By Heather Grossmann
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Gov. David Paterson said on Tuesday that the forthcoming New York Times article on him was not a resignation-inducing bombshell, just a profile piece.
"The only was way I'm not going to be governor next year is at the ballot box, the only way I'll be leaving before is in a box," Paterson said in response to questions about leaving office or abandoning his gubernatorial campaign.
Paterson said he had been interviewed for the profile piece by Times' staff including Danny Hakim — one of the presumed authors of the alleged salacious scoop on the governor — and that none of the questions he was asked dealt with the rumored issues.
The governor said that in all his two decades in Albany, he had never seen the sort of "feeding frenzy" sparked by the "false allegations and unsubstantiated rumors" swirling around him.
"It's obviously an encumbrance answering a lot of false, unsourced charges," Paterson said of dealing with the rumored Times' story. He said he had written a letter to the public editor of the paper on the subject.
Paterson's campaign confirmed on Tuesday that he would be officially kicking off his 2010 campaign on Feb. 20 in Hempstead, L.I. and would be holding a campaign event the following day in Harlem.
