Two weeks ago, David Paterson was a frustrated lieutenant governor: There wasn’t much for him to do. “He’d been pretty much cut off,” says a Spitzer administration source. “If he did attend meetings, David wasn’t fully integrated.” So last month he scheduled a meeting with Bill Lynch, the Harlem political consultant and former deputy mayor under David Dinkins. “The point of the meeting was, ‘Look, where do we go from here?,’ ” says Lynch. He and Paterson had come up with a fix for the politician’s dilemma. “The solution was, ‘Let’s raise your national profile,’ ” Lynch says. The two devised a plan for Paterson to give speeches around the country on national issues, capitalizing on his status as one of the country’s very few African-Americans elected to high office. “We thought this was the right idea,” Lynch says.

Have good intel? Send tips to intel@nymag.com.

Related:

• Archive: “Intelligencer”
• Articles by Geoffrey Gray
• Table of Contents: Mar 24, 2008 issue of New York | Subscribe!