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An Idiot Or A LiarThis week’s New York Magazine has an interesting article about Governor Paterson by Chris Smith. However one part of the article stands out to me. Writing about what was going on when Paterson had to appoint someone to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate, Smith says: “Andrew [Cuomo] has always dreamed about being governor and president; David has always dreamed about being U.S. senator,” says a New York Democrat who is a friend of both. “We had an opportunity for it to work out that way. We had a small threshold where if David had named himself senator, we could have had some time with Malcolm Smith as interim governor while putting together a process to give Andrew an opportunity in a special election to run for governor. It would have solved a lot of problems” This stands out because it means that Smith’s source is either an idiot or a liar. The New York State Constitution does not allow any process to create a Special Election for Governor. If Paterson appointed himself to the Senate, Malcolm Smith or whoever was President Pro-tem of the Senate would have become Governor. I stand corrected. I never knew this and I never read anything that said this at the time. I am the idiot in this case.
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It's a shame that you would call someone an idiot and liar when you are either raising the most trivial of semantic points or you didn’t even bother to read the NYS Constitution. Article IV §6 states:
In case of vacancy in the offices of both governor and lieutenant- governor, a governor and lieutenant-governor shall be elected for the remainder of the term at the next general election happening not less than three months after both offices shall have become vacant. . . In case of vacancy in the offices of both governor and lieutenant- governor or if both of them shall be impeached, absent from the state or otherwise unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office of governor, the temporary president of the senate shall act as governor until the inability shall cease or until a governor shall be elected.
Because Paterson could have appointed himself to the seat more than 3 months before the next general election, and because Smith was temporary president of the senate, we most definitely could have had Malcolm Smith as interim governor with a newly elected Cuomo taking over as Governor later that year.
Are you simply saying that we should only refer to elections as “special elections” when they are specifically proclaimed by the Governor as such and that the process for a new election laid out in the Constitution is just an “election”?