Paterson's Predilections

Sometime in the next 45 days, New York State will have a new Senator, and it says here that Andrew Cuomo will be the one holding an Acela ticket to Washington.

There are a lot of good reasons, most of them inside-baseball political, for Paterson to name Caroline Kennedy. She's got ties to Obama, which is good. And she's a pick that will anger everyone, and thus no one.

See, Paterson's first goal has to be to name someone who will be able to keep it in Democratic hands in 2010.

Given the utter paucity of GOP talent in the state, it would be ludicrous for New York to elect a Republican to the Senate in 2010, but a misstep by Paterson could well bring about this result. And you can bet that the national GOP will spend heavily if they sniff the chance of embarassing the Democrats by picking off a seat in a blue state.

(New York is fairly reliably blue in presidential elections, but has been unpredictable at the state level. The GOP and Democratic parties have alternated occupancy of the governor's mansion and have seen GOPers like Alphonse D'amato, Christopher Buckley and Jacob Javitz elected to the U.S. Senate.)

Paterson's choices include:

• Kennedy, who has name recognition and fundraising prowess, and, as a female, will at least please one constituent bloc, but whose nomination will stoke anti-entitlement passions;
  
• Congresswoman Nydia Vazquez, also a female, whose nomination would satisfy Latinos angry at being underrepresented in the higher levels of state government;
• Jerrold Nadler, a staunchly liberal congressman from the Upper West Side;
• Byron Brown, the first African-Ameircan to be elected mayor of Buffalo; and
• Carolyn Maloney, a long-time representative from Queens.
  

The problem with all of these choices, other than Brown, is that they are downstaters with little chance of carrying the entire state, particularly if faced with a potent Republican like Peter King. Moreover, Nadler is far too liberal and Vazquez an unknown minority with little pull outside NYC.

And as I mentioned above, there will be a populist backlash against Kennedy, maybe even from within her own party, with factions forcing her into a nomination fight on the grounds that she should have to face friendly fire before confronting an actual adversary in the general election.

Conversely, Brown is unknown outside Buffalo.

Andrew Cuomo, on the other hand, is well-known both upstate and down. He doesn't satisfy any particular constituency, but neither does he satisfy one at the expense of the others. And he's the member of a political family.

And while Kennedy's dynastic connection is as much a liability as it is a boost to her career, Cuomo's family name only burnishes a career and public personna he has built up on his own. Best of all for Paterson, it removes the only serious competition he might have had for his own job in 2010.

And lest we forget, Paterson doesn't come out of nowhere either. His father was Basil Paterson, a highly regarded politician who came close to being the first African-American mayor of New York City.

So Paterson knows first-hand that being the scion of a political family has built-in advantages, and a Cuomo has less baggage to tote around than a Kennedy.