ALBANY – Gov. Paterson asked the public to judge him for what he says, not what he accomplishes, as he took to the airwaves this morning to promote his tough-talking State of the State address.
“I don’t think it’s an issue of what percentage of proposals you pass,” Paterson said during an interview WCBS 880AM in the city. “It’s: are you fighting for the things that will make life better for New Yorkers?”
The governor said he expects fierce resistance to calls for spending restraint and ethics reform included yesterday in his annual address to the Legislature. The unusually blunt speech was praised by local governments and business groups, but widely panned by lawmakers who dismissed it as political posturing by an unpopular governor.
Paterson planned some 10 radio interviews today across the state to promote the agenda.
He repeatedly complained about the media’s “ridiculous” convention of focusing governor’s accomplishments after the State of the State instead of evaluating the message.
“It’s then like the report card on the governor,” Paterson told WGY 810AM in Schenectady, N.Y. “That is so wrong, because governors have hesitated putting necessary legislation on the floor and fighting for it.”
On the city’s WWRL 1600AM, the governor derided the ethics reform plan being negotiated by legislative leaders and accused his fellow Democrats of “putting a couple of bandages on the problem and sneaking it in behind my back.”
He also continued to his bizarre attacks on the good government groups that have long advocated many of the ethics reforms he now wants lawmakers to adopt. One proposal in his ethics plan would require advocacy groups to disclose their donors.
“It’s about time they realize they have been drunk with power just like the Legislature,” Paterson said on WWRL.