POLITICAL NEWS ANALYSIS

(AP) Remember David Paterson, the one guy in New York government everyone would like to have a beer with at a ball game, share a laugh, and not worry about getting stuck with the tab?

In just over a month, he's gone from New York's favorite son to the cranky relative no one wants to see over the holidays.

How did he slight Albany's dysfunctional family? He's had the temerity to say New York is in a fiscal crisis from years of overspending on special interests, Wall Street's meltdown and a national recession. He's insisted that something, finally, has to be done. Worse, he sounded the alarm early and often—dating to March when he took office.

His latest call to action was last Wednesday, Nov. 12, when, after getting nothing from legislative leaders on his request for spending cut ideas to be proffered at the emergency economic session for Tuesday, Nov. 18, he proposed $2 billion worth of pain. He made rare calls for midyear school aid cuts from the promised increase in funds, $600 increases in public college tuition, cuts to hospitals, and concessions from public worker unions to avoid layoffs.

He immediately got an almost defiant inaction. Aligned against Paterson are:

• The Senate's Republicans, still fighting for their political lives in the last eight weeks of the majority they lost Nov. 4. They say they need an 18-month plan to make prudent decisions that could avoid the midyear school cuts that they say would devastate schools.

• Democrats in the Assembly and Senate who say they support Paterson, but haven't exactly rallied to his proposals. They can still use the GOP Senate as political cover and do nothing to bite the hands that feed them.

• And, more powerful than either of them, special interests led by the teachers unions and other public employee unions who say they won't reopen contracts that average about 10 percent wage increases over three years. Unless they get some sweeteners out of it.

Even the resources of the governor's office pale to those of very organized labor.

"We're part of the solution, not part of the problem," said Danny Donohue, president of the 70,000- member Civil Service Employees Association union, in a radio ad just hours after Paterson's presentation. Donohue has been in these spots before with other governors, and won out.

The Public Employees Federation union quickly started airing slick, slow fade TV commercials trying to make the case that we're "all in this together," apparently as long as it doesn't hurt unionized workers. It's a powerful tool. In 2007, unions spent $1 million to beat back cuts to hospitals and every year the teachers unions run $1 million ad campaigns to get "yes" votes on school budgets, 70 percent of which go to salaries and benefits for union members.

"Clearly, he's got no friends and he's surrounded by choppy waters," said Doug Muzzio, a public affairs professor at Baruch College in Manhattan. "The Legislature is a wholly owned subsidiary of the special interests ... and they aren't going to give him what he wants and the state needs."

Paterson also faces a threat from within. The so-called Gang of Four dissident Democrats, crumbling to three, have threatened the Democratic majority in the Senate won after 40 years of GOP rule. They say they may reject Democratic Sen. Malcolm Smith as the next leader and side with current Republican Leader Dean Skelos. The Democrats have just a 32-30 advantage in the Senate so if three of their own defect, the GOP could stay in power.

Robert B. Ward, deputy director of the Rockefeller Institute of Government research center, said Paterson faces a similar crisis to the one that hit New York in the 1970s, under Democratic Gov. Hugh Carey.

"What's different today than in the '70s is it's become even harder politically for the governor and the Legislature to restrain spending," Ward said. "Hugh Carey did not have to confront million dollar ad campaigns calling him bad names for getting the budget under control."

Carey also had Republican Senate Majority Leader Warren Anderson of Binghamton, who chose to work closely with Carey. Paterson has Skelos and the two have tangled lately. Skelos helped force Paterson's longtime chief of staff out of office in recent weeks after the staffer admitted he failed to pay taxes for five years. In turn, Skelos criticized Paterson for openly campaigning for Democratic Senate candidates this fall.

"You have to make some hard choices, and the Legislature isn't known for courage," Muzzio said. "Then with the leadership and control of the state Senate in the air, it makes the usual dysfunctionality even more so."