Search

A
A+
A++

Local News

Featured Slideshows

President Bush More

Mar 25, 2008 6:05 pm US/Eastern

Digg |

Facebook | E-mail | Print

Paterson, Ex-Lover Traveled For Clinton Campaign

Pair Stayed In Same Places, But Governor Says It's Nothing

Reporting
Marcia Kramer

ALBANY, N.Y. (CBS) ― The hits just keep on coming for New York's top man, Gov. David Paterson.

It seems he recently traveled with a woman with whom he'd once been romantically involved, though he'd recently claimed his extramarital affairs ended long ago.

"I betrayed a commitment to my wife several years ago," Paterson said last week during a news conference in which he told New Yorkers that he had cheated on his wife with a number of women during a period of marital discord.

The cheating had stopped, however, after he and his wife, Michelle Page Paterson, worked out their problems.

Yet the new revelations continue to take front and center.

On Monday, Paterson, 53, revealed during a television interview that he had tried cocaine and marijuana decades ago when he was in his early 20s. Now comes word that he and one of the women he reportedly had an affair with, Lila Kirton, have gone on two recent out-of-town trips to campaign for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Aides to Paterson say he and Kirton, the $151,000 Director of Community Affairs in the governor's office, traveled to Iowa for several days last December to join Clinton's campaign efforts. They went to South Carolina just last month, again to campaign for Clinton.

On both trips, the pair stayed in the same places and the same hotels at the same time. Paterson aides say nothing sexual went on, however.

Paterson owns a home outside Albany in Guilderand, but some are asking why he stayed downtown in Albany hotels 13 times in the past 15 – at taxpayer expense.

"I had to be at the call of the governor," he said during a news conference yesterday.

But according to published reports, a female member of his staff who he reportedly once had an affair with used a state credit card to stay at downtown Albany hotels 17 times during the period, sometimes during the same times Paterson was staying in the downtown area.

Paterson insists his stays were "to accommodate the governor."

Still, the information comes to light as Paterson's aides were forced to admit Tuesday that he took the two recent trips with Kirton.

New Yorkers seem stunned by all this.

"I think it's maybe too much information," one city resident told CBS 2.

Said Brooklyn resident who only identified herself as Priscilla: "I've got no feeling about it whatsoever, because everybody's doing everything. Anything goes."

And one resident came to this conclusion after learning the news: "I guess if you run for office you have to have a lot of testosterone!"

Political pundits worry Paterson should have made a complete clean break about the incidents last week, even if the two recent trips were platonic.

"It's certainly plausible that this was an innocent trip taken for the purposes of the Clinton campaign and Gov. Paterson's – then Lt. Gov. Paterson's – political purposes, whatever those might have been," said Baruch College Prof. David Birdsell. "But it suggests that there may have been more to say than he said last Tuesday about the status of his relationships with women other than his wife."

A source close to the governor told CBS 2 Political Reporter Marcia Kramer that because he is legally blind, he has continued to travel with Kirton. "They remain friends and he feels comfortable traveling with her," the source said.

The governor's office said Kirton was not working for the state during the campaign trips and that she used personal time.

WCBSTV.com's Most Popular Pages

From Our Partners

Video

You need the latest Flash player to view video content.
Click here to download.

Click here to bypass this detection if you already have the latest Flash Player.