the 99th annual convention of the NAACP in Cincinnati, Ohio. Other speakers included Congressman Charles Rangel and U.S. Presidential candidate John McCain.

Although Paterson is a lifelong Democrat who was considered a liberal during his time in the State Senate, he earned praise from conservatives during his time as Governor for his efforts to combat the 2008 New York fiscal crisis by major reductions in spending and the enaction of an inflation-indexed property tax cap, a school tax "circuit breaker," and unfunded mandate relief, as well as his appointment of Blue Dog Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy created by Hillary Clinton's appointment as United States Secretary of State.

According to state Senator Liz Krueger, Paterson has always been against capital punishment.[ In July 2008, he ordered the removal of the state's equipment to perform lethal injection, previously housed in Dutchess County's Green Haven Correctional Facility. In spring 2008 the state Senate passed a bill that would make murderers of policemen eligible for execution; though it is doubtful the state Assembly would pass a similar bill, it is certain that Paterson would not sign it.

Career Facts:  In 1985, Paterson resigned from the Queens District Attorney's office so he could join the campaign of then city clerk David Dinkins to win the Democratic nomination for Manhattan Borough President. That summer, on August 6, state senator Leon Bogues died, and Paterson sought and obtained the Democratic party nomination for the seat. In mid-September, a meeting of 648 Democratic committee members on the first ballot gave Paterson 58% of the vote, giving him the party nomination. That October, Paterson won the hotly contested special State Senate election.





At the time, the 29th Senate district covered the Manhattan neighborhoods of Harlem, Manhattan Valley and the Upper West Side, the same district that Paterson's father had represented. Upon his election, Paterson became the youngest State Senator in Albany. He won the seat again in 1986 for a full term representing the 29th District in the New York State Senate, and served as senator until assuming the office of Lieutenant Governor on January 1, 2007.