This All Sounds Familiar to South Carolinians, Except Backwards, Doesn't It?

An Unpopular Governor That Won't Listen to His Own Party Begging Him to Not Run ? Welcome to the Bizzaro World That Is NY-SC Politics .....

Ready for me to piss off every South Carolinian - except for those of you who live South of Broad in Charleston? New York is JUST LIKE South Carolina! Oh sure, it's the polar opposite of New York in culture, food and just about everything else - yeah, maybe Hillary never ran for Senator of South Carolina - but in some ways it's exactly the same... Need proof? Look no further than the top of the heap...

To be honest, politically, New York is the reverse of South Carolina: The Dems are in charge. They have all the offices, they raise all the money - and they manage to screw it all up as well, just like the GOP in the Palmetto State. Where SC has the Mark Sanford/Andre Bauer/Henry McMaster/ Jakie Knotts/ Bobby Harrell/Glenn McConnell/ Nikki Haley (did I forget anyone?) mess, New York has David Paterson. Paterson is the Andre Bauer of New York - an unknown Guv Lite, he rose to Governor when Eliot Spitzer got caught buying call girls.

Paterson, who is legally blind and the first African-American Governor of New York, hasn't endeared himself to voters, and worse yet, to the Obama Administration. His approval ratings last week were somethign that would make even Mark Sanford or George Bush cringe - 20 percent! A few points lower, and you'd swear he was in Congress... He royally pissed off Obama last year, when he appointed Kirsten Gillibrand - WHO? - to fill out Hillary Clinton's term last year. Obama wanted and owed Caroline Kennedy, but couldn't convince Paterson to give it to her, probably to his credit.

Obama wants Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who's dad Mario ran New York from 1982 to 1994, before losing to George Pataki. Cuomo already has $10 million in the bank, twice what Paterson has, and is beating Paterson in the polls by almost 3-1.... Cuomo hasn't announced he is running yet, but Obama is not waiting... On Friday, he sent Congressman Greg Meeks to have dinner with Paterson, and give him the bad news - Obama doesn't want him to run. Even though the Dems control everything for the first time since 1935, the hold is extremely shaky. They only control the Legislature by 2 seats, and three major offices - Governor , Comptroller and US Senator - are appointees. If Paterson loses, then Gillibrand will likely lose, the US Senate loses it's Democratic supermajority , the GOP will be able to redistrict the legislature - and soon afterwards, the entire world will cease to exist, leaving only cockroaches and primitive plant life ......

Now before you get all excited, the GOP in New York is a lot like the Democrats in South Carolina - they're stupid. Very, very stupid..... No one in the GOP is primed for this race. My old Congressman, Rick Lazio, will announce his intention to run. He is the guy who couldn't beat Hillary's obvious carpetbagger run in 2000, and he has only $185k left in the bank. Then there is Rudy Giuliani. He hasn't decided on a run or not. They guy is making so much money in the private sector, I don't know why he'd run - and we all know how half-assed campaign fare. Oh, he also only has $7245 in the campaign coffers. That's a high mountain to climb.

The pressure is on Paterson to decide to not run, and let Cuomo take over in 2010. Part of me sees this as Obama being politically savvy. Part of me sees this as Obama doing a reenactment of Joe Clark, minus the baseball bat, and I'll skip the 4 letters Clark used. Just like in South Carolina, you have to deal with bad decisions made previously. Sure, the Empire State and the Palmetto State are exact opposites, but in the end, it'll end up the same - we'll both have new Governors in 2010....

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