Has The New York Times Killed David Paterson’s Chances at Reelection?

New York Governor David Paterson cannot, and likely will not, catch a break. Just three days after a poll from the Siena Research Institute placed his approval rating at 35 percent (better, at least, than the 19 percent estimate he was saddled with a year ago), the New York Times released the third in a series of stories about a Paterson aide with a history of domestic abuse – this one linking the governor to an incident last Halloween.

According to the Times story, Paterson’s aide, David W. Johnson, choked a former girlfriend, stripped her of much of her clothing, slammed her against a mirrored dresser, and twice prevented her from calling for help. Paterson, who one week ago said of Johnson, “I will not turn my back on someone because of mistakes made as a teenager,” has suspended his 37-year-old aide without pay.

The gesture likely won’t be enough to salvage a political career in nosedive, though – especially given revelations of Paterson’s direct involvement in the case. According to the woman’s lawyer, Lawrence B. Saftler, Paterson phoned her the night before she was due to appear in court. “If you need me,” he reportedly said, “I’m here for you.”

“If these allegations are true that he directly intervened in a criminal investigation, I don’t think there’s any way he can recover from this,” Scott Levenson, a New York Democratic political consultant, told Politico. “There’s going to be an increasingly loud drumbeat within the Democratic Party for David Paterson not to seek re-election.”

Such a drumbeat has already begun its rumbling crescendo in the media. Over at the Washington Post, Jonathan Capehart has called Paterson’s alleged intervention “a death rattle for his reelection efforts.” And the Politico story, whose headline reads “NYT Report Could Be the End for Paterson,” quotes another Democratic consultant affirming that the incident “creates the potential for a clarion call for Andrew [Cuomo] to effectively be drafted by the Democratic Party Establishment.”

Up until this point, Paterson’s problems had as much (or almost as much) to do with the collective problems of New York as they did with his political personality: Many New Yorkers failed to see Paterson in a positive light because they were peering over a veritable garbage heap of other problems — debt, unemployment, etc. But following this story, I’m inclined to agree with other Dems calling for him to cut his losses.

Paterson, after all, never asked to be governor. It’s beginning to look like he’ll never have to.