Paterson, Aide Traveled Together Recently For Clinton’s Campaign
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- March
- 25
After saying he ended an affair with a state employee years ago, Gov. David Paterson recently made two trips with the woman to campaign for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential bid in Iowa and South Carolina, aides said today.
Paterson and ex-lover Lila Kirton, of White Plains, traveled together to Iowa on Nov. 20-21, 2007 and to South Carolina on Jan. 24-27 to campaign for Clinton, aides confirmed.
Aides said they stayed in separate rooms and traveled together on personal time, with expenses paid by the Clinton campaign.
Paterson said last week that his affair with the unnamed aide ended around 2001. Sources later identified the aide as Kirton, a former deputy attorney general who has worked since January 2007 as former Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s director of community relations in the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.
Yet the disclosure that the pair traveled together as recent as two months ago raises new questions about their relationship. Aides insisted that the couple was no longer romantically involved.
Still, some political observers said the revelation brings into doubt the validity of Paterson’s initial disclosure about having extramarital affairs during a rocky point in his marriage between 1999 and 2001.
“The one thing that he’s had going for him in this scandal is that he’s been very frank and even bringing up the issue in the first place,†said Douglas Muzzio, a political science professor at Baruch College.
“If it can be shown that they were likely still having an affair, it just blows that right up.â€
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on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 12:34 pm by Joseph Spector.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
