WHEN YOU ARE THE FIRST BLACK GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK AND BLACK ELECTED OFFICIALS AND MEMBERS OF THE CLERGY ARE GATHERING TO LIGHT THE PATH TO YOUR EXIT, YOU ARE IN DEEP, DEEP TROUBLE. THE BOTTOM HAD COMPLETELY FALLEN OUT OF HIS ELECTION BID AND THE QUESTION NOW IS WHETHER THE SAME IS TRUE ABOUT HIS GOVERNORSHIP.
It’s not like David Paterson had a choice. His decision to give up on a bid for election to governor in his own right was a decision to scrap a campaign that had no real support and absolutely no chance of succeeding. The bottom had completely fallen out of his election bid, and the question now is whether the same is true about his governorship.
When you are the first black governor of New York and black elected officials and members of the clergy are gathering to light the path to your exit, you are in deep, deep trouble.
There are two immediate questions for voters: Why did the governor select David Johnson, a man with a troubled background and no demonstrated command of state government policies or practices (at one time he was the governor’s driver) to be his most powerful, most trusted adviser? And why, in the name of heaven, did people close to the governor, and perhaps even the governor himself, intervene to protect Mr. Johnson from an ugly domestic violence allegation?
These questions go to the heart of whether Mr. Paterson is suited to serve out the remaining 10 months of his term as governor. He is responsible for staffing his administration with the best people and for seeing that the great power of state government is used on behalf of the interests of ordinary New Yorkers, not as a club to protect his cronies.
Domestic violence was supposed to be an issue that Mr. Paterson knew something about. He was an advocate of tougher laws to protect victims and has not been shy about criticizing Hiram Monserrate, who was expelled from the State Senate after being convicted of misdemeanor assault for dragging his companion down an apartment building hallway.
The governor described the victim in that episode as “a classic case of a woman who was intimidated.”
But when Mr. Johnson was accused of attacking his longtime companion — stripping off most of her clothes, choking her, slamming her against a dresser, preventing her from calling for help — state officials raised a protective cordon around Mr. Johnson, not the alleged victim. Even as the frightened woman was seeking an order of protection from the courts, she was being urged by powerful state forces to drop the whole thing.
When she failed to show up in court just one day after a conversation with the governor himself, the charges against Mr. Johnson were thrown out.
There is something terribly wrong with this picture. For one thing, the case was a local police matter, but the woman complained to the court that the State Police had been harassing her, trying to get her to change her mind about seeking an order of protection and pursuing her case against Mr. Johnson.
The State Police? It turns out, according to sources cited by The Times on Friday, that Maj. Charles Day, the head of the governor’s own State Police security detail, personally contacted the woman. This is an outlandish abuse of State Police power. The police are supposed to be in the business of protecting crime victims — or alleged crime victims — not intimidating them.
The governor’s top criminal justice adviser, Denise O’Donnell, was not at all hazy about this. She quit the administration on Thursday, saying:
“The fact that the governor and members of the State Police have acknowledged direct contact with a woman who had filed for an order of protection against a senior member of the governor’s staff is a very serious matter. These actions are unacceptable regardless of their intent.”
Mr. Johnson was not arrested as a result of the woman’s complaint, which is not unusual. She alleged that he choked her, but choking is not a crime in New York unless there is evidence that the victim was injured. The charge raised against Mr. Johnson — and later dropped — was second degree harassment. That’s not even a misdemeanor. It’s a violation, the equivalent of a disorderly conduct charge.
But it was quite enough to get the big guns in state government rallying to Mr. Johnson’s side, and that should cause us to take a much closer look at people like Major Day, and the State Police superintendent, Harry Corbitt, who learned of the encounter between the woman and Mr. Johnson within 24 hours. He doesn’t seem to get that the State Police intervention was improper. Nor has he mastered the concept that cops are supposed to protect victims, not perps.
Mr. Paterson’s job now is to reassure the public that his overall judgment is sound and that he understands what was wrong about his behavior, Mr. Johnson’s behavior and the State Police’s behavior in the domestic violence case.
If he can’t do that, then he should hand the keys to the governor’s residence to the next in the line of succession, Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch.
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Saturday, February 27th 2010 at 12:22PM
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