[classicman]

Pressure mounts over replacement for Clinton

Facing one of the most nail-biting choices since the presidential election, David Paterson, the New York governor, has been told he would be guilty of “political malpractice” if he named anyone other than Caroline Kennedy as the state’s new junior representative in the Senate.

Mr Paterson, under intense pressure from some of the country’s most powerful political dynasties as he ponders his decision, has sole discretion to appoint a replacement for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is moving to the state department in Barack Obama’s administration.

Ms Kennedy, scion of the US’s most eminent political family, is credited with persuading Senator Edward Kennedy, her uncle and head of the Kennedy clan, to back Mr Obama’s presidential candidacy. It was a blow to Mrs Clinton’s presidential aspirations but it gives the Kennedys most-favoured status in the new White House.

What was described by New York political observers as Mr Sheekey’s “extraordinary” intervention has now highlighted Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s interest in a outcome that would give New York a hotline to the White House.

“If Caroline is appointed, Barack Obama has to come to New York as his first political trip to . . . support her and, in turn, New York,” Mr. Sheekey told the Daily News.

Sheldon Silver, the New York state assembly’s senior Democrat, last month accused Mr Bloomberg and Mr Sheekey of promoting Ms Kennedy for their own political motives, claiming that, if appointed, she would be beholden to the mayor rather than the governor.

After she injected “you know” more than three dozen times in a single interview, one commentator said: “She’s turned out to be a no-pulse flat-liner with the vim, vigor, enthusiasm and passion of, um, you know, a wet noodle.”