Steele questions Obama stance on Patterson in context of support for Corzine

September 21, 2009 by Blue Jersey

I was wondering how long it would take for this to happen when I saw the story that the Obama Administration does not want NY Governor David Patterson to run for re-election. Michael Steele responded to that news on Face the Nation this morning bringing Governor Corzine into the debate as a contrast:

"It raises a curious point for me. I think Gov. Paterson's numbers are about the same as Gov. Corzine's. The president is with Gov. Corzine," Steele said.

Steele makes the statements about 3 minutes into the video:

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When Steele was pressed on the statement by Schieffer, he said he was merely curious, as if it was responsible for the leader of the national Republican Party to just idly speculate when they complain that race is brought into debates already.

In addition, Patterson's approval ratings range from an 18% low to 32% high in recent months, far below Corzine's in the last few months which has hovered from 34% on the low end to 40% on the high end. There are also plenty of other dynamics in play in New York that seem to be playing into the stepping in of Obama. But Steele glosses over that all to make it a racial issue. Here's what JRB had to say about it over at Huffington Post:

Steele is trying to stir up controversy where there isn't any. In fact, there's a very good explanation for why Paterson and not Corzine is getting the presidential boot: all politics is local.

It's been the silent consensus of New York Democratic leaders for months now that Paterson needs to go. Paterson did not respond well to these critics, injecting race into the equation -- even conflating attacks on him with attacks on President Obama (practically inviting the White House to wade in). It backfired, Paterson backtracked and was left even deeper in the hole. Obviously, state Democratic leaders felt they weren't getting anywhere. They needed somebody to step in. And so, they reached out to the White House. Bing. Bang. Boom.

The Governor should stay as far away from this discussion as possible.  He already has enough issues to deal with in this campaign.

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