Later today, New York inaugurates a new governor; heck, we just did this last year. No matter, we're doing it again. And in less than a week, a relatively humble yet hard working former state senator from a prominent family will assume the leadership role of the wonderful state of New York, and most of us have absolutely no idea what's coming.

Based on some of what I've been reading on David Paterson lately, I get the feeling that he'd have never been elected to the office of governor on his own. He comes from a nice pedigree, as his father was also a state senator and is the top lawyer for most of the unions in this state. But some of his positions,... well, when I think back on Spitzer trying to push through legislation last year saying illegal aliens could apply for drivers licenses in this state and how he got beaten up for it, I'm thinking it pales in comparison to Paterson's trying to push through legislation to make deadly force by police a crime unless their lives were ultimately in danger, along with allowing some criminals to legally fight the police when being arrested if they feared for their lives. Knowing the constituency he represented, I'm not totally shocked by it, but those positions wouldn't have won him many friends outside of his home area.

Unfortunately, Paterson won't have any sort of honeymoon period to get used to the office. The state budget is due in a couple of weeks, and he has to hit the ground running. There were also some reforms that had been put through by Spitzer before he left, a couple of them for the central New York area, and we're hoping Paterson follows through on those also. We all will get to see relatively quickly what kind of leader the new governor Paterson will be.

I hope he does well, for all our sakes.