New best buddies: Paterson and Skelos
-
- July
- 1
The love-fest between new Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and Gov. David Paterson apparently survived their first closed-door meeting.
The two leaders, joking about Paterson’s “seniority’’ over Skelos (Paterson became governor March 17, Skelos took over as majority leader June 24) faced the media in Manhattan today and pledged to work to lower property taxes and lower medical-malpractice premiums and tackle other problems of the state.
“The Governor and I have a very cordial, non- combative relationship,’’ said Skelos, of Nassau County, who has a reputation as a tough, partisan politician.
How long can it last? If Paterson works to help fellow Democrats take control of the Senate in November, Skelos will be out as majority leader.
But if he doesn’t, and Republicans hold onto he majority, it’s hard to imagine them not giving Paterson a hard time for the following two years to soften him up for Michael Bloomberg or some other Republican to take on when he seeks re-election in 2010.
But for now, they’re pals.
Paterson said if he does decide to summon Skelos and the rest of the Legislature to return to the Capitol to consider a cap on property taxes, “I’m not going to do it in a coercive way.’‘
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 5:27 pm by Jay Gallagher.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Share and Enjoy: | 
Print This Post
| 
Email This Post
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. 
Being too buddy, buddy with Paterson is like bring home a trojan horse.
VJ Machiavelli
http://www.vjmachiavelli.blogspot.com
ps This election is all about shoes, yes shoes do we keep them on or do we take them off and never put them on again.