The son of Basil Patterson, the first black New York Secretary of State, Lt. Governor David Patterson is generally well-liked and well-respected in Albany. And it can’t be denied that David Patterson is from a remarkable political family.
“Father and son are both extremely gentle but extremely serious people who want to get things done. They both believe that people should like you,” says Wayne Barrett, political reporter for the Village Voice.
Patterson has been described as a smart, sweet-tempered, good-humored and genuinely progressive guy.
“We’re going to need to see, in a state that needs the dramatic reform that Eliot Spitzer promised, we’re going to have to see a tougher side of David Patterson,” Barrett told Brian Lehrer. “He will do it in a different way than Eliot Spitzer would have done it.”
Andrea Bernstein, also on Lehrer’s show, has covered David Patterson, who is legally blind, for years. “His eyesight is not an issue. There is no adjustment to his functioning in any way. He is genuinely well liked in Albany. Pataki was well liked, too. Eliot Spitzer was going to be the anti-Pataki. He was not going along to get along. That exhausted people. People looking to David Patterson to mend fences.”