by TONY BEST

THERE WAS no better setting to declare one's Caribbean roots.

With at least two million, including thousands of Bajans waiting to jump up to pulsating West Indian music along Brooklyn's Eastern Parkway, David Alexander Paterson proclaimed his heritage.

That was back in September.

Paterson is the grandchild of Jamaicans and Grenadians.

Born in Brooklyn, Paterson, 53, tapped into the mood when he told the large crowd "this is a day for everyone, everybody is Caribbean."

Fast-forward six months.

Paterson, the father of two, will be sworn in tomorrow as governor of the most powerful state in the union and as the third black head of a state government since
the 19th century Reconstruction era.

He replaces Eliot Spitzer who stepped down as governor last week after he was at the centre in a prostitution scandal which broke.

Known for his mild, subtle but firm temperament, not to mention his dry wit, Paterson, the scion of an influential family led by Basil Paterson, is hailed as a breath of fresh air.

He is adept at getting on with people, maintaining cordial relations with his political adversaries. Still, he remains focused on social and economic change in a country and a state he has called "my own".

Paterson lost the sight in his left eye and has limited vision in the right after suffering an infection as a child, has never bowed to his handicap.

After New York City schools declined to allow him to attend regular classes, his parents moved to Hempstead where he was treated like everyone else, becoming the first legally blind student to graduate from the village's public schools.

His next stop was Columbia University, graduating in 1977 with a degree in history. He then went on to Hofstra University in Nassau County earning a law degree. Soon after, people began to forecast that eventually he would enter politics, and he did in 1985 after serving a stint as a prosecutor in the Queens District Attorney's office.

After battling his way to the top as Senate minority leader, Spitzer came calling, offering him the number two spot on the ticket.

For more than two decades, Paterson was a Harlem State senator, who later rose to become Senate minority leader.

"He's a guy who had two handicaps: his blindness and his race. And he never made excuses for it," the Reverend Al Sharpton, the prominent civil rights leader, said. "He's the guy who has said, "I've been in a minority group and a minority within a minority. And I can make it so don't give me no excuses."

United States Congressman Charles Rangel, chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives, and
a close friend of the father of the governor-designate said: "He is committed to assisting those who need help the most."

Paterson is focused on his agenda: improvements to Medicaid to assist the elderly poor; renewable energy; stem-cell research, and social and economic programmes that would benefit the less fortunate.

Little wonder, then, that adversaries and allies alike consider him a savvy political operative with a penchant for hard work.

Paterson's father, an eminent labour attorney on Long Island, once sat in the State Senator before vacating the Harlem seat to run for lieutenant-governor in 1970. After he lost, the elder Paterson became New York City's deputy mayor under Edward Koch; and in the 1970s, Governor Hugh Carey appointed him the first black Secretary of State in New York.

His son's operating philosophy is pretty straightforward; and it has worked for him.

"I want everyone to feel included." Just as important, he told a newspaper less than two years ago: "I want to set a good example for the young people and children who look to me."

But how does he manage as a blind person?

To begin with, he has learned to be "little more pragmatic about life" as he functions in the state capital.

"When I am in places where I am familiar, I will appear to see better than in places where I am not," he explained. "If I walk around my house, and you didn't know, you'd probably think I have no vision problems.

"I play basketball, and I've done things that people with my vision aren't supposed to do," he added. "I'm in this interesting sort of zone between the sighted
and the unsighted."

So, while he can walk through the State Senate unaided, he memorises his speeches because he can't read text and his aides brief him personally and leave extensive recorded messages for him.