ALBANY — Gov. Paterson continued yesterday to turn what could have been a term-ending victory tour into a lame-duck “victim’s lap,” attacking the media and casting doubt on his successor.
Speaking on a call-in show on WWRL radio, the governor compared the press to a Tammany Hall political machine while expounding on his tumultuous tenure.
“These people are not interested in reporting the news,” Paterson complained in one of his harshest attacks yet on the press. “They’re not even still interested in making the news. They want to run the government.
“Anyone who speaks against them are castigated. Anyone who objects to the unprofessionalism is labeled. The dysfunction is now in the media as well as the government.
“That makes me think of the old political organizations that were run by Boss Tweed,” he said.
One Capitol insider with direct knowledge of Paterson’s recent behavior said, “Where some people have victory laps, he has a victim’s lap.”
Paterson also questioned whether his successor, Andrew Cuomo, would be able to break through the dysfunction.
“This is when we get kind of distracted into this whole thing, like who’s winning, who’s losing, who’s governor, how well are they doing, to the real question, which is whether or not under the system that we have now the state is even governable,” he said.