David Paterson

Mark Sanford may not be the only former governor in the House of Representatives.

Former Gov. David Paterson in an interview with Fred Dicker on his Talk-1300 radio show did not rule out running for the Harlem seat held by Rep. Charlie Rangel, but he acknowledged the longtime Democrat incumbent will likely seek another term.

“I think he’ll run,” Paterson told Dicker. “When you’ve done anything for 44 years, where do you go?”

Paterson says he would “listen to people” before committing to a run for Congress.

“I watch the political landscape,” Paterson said when asked about his interest the seat. “People are not talking about issues that affect people.”

There’s an obligatory grain of salt with everything Paterson says: He has a tendency to speak off the cuff and then, on occasion, contradict himself later.

The former governor, who succeeded Eliot Spitzer after his resignation after becoming engulfed in a prostitution scandal, is now a professor at Touro Medical College in New York City.

Paterson, of course, brings his own baggage to a Congressional run.

Among them: He declined to run for a full term after it was reported he intervened in the domestic abuse case of one his aides, while also accepting World Series tickets from the Yankees and then lying about it under oath.

But since leaving office, Paterson has remained in the public conversation, including a stint as a drive-time radio host on WOR in New York City.

Rangel was nearly unseated last year when Sen. Adriano Espaillat made a serious run for the post, but lost in a Democratic primary.

The heir apparents to the seat also include Assemblyman Keith Wright, the state Democratic Party co-chairman.

Ex-Gov. David Paterson decried this morning in a radio interview what he said was a lack of talented candidates running for public office, calling some “lower caliber” than when his father was in office or when he first started in the state Senate.

“I think the best and the brightest are not going into government,” Paterson said told Fred Dicker on his Talk-1300 radio show.

“What’s gone from Albany is nobody’s passionate about anything but personal gain,” he added.

But Paterson also gave Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver a pass on the corruption scandals have infested Albany and said that if he was governor, he wouldn’t seek to have the powerful Democrat removed from his leadership post.

“Who could be around Albany for 20 years and not be accused of something,” Paterson asked rhetorically.

In typical, unabashed Paterson fashion, the former governor then referenced his own ethical troubles from when he was in office, including his intervention on behalf of an aide who was arrested for domestic abuse charges.

That wasn’t the only scandal that marred Paterson’s time as governor, an office that he assumed after Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in the midst of a prostitution scandal.

In December 2010, Paterson was fined $62,000 for accepting World Series tickets from the Yankees and then lying under oath about how he got them.

Now a professor at Touro College in New York City, Paterson was booted from his perch as a drive-time radio host last year. The radio show on WOR had been an occasional spot for Cuomo himself to call in and drop news in a relatively friendly setting.

Paterson in the interview said he was “deeply jealous” of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s ability to work with the Legislature and doubted the current governor would want to unseat Silver, who has been speaker since 1994.

Dicker reported on Monday that Cuomo and his inner circle had discussed ousting Silver over the weekend and possibly install Assembly Majority Leader Joe Morelle. Cuomo’s office has stringently denied there’s any discussion to remove Silver.

Cuomo in his own radio interview on Monday said he didn’t want to meddle in the affairs of the Legislature and called Silver a “partner.”

Paterson, the former Senate minority leader, was succeeded in that post by Sen. Malcolm Smith in 2007, who now is accused of orchestrating a bribery scheme to put himself on the Republican mayoral ballot.

The former governor said he was perplexed by the alleged effort to pay off party leaders saying there was a legal way to do that anyway.

“All of these things they wanted to do illegally they could have done legally,” Paterson said.

Former Gov. David Paterson gave a tough assessment this morning of his successor as Democratic leader in the state Senate Malcolm Smith today, suggesting that his new colleagues in the Independent Democratic Conference should “re-think” giving him a leadership post.

Paterson, never the most reliable narrator in these interviews, criticized Smith for never taking up issues as the Democratic leader and knocked him for flirting with a run for mayor of New York City on the GOP line.

“Malcolm Smith who is like the tennis ball at Wimbledon bouncing between parties,” he said on Fred Dicker’s Talk-1300 radio show. ”First he’s running for mayor of the city of New York as a Republican and now he’s an independent Democrat. How can he be in there if he wants to run for mayor as a Republican.

Paterson did compliment Smith for not bending to then-Sen. Pedro Espada over leadership perks, but he said the IDC should be wary of giving Smith a leadership title.

“… the only thing have ever hear about Malcolm Smith is he wants an important leadership position,” he said. “If that independent Democratic conference thinks they are create diversity by giving him a leadership position when he has sold out everyone around him, they’ve got to really re-think that.”

Paterson did criticize the Senate Democrats during their time in the majority for overspending their office budgets, which he said gave Sen. Jeff Klein and the IDC a good reason not to stick with the mainline conference.

And he said Gov. Andrew Cuomo is doing the smart thing by not getting involved in the ongoing leadership struggle. Paterson said that when he injected himself into the internal workings of the Senate as governor, he was “rewarded” with criticism from rank-and-file Democrats.

“I never heard the rest speak out against the way they treated me,” Paterson said. ”If Gov. Cuomo has any apprehension, maybe he read the newspaper articles about how they attacked the previous governor.”