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They Want the Job—And to Upgrade It

Lieutenant governor candidates get their marching orders

By Edward-Isaac Dovere

When Tom Suozzi and Eliot Spitzer left the stage after their only gubernatorial primary debate in July, reporters rushed down the Pace University hallways to the “spin room.”

Spitzer never arrived, but his campaign struck first, with State Sen. David Paterson (D-Manhattan), Spitzer’s lieutenant governor running mate, guided to the clump of cameras and outstretched recorders to deliver the spin.

A few minutes later, Suozzi entered. He ran alone, without a lieutenant governor candidate.

And that night in front of the reporters, he stood alone.

Lieutenant governors in New York are curious creatures. Unlike vice presidents, they are elected separately from the governors. Like vice presidents, their candidacies are almost entirely determined by the men who tap them to run, and once elected, they have almost no defined powers—unless the boss happens to die or resign.

They chair low-profile and low-power commissions, and generally keep as low a profile as Mary Donohue (R) has over her two terms in the post.

But both Paterson and his Republican counterpart, C. Scott Vanderhoef, agree that is due to change.

Paterson, who has been State Senate minority leader since 2002, said he has barely dealt with Donohue, who technically presides over his chamber.

“I pass her in the hall,” he said, adding that when he heard of a meeting between Donohue and advocates for the disabled-parity bill called Timothy’s Law, “I kind of wanted to go with them, because it was the first time someone had said they were meeting with the lieutenant governor on an issue.”

“It’s not like we can say we will be doing x, y and z, because in large part that’s really determined by the governor,” explained C. Scott Vanderhoef, Republican candidate for lieutenant governor.

And so Paterson initially resisted Spitzer’s appeals to join the campaign. Spitzer lobbied him hard over three meetings, eager to have Paterson’s help in solidifying Democratic base support, particularly in the minority community.

This strategy is not new: four years ago, Charlie King, an African-American, helped counteract some of the controversy caused by Andrew Cuomo’s Democratic primary challenge to then-Comptroller H. Carl McCall, the first African-American New York gubernatorial candidate.

He did not seem to be too concerned with geographic balancing, another common factor in picking running mates.

Lieutenant governors can also provide ideological balance, like former New York Lt. Gov. Stan Lundine (D) in New York. Elsewhere around the country, this tactic has been used more recently: Brian Schweitzer (D) picked a Republican running mate to help him win the 2002 Montana governor’s race and that same year, Maryland’s Robert Ehrlich (R) picked Michael Steele, an African-American and former Democrat, to help him become the first GOP governor of his state since Spiro Agnew.

Wary of switching jobs just as his efforts toward a Democratic State Senate majority seemed on the verge of fruition, Paterson took to the internet to research lieutenant governors in other states: Michigan’s lieutenant governor is active on environmental issues. Pennsylvania’s has a major role on the pardons commission.

Paterson asked for substantive roles shaping the policy on domestic violence, disabled care, child sexual abuse, equity issues and empowering minority groups, especially in minority and women business enterprise (MWBE) programs. (He did not ask to be equal in power to the lieutenant governor of Texas, who is an ex officio member of state commissions and committees, since that would require an amendment to the State Constitution.)

“I would expect that it would involve decision-making capacity and review of agency performance on some of these issues that we’re working on and the legislation that we advocate for,” he said, noting that in the new role, “I’ve gone from being the implementer to the supporter and from the initiator to the responder.”

Spitzer asked Paterson to take on even more, like helping craft energy policy. However, no formal plans have been set for how this might work if they win.

“We’ve never even had a meeting about it. We’re a faith-based operation,” Paterson joked.

Of course, come January, Spitzer could be meeting with a Republican lieutenant governor. Vanderhoef has three consecutive wins for Rockland County executive, and enough of a buzz around him to have people encouraging him to run for state comptroller before John Faso asked him to join the gubernatorial campaign.

Vanderhoef expects that if he and Faso win, his role will mainly be to advise on Medicaid reform, the central topic of their only conversation about joining the ticket before Faso made the offer. Vanderhoef explained that Faso wanted to have his perspective on how Albany legislation affects life on the local level.

“From a governmental point of view, from a policy point of view, the issues he wanted to emphasize were very much issues that he could identify with a county executive,” Vanderhoef said.

Whereas Paterson has generally traveled with Spitzer, Vanderhoef’s appearances have rarely overlapped with Faso’s, as the trailing campaign looks to maximize its exposure.

Though he resists being called a “hatchet man,” Vanderhoef does slip in the occasional dig at Spitzer. Paterson’s approach is much the same, arguing that he does not believe Spitzer needs a hatchet man, since the choice between ideologies is so clear.

But, Vanderhoef noted, “these campaigns have tendencies to shift and move.”

Vanderhoef called for a series of lieutenant governor debates.

“It’s more an attempt to reflect the team’s approach to governance, and I think that has merit. It’s not like we can say we will be doing x, y and z, because in large part that’s really determined by the governor,” Vanderhoef explained.

None have been scheduled. However, Paterson is planning separate television advertisements, to start airing later this month.

Paterson wants the lieutenant governor’s office to have a set budget, and to restore its funding to previous levels, when it was 30 percent higher than today. Vanderhoef believes budget allocations should be contingent on what the governor asks of the lieutenant governor from year to year.

For all its vagueness and vagaries, the office has been a political incubator in New York. Lt. Gov. Malcolm Wilson (R) served a year as governor after Gov. Nelson Rockefeller (R) left for the vice presidency, then lost a bid to be reelected in his own right to Hugh Carey (D) in 1974. As Carey’s second lieutenant governor, Mario Cuomo (D) said he “traveled the whole state,” building up the name recognition to power an underdog victory in his first race for governor in 1982.

And then there is current Gov. George Pataki’s (R) first lieutenant governor, Betsy McCaughey Ross, who switched parties and ran against him in 1998. Across the country, more powerful lieutenant governors have used the post as a springboard to both governor and senator.

Neither Paterson nor Vanderhoef entertained much discussion of this aspect of their candidacies, though they did say that running has earned them more respect already.

“‘Lieutenant governor,’ I don’t know what it is,” Paterson said. “Maybe because the word ‘governor’ is in it, maybe because it sounds military, it seems to have a ring with people.”