Well not yet but soon…
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/26/paterson.governor/index.html?hpt=T2
Troubled NY governor won’t run for full term, source says.
February 26, 2010 12:35 p.m. EST
New York (CNN) – Gov. David Paterson of New York has decided not to run for a full term in office, a Democratic Party source said Friday.
Paterson is expected to go before cameras Friday in New York.
On Thursday, Paterson denied at a news conference that he would resign and indicated that he would stay in the race.
Hours earlier, New York Deputy Secretary for Public Safety Denise E. O’Donnell abruptly resigned amid a burgeoning scandal over reports that a Paterson aide was involved in domestic violence incident with a woman and that state police later pressured her to keep quiet.
Paterson has suspended the aide, David Johnson, without pay. He also asked New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to investigate the conduct of the state police in the matter.
Cuomo may run against Paterson in the Democratic primary for governor.
The attorney general said in a brief statement Thursday that he is investigating whether criminal or other wrongdoing had occurred.
The growing developments prompted the Rev. Al Sharpton to hold an “emergency meeting” with three state Democratic officials to discuss Paterson’s future, according Rachel Noerdlinger, a spokeswoman for Sharpton.
Noerdlinger confirmed that Sharpton did not want Paterson to seek re-election.
Johnson, a one-time driver for Paterson who later became one of the governor’s closest aides, has been accused of several acts of wrongdoing in a series of stories by The New York Times.
He has not been charged with a crime. Efforts to reach him and his attorney have been unsuccessful.
The New York Times reported that New York State Police contacted Johnson’s alleged accuser to encourage her to abandon efforts to seek a protective order against Johnson. The newspaper quoted Lawrence Saftler, a lawyer for the alleged victim, whom the newspaper did not identify. Saftler did not return calls from CNN.
The newspaper also reported that the state police confirmed that the woman was visited by a member of the governor’s personal security detail.
In a statement released Thursday, the state police said the attorney general requested that it not conduct an internal investigation into the matter.
“The state police will fully cooperate with the attorney general’s office and their investigation,” the statement said. “Further, it would be inappropriate at this time for the state police to comment in any way about this case while the attorney general’s investigation is ongoing.”
The New York Times also quoted Saftler as saying that the governor personally contacted the alleged victim. The lawyer said that the conversation lasted about a minute and that the governor asked how she was doing, the newspaper reported.
Through a spokesman, the governor told The New York Times that the woman initiated the phone call and declined to answer further questions.
The governor also declined to answer questions about the alleged phone call in an interview with WOR radio Thursday morning.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” he said. “I’m sure those are things the attorney general [is] going to ask me about. … I’ll just let the facts come out.”
In announcing her resignation, O’Donnell said, “The fact that the governor and members of the state police have acknowledged direct contact with a woman who had filed for an order of protection against a senior member of the governor’s staff is a very serious matter. … These actions are unacceptable regardless of their intent.”
She said State Police Superintendent Harry Corbitt told her in January that a senior administration staff member had been involved in an incident months earlier and that a domestic incident report was filed.
Corbitt said the staff member had an argument with his girlfriend and there was no arrest, O’Donnell said.
The police superintendent told her that “the matter was being handled as a local police matter by the New York Police Department,” O’Donnell said.
“My immediate concern was what role the state police would take in the investigation, and I was assured by Superintendent Corbitt that the state police were not involved,” she said. "It was only last night when I learned from press reports the contrary details, including the involvement of the state police.
“For these reasons, I am resigning my position as commissioner of the Division of Criminal Justice Services and deputy secretary of public safety, effective today.”
Corbitt said he did not dispute O’Donnell’s account of what he told her. However, he said, he “provided Deputy Secretary O’Donnell with factually correct information, but the conclusions she appeared to draw from these statements were incorrect.”
He said that state police were not involved in the investigation into the incident with Johnson and that he was confident that the attorney general’s investigation will “quickly reveal the nature of the contact between a state police official and the woman involved.”
The New York Times has reported on other allegations of wrongdoing by Johnson from when he was a teenager.
Paterson had defended Johnson before the most recent allegations. This month, he told CNN that The New York Times chose to “splash” Johnson’s “youthful offenses across the pages of its newspaper. … I profoundly believe in this principle of redemption and giving young people a second chance.”
Paterson became governor in 2008, after a sex scandal prompted then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer to resign. He is New York’s first African-American governor and the fourth in U.S. history.
He is legally blind, and although documentation is scarce, it is widely believed that he is the nation’s first blind governor.
He was elected to the New York state Senate in 1985, representing the 30th District, encompassing Harlem, East Harlem and the Upper West Side.
In November 2002, Paterson was elected New York Senate minority leader. He addressed the 2004 Democratic National Convention as well as the U.S. Conference of Mayors that same year.