Things aren’t
looking good for Gov. David Paterson of New York. Fourteen months
after his election, he has worse ratings than his predecessor, Eliot
Spitzer, who resigned after being exposed as a patron of a
prostitution ring. According to a poll by The New York Times, Cornell
University and NY1 News, only 21 percent of New Yorkers are still
satisfied with Paterson, and seven in 10 say he doesn’t deserve to
be reelected next year.
Most of the state’s
disapproval of their governor seems to come from citizens’ lack of
confidence in Paterson’s ability to deal with the struggling
economy, the New
York Times reported.
Even so, for what
it’s worth, most New Yorkers said they still believed that Gov.
Paterson cared about their problems.
“I just don’t
think he can do anything right,” said George Bores, a retired NYPD
officer, during the telephone survey. Ouch. Bores claimed to miss the
former governor. “I’d rather have someone who ran the government
well. What someone does in their private life doesn’t bother me,”
he told the
Times.
But the governor is
still trying. On Monday he announced a plan that would redirect $100
million of state money over three years to research institutions that
conduct energy, technology, and medical research and development. The
goal of his plan, which pledges 10 cents of state money for every
stimulus dollar provide by the federal government, is to help spark
discoveries that could lead to new jobs and industries.
The state has
already raised $110 million with a utility bill charge that the
governor wants to use to help the state compete for federal grants
for renewable energy programs, said Public Service Commission
spokesman James Denn.
Paterson’s lofty
address, entitled “Bold Steps to the New Economy,” failed to
impress many listeners, since the governor’s office was stingy with
specifics about how it would pay for the program after the $25
million set aside this year, Newsday.com
reported.
"There's an
effort here to wrap it in newspeak," E.J. McMahon, director of
the Empire Center for New York State Policy, said. "It's the
same old government-led investment in nifty things. In the final
analysis it’s difficult not to see all these things adding up to
marginal at best."
Unfortunately for
the governor, given his current ratings, he probably won’t be
around to see the fruit of his labor, whether the program is
successful or not. The same poll that made Paterson seem about as
popular as roadkill also showed an overwhelming approval of Attorney
General Andrew Cuomo, who many imagine will be a rival for the
Democrats’ next nomination for governor.
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