The war between Gov. Pat erson and the Legislature’s Democratic leadership continues to escalate as a top Senate leader has begun boycotting Paterson’s events while a senior Senate official called him “an unelected, ineffective and irrelevant governor.”
Things have gotten so bad that Senate Democratic leader John Sampson of Brooklyn is refusing to attend formal events with Paterson.
“Why associate with someone who just keeps attacking you?” said a source close to Sampson.
“Frankly, we don’t need Paterson, because we can just negotiate what we need with [Manhattan-based Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon] Silver.”
Senate Democrats, smarting over Paterson’s attacks on them as irresponsible and ineffective, have begun circulating an analysis comparing his handling of the recently ended special legislative budget session — which the governor said failed to fully address state fiscal problems — to his botched selection of a successor to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton a year ago.
“The same failing and lack of leadership are evident in each situation,” the Senate official, who demanded anonymity, told The Post.
“It’s like he picks an issue to redeem himself, says it’s a defining moment and then fails to deliver on what he promised to achieve.”
Sampson, meanwhile, openly criticized Paterson for “self-indulgent theatrics.”
“Constantly attacking the Legislature is easy, but it doesn’t solve people’s problems,” said Sampson.
Meanwhile, Assemblyman Keith Wright, the new Manhattan Democratic chairman, criticized Paterson for criticizing the entire Legislature, and not just the Senate’s at times ineffective Democratic leadership.
“I think he probably needs to . . . differentiate between the Assembly and the Senate,” said Wright.