GOV. PATERSON’S top political ad viser has met se cretly with longtime Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone, who took credit for helping sink the governor’s predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, The Post has learned.
The Manhattan meeting at L’Express bistro on Park Avenue South earlier this month between Stone and Charles O’Byrne, Paterson’s former chief-of-staff, focused in part on Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s possible Democratic-primary challenge against the governor next year, sources said.
The meeting came at a time when Paterson is at his lowest ratings ever in public-opinion polls and trails Cuomo among Democrats by as much as 50 percentage points.
“Paterson’s attempt to survive a possible challenge from Cuomo was definitely discussed,” a source familiar with the meeting told The Post.
Within days of the meeting, a series of sometimes-vicious anti-Cuomo e-mails started bombarding journalists and others.
Nearly 30 of the anti-Cuomo e-mails have been sent under the names “Sanji Wentworth” and “Tyrese Jones,” claiming, among other things, that Cuomo prosecuted bribe-paying state pension-placement agents in order to benefit the law practice of his father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo.
The most vicious contained several unsubstantiated, salacious allegations against the attorney general, and even included photos of a woman he was said to be involved with.
Repeated attempts by return e-mail to get the senders to fully identify themselves were unsuccessful.
Stone, reached in Los Angeles, confirmed the meeting with O’Byrne.
“I won’t comment on the details of a private conversation,” he said initially.
But when told of the e-mails, he said, “It was definitely not me. I’ve received them, too, and they are very virulent.”
Republican activists, including Stone, have repeatedly said in recent weeks that they want the GOP’s candidate for governor next year, whomever it is, to run against Paterson and not Cuomo.
O’Byrne refused to comment “on the record.”
A source close to O’Byrne, while conceding next year’s elections were discussed, insisted the main purpose of the meeting was to enlist Stone’s help in winning support from state Senate Republicans for the legalization of gay marriage.
O’Byrne, who is gay, resigned last October as the governor’s chief-of-staff after The Post revealed he had failed to pay income taxes for five years.
He returned as Paterson’s top political adviser in February.
Stone last year claimed to have tipped the FBI to Spitzer’s penchant for high-priced hookers.
He also claimed shortly after Spitzer resigned in March 2008 to have obtained information that Spitzer had a preference for wearing calf-length black socks while in the act.
Months before Spitzer’s resignation, Stone was forced to resign as an adviser to Senate Republicans after allegedly being recorded making a threatening, hate-filled, late-night call to the governor’s elderly father.