Ben Harris reports on the warm feelings that Jewish groups have for NY Lt.-Gov David Paterson, the man who will be taking over for Eliot Spitzer (and, in case you missed it, yesterday Ron Kampeas wrote about the Israeli angle to the scandal).
Not sure where Spitzer was on the night of July 15, 2007, but you don’t have to worry about his replacement – Paterson was thrilled to death to be giving a speech to the women of Hadassah:
When I came in this evening, Carol thanked me for coming here this evening and said ‘I understand you cut your vacation short just to be here.’ And many of you might think that that was a real act of some kind of charity, it really wasn’t. You don’t understand. Lieutenant Governors never get invited to such national prestigious organizations as this. And as soon as I heard that, I was out of the Hamptons faster than Jon Corzine. I was here immediately.
Here’s a prescient passage from the talk:
After six months and 15 days I’ve come to this conclusion. You wake up at 6:30 in the morning and you call the governor’s mansion. If he answers, you can go back to sleep.
Many will come before you this week telling you how glad they are to be here but you know that I really am. As a matter of fact, I found out in my third month of duty that they actually have an organization known as the National Lieutenant Governor’s Association. We had a meeting in Washington DC. And I hesitated about going to a meeting with people who must have such morbid fantasies involving plane crashes and criminal convictions.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
