ALBANY – Attorney General Andrew Cuomo was lying low over the weekend with his three young daughters, refusing to discuss the possibility that he’ll be picked by Gov. Paterson to succeed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama’s apparent choice for secretary of state.
Cuomo told several friends that he’s “not inclined to do it,” but he didn’t rule it out entirely.
He called speculation that he’ll be offered the job “premature because Hillary hasn’t accepted [the post at State] yet, and the governor hasn’t offered it yet,” a source close to the ex-federal housing secretary told The Post.
Cuomo is widely seen in Democratic circles as the obvious choice, but those who know him insist that, as one put it, “his destiny is in New York and in Albany.”
Cuomo failed disastrously in his first effort for elective office in 2002, when he unsuccessfully sought the nomination for governor.
Paterson has a lot riding on the choice, since whoever is selected will face the voters in 2010, when the governor himself will be on the ballot.
If Paterson picks a weak replacement, he risks the loss of the Senate seat to a Republican such as former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Meanwhile, if Cuomo does go to the Senate, his replacement until 2010 would be chosen by the Democratic-controlled Legislature. And that would mean that none of New York state’s top three officials would have been elected to his post.
Paterson, of course, was the lieutenant governor who took over in March, when former Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in disgrace. The lieutenant-governor post has been vacant since.
And state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli was chosen by the Democratic-dominated Legislature in February 2007 to fill the seat left open by the resignation of Alan Hevesi, who pleaded guilty to felony theft of state services.
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Global Strategy Group, the powerhouse Democratic consulting and polling firm that has worked for Paterson since he took over in March, may not be working for the governor much longer.
Sources say Paterson is unhappy with Manhattan-based Global’s advice and blames it for the income-tax-evasion debacle that recently forced his chief of staff, Charles O’Byrne, to resign.
The governor is also known to be unhappy with his communications director, Risa Heller, whose last job was with Global.
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The state budget is busted, but some members of the Democratic-controlled Assembly are angling for pay raises.
That’s the claim of Senate Republican leaders, who say they’ve been quietly sounded out by Assembly Democrats on their openness to a pay hike. They said their answer was, “No way.”
The state’s 212 lawmakers receive a $79,500 “base” salary, but more than half get additional stipends, or “lulus,” for supposed extra work.