There were rumors when Spitzer chose Paterson as Lt. Governor, that a deal was in place.  A deal whereby if Hillary Clinton got elected President. Spitzer would name Paterson as her replacement in the Senate.  At the time Paterson had to have thought Spitzer would be governor for years, and Lt. Governor is a totally thankless mostly invisible job.  The thinking is that Paterson only agreed to be Spitzer's runningmate as a steppingstone to the Senate.

But then the shocking happened.  Spitzer had to resign and suddenly Paterson is governor, a job he never coveted and did not want.  Now he is head of a state government that is sinking like the Titanic.  He knows that the next year and more are going to be so painful fiscally that it will be incredibly difficult to get elected in his own right to the governorship.  Paterson is now the fall guy for things that started happening well before he became governor.  He is in a no-win situation in Albany.  Forced to be the bad guy who takes one for the team over the next two years and then he is probably put out to pasture, seen forever as a caretaker governor who was forced to captain the ship as it went down.

Paterson has to be really depressed thinking about what is ahead.  Yet now lo and behold, the job he intended to get in the first place, that being Hillary Clinton's Senate seat, might now still become available.   And he has the power to give himself the job.  It has to be tempting.

Paterson will argue that with Obama now resigned from the Senate, there are no black Senators.  It is an all white body again.  New York has never had a black Senator.  He'll say he can do more for New York in Washington than he can in Albany, where he is serving in a job to which he was never elected.  Senator David Paterson would have a long political future, whereas Governor Paterson could well be a private citizen before 2010 is out.  Could you blame him then for considering this?