Paterson Worries About Leaving New York State

He worries about how he will make a living. He wonders whether people will
value him once he is out of office.

But when he thinks about the future, David A. Paterson, the legally blind
governor of New York, is most unsettled by something more elementary: how to
cross the street.

For years, a small army of state employees has done for Mr. Paterson what
his predecessors did for themselves: they read him the newspaper, guided him
up stairs and around corners, fixed his collar when it was sticking up, and
even grabbed a quart of milk for him at the supermarket.

"If I go into a grocery store, the state police come in with me," he said.
"It's kind of like, hey, Governor, just tell us what you need and we'll get
it for you. And, I know I have to adjust."

Many politicians who leave office struggle to adapt to civilian life, with
its everyday letdowns and indignities - the sudden absence of solicitous
aides and gun-toting bodyguards, jam-packed schedules and an ever-ringing
telephone. But for Mr. Paterson, who can see nothing out of his left eye and
only color and large objects out of his right, the transition will be
extraordinary: after three decades in government, he must now relearn the
basic routines and rituals of living on his own.

In a wide-ranging interview, he spoke candidly, and at times emotionally,
about how he was grappling with - and, in some cases, dreading - that
change, saying he planned to enroll at a school for the blind that he last
attended when he was 3 years old.

"I know it can be done," Mr. Paterson said, "but it's just the anticipation
of it that gives me anxiety."

He also admitted to some concern about money and losing the lucrative perks
that come with his post. He is looking for work in the business and academic
worlds but has no job lined up, a fact that seemed to slightly nag at him.

He has sought the advice of former President Bill Clinton and former Govs.
George E. Pataki and Mario M. Cuomo about how to cope with the loss of title
and stature. Most of what they tell him boils down to this: "It gets
easier."

He acknowledged previously unknown strains on his family that accompanied
his elevation to governor, especially on his teenage son, who has hated
almost every minute of his father's tenure. At one point, Mr. Paterson said,
he even told the boy he was sorry for becoming the state's chief executive.

He divulged the ways he had been teasing the incoming governor, Andrew M.
Cuomo, since his victory in November. And he offered a mediocre assessment
of his own skills as a manager, giving himself a B-minus over the last four
years. He said he had been reluctant to pack up the governor's mansion and
his own office, once gently scolding a staff member for rushing him out.
(His last day is Dec. 31.)

But looming over the interview was Mr. Paterson's obvious unease about what
awaits him. He conceded that he had put off confronting his new reality: he
has yet to schedule with his 22-year-old daughter a long-promised practice
run on Harlem's sidewalks, subways and streets.

When Mr. Paterson was a boy, his parents were determined that he not be
treated as disabled. Defying his doctors' advice, he never learned Braille,
used a Seeing Eye dog or walked with a cane. Instead, he adapted: he
memorized the city's subway system by listening to the conductors'
announcements, learned to follow the lead of strangers at crosswalks, and
developed a system for catching cabs that would keep him from mistakenly
boarding a passenger car.

The system was not perfect.

He recalled an incident a few years ago when, as a state senator, he hailed
what he thought was a taxi in Manhattan. At the end of the ride, the driver
refused to take his fare. When Mr. Paterson pressed him, the man explained:
'I am not driving a taxi. I just saw you on the street and thought you might
need a ride.' "

His survival skills atrophied when he became lieutenant governor in 2007 -
and governor a year later after Eliot Spitzer resigned amid scandal.
Suddenly, he was chief executive of the state, with a huge security detail
and a domestic staff at the governor's mansion.

"The reality is that I had a pretty good sense of my own independence. But
over the last four years," he said, "I haven't been on the subway. I haven't
crossed a street by myself. Haven't gone into a restaurant by myself."

Mr. Paterson, 56, said he planned to attend classes at Helen Keller Services
for the Blind and, if finances permitted it, hire a full-time aide to help
guide him for the first year, in part to deal with strangers he expects will
still approach him.

"It would probably be good for me to travel with somebody, because, who
knows, I may have more pardon requests," he said mischievously.

Though he did not rule out running for office again someday, Mr. Paterson,
who has earned $179,000 a year as governor, said he was eager to earn a
bigger salary in the private sector. That would allow him to put his son
through college and to replicate, at least in some ways, the comfortable
life he has grown accustomed to.

"You have a false income when you're governor, because you live in the
executive mansion," he said, ticking off the perks: free meals, free
transportation, free staff. "And, so, if you computed that out to a salary,
it's probably twice the governor's salary."

He confirmed that he had met with administrators at New York University and
Touro College to discuss taking teaching positions. He has spoken with
executives at a local talk radio station, WOR, about becoming a substitute
host. So far, though, he has not hammered out any contracts. In the
meantime, he has filled out paperwork to begin collecting a state pension.
(With 27 years, he can collect about $80,000 annually.)

"I am worried about money, because I am not a billionaire, in case you
hadn't heard," he said.

His advisers - old friends, current aides and former chief executives - have
encouraged him to think big. Mr. Clinton, for instance, asked him to
consider running a foundation in Harlem that would employ youngsters and cut
energy costs by painting the roofs of buildings white to reflect sunlight.

"You want me to make all the roofs in Harlem white?" Mr. Paterson recalled
asking Mr. Clinton inside the former president's office on 125th Street. Mr.
Clinton nodded. "Don't you think Harlem has become white enough?" Mr.
Paterson asked him.

Over the last few weeks, he has conducted a distinctly Paterson-esque
farewell tour across the state, much of it over local AM radio, dispensing
frank and funny observations about himself and his colleagues. He has
compared the news media in New York to the corruption-riddled Tammany Hall,
and declared that the quality of lawmakers in Albany has plunged over the
last two decades. "I am sorry to say this," he added, impishly.

He even made light of his own multiple run-ins with state prosecutors and
ethics investigators, telling the audience at a Bronx school the other night
that when he saw all the people in their seats, he figured he had walked
into a grand jury room.

He had only good things to say about his predecessor and his successor.
Asked how he planned to welcome Mr. Cuomo, he has said he had already swept
one big obstacle out of the governor-elect's path: he made sure the faulty
outlet above the sink in the master bedroom of the governor's mansion got
fixed.

"I said, 'This is important stuff, Andrew,' " he recalled. "'You don't know
what it's like when you need to plug something in, like an electric razor,
and you can't.' "

He even weighed in on Mr. Spitzer's show on CNN, which has suffered in the
ratings and has led to a debate about whether his co-host, Kathleen Parker,
has been unduly sidelined by the ex-governor. If anything, Mr. Paterson
opined, the show needs to revolve more around Mr. Spitzer to showcase his
brilliance.

He said he was looking forward to having a more normal family life,
recounting the difficulties his wife and his son faced once he became
governor.

"I don't think anything about me being governor ever looked like it made him
happy," he said about the boy, Alex, now 16. Asked how it made him feel as a
father, he responded: "Very guilty."

He and his wife, Michelle, grew so frustrated by tabloid photographers'
trying to shoot pictures of them as they vacationed poolside at a friend's
house in the Hamptons that they grabbed the family camera and took pictures
of the paparazzi, who they said were trespassing.

"While we found that funny, and it's a great story to tell," he said, "the
reality is it was very hard to sit back and say, 'So how have you been?'
Because you are both under this constant pressure."

Reflecting on his tenure, he paused for several seconds.

"Some things went well, some things went not so well," he said. "It was a
privilege. It was an honor. I would serve. I would do it again."

Still, he could not resist a joke, cheekily recalling the suddenness with
which he landed in the governor's office.

"I would like two weeks' notice next time," he said.