David Paterson became Governor of New York State on Monday, pledging unity in government to an ecstatic and palpably relieved audience in Albany.

Paterson was sworn in as the state’s 55th governor almost exactly a week after revelations emerged that his predecessor, Gov. Eliot Spitzer, had patronized a prostitute, Ashley Dupre, and faced federal investigation.

In a speech lasting half an hour, David Paterson offered soothing rhetoric to an audience that yearned to move beyond what has been an unusually sordid ordeal even for Albany, a capital well-acquainted with scandal.

Speaking to the N.Y. State Assembly and Senate, David Paterson alluded to Eliot Spitzer’s great difficulties over the past year in working with the Democratic controlled Assembly and Republican-controlled state Senate.

His father, Basil A. Paterson, a former state senator and secretary of state, stood behind Mr. Paterson when he first ascended the dais, as did his mother, his wife, Michelle Paterson (with David, above), and their two children.

New York’s U.S. senators, Charles E. Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton, were in attendance, along with New York City Michael Bloomberg, former governors Hugh L. Carey and George E. Pataki, and Governors John Corzine, Jodi Rell and Deval Patrick of neighboring New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

With the sting of Eliot Spitzer’s indiscretion still fresh, David Paterson later made a stunning admission of his own to the New York Daily News, acknowledging he had an affair with another woman beginning in 1999.

In the interest of full disclosure amid the Spitzer sex scandal, David Paterson and Michelle Paterson said, in a joint interview, that they each had relationships with others during a rocky period in their marriage years ago.

Continue reading about Paterson’s big day in the New York Times …