Former Gov. David Paterson got a rise out of a Manhattan audience yesterday when he turned his old boss, Eliot “Client No. 9” Spitzer, into a punch line.
“You know how I became governor . . . Let’s just say it was the best sex I ever had — and I wasn’t even there!” Paterson quipped when he delivered a six-minute speech in Midtown.
Paterson’s joke drew a good laugh from a standing-room only crowd of well-heeled business types at The Roosevelt hotel for the event sponsored by the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Wall Street Project.
Paterson served as ex-Gov. Spitzer’s lieutenant governor.
But Spitzer was forced to resign in 2008 after authorities identified him as “Client No. 9” in a prostitution call ring. Spitzer, previously a state attorney general who prosecuted sex crimes, was infamously dubbed the disgraced “love gov.”
And Paterson became known in Albany as the “accidental governor.”
Jackson’s group feted Paterson for increasing the hiring of minority contractors when he was governor.
And he delivered his Spitzer joke while discussing his role in boosting affirmative action.
About an hour later, former President Bill Clinton — whose presidency was nearly destroyed over his dalliance with White House intern Monica Lewinsky — was the keynote speaker at Rainbow PUSH’s economic summit.