In 1970, just after New York Democrats designated their statewide ticket, Daniel O’Connell, the venerable party boss of Albany County, was said to have groused that virtually all the candidates were Jewish. He ticked off their names: Ottinger, Goldberg, Walinsky. Then he came to the choice for lieutenant governor, Basil A. Paterson.

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The New York Times

Basil Paterson being sworn in as deputy mayor by Mayor Edward I. Koch in 1978. His wife, Portia, and son David attended.

“He’s the only white man on the ticket,” Mr. O’Connell was said (by Albany politicians of the day) to declare.

Mr. Paterson was, in fact, the second black nominated by a major party for statewide office in New York. And, given the controversy his selection generated (some upstate residents even warned that black militants might assassinate Arthur J. Goldberg, the candidate for governor, so Mr. Paterson could succeed him), Mr. O’Connell would have been about the only New Yorker confused about his race.

Thirty-six years later, Mr. Paterson’s son, David, who represents the same Harlem district in the State Senate that his father did and lives just around the corner from his parents’ apartment, was nominated for lieutenant governor, and barely anyone mentioned that he is black. In 1970, Basil Paterson was more or less thrust on party leaders by black and liberal Democrats. This year, David A. Paterson, the Senate minority leader, was drafted by Eliot Spitzer, and they will be inaugurated on Jan. 1.

“I was 16 when Basil ran,” David Paterson recalled the other day. “The people were more accepting than the prognosticators.”

Basil Paterson won the Democratic primary, but as Mr. Goldberg’s running mate, he went down to defeat that November as the Democrats were outspent and overpowered by Nelson A. Rockefeller, the incumbent. After the election, some of the political leaders who had been wary of Basil Paterson’s candidacy suggested that he had been a bigger asset to the ticket than Mr. Goldberg.

“He was not considered an asset to the ticket until they lost,” David Paterson said of his father.

“They didn’t use me,” Basil Paterson lamented.

His son interrupted: “They still had some concern about him running” this year. “That’s why they wanted me.”

It’s a tossup whether father or son is the bigger wise guy. (Asked in 1970 to evaluate himself, Basil Paterson replied: “I’m sly, devious, oily and slick. I dress like a pimp and developed a good memory by hustling numbers in Harlem.”)

Since then, black candidates have been elected mayor of New York City (David N. Dinkins) and state comptroller (H. Carl McCall), but so-called minority politics has become more complex.

Power has migrated from Harlem to Brooklyn and Queens, to Caribbean-born blacks, and to Hispanic residents, who now outnumber blacks in New York.

“Only a charlatan would think we haven’t made great strides in race relations,” Basil Paterson said, “but only a fool would think we’ve come far enough.”

The Patersons are realists. Basil Paterson, a spry 80-year-old who later served as a deputy mayor under Edward I. Koch and as Gov. Hugh L. Carey’s secretary of state, says having a son who is lieutenant governor may actually “get in the way” of his livelihood as a negotiator and lawyer for politically potent unions, like the hospital workers and Teamsters.

David Paterson, who is 51 (his younger brother, Daniel, works for the Office of Court Administration), has few illusions about a job that has frustrated more than one predecessor. (Comparing the salary, staff and other perquisites, Alex, his 12-year-old son, who aspires to be an investment banker, recommended he remain in the Senate, adding, “I know a bad deal when I see one.”)

David Paterson said, “I’m learning what the title really means,” and added that many people are “focused on what the governor is doing and could care less about what the lieutenant governor is doing.”

Rather than operating separately from the governor as some of his overlooked predecessors did, he hopes to model his office on two lieutenant governors he regards as “organic” extensions of the governors they served: Malcolm Wilson with Mr. Rockefeller and Stan Lundine with Mario M. Cuomo.

If he ever succeeded Mr. Spitzer, he and Mr. Rockefeller would have something besides the governorship in common: great difficulty in reading. Mr. Rockefeller was dyslexic and David Paterson is legally blind. He developed an infection as an infant that, after three months, left him totally blind in one eye and with severely limited sight in the other.

“Every singe white political consultant that I ever worked with likes to promote my disabilities,” he said, “and I suspect it’s to mitigate race — to give me, in their eyes, an honorary white status.”

He remembers becoming furious when Shirley Chisholm, the former Brooklyn congresswoman, said she had encountered more bias as a woman than as a black.

“Internally, I probably felt myself more discriminated against as a disabled person,” he said. “And when I would experience discrimination from another African-American I would go ballistic.”

Four years ago, when he was elected Senate minority leader, he recalled the discrimination he had suffered because he is disabled. “So I have had this desire my whole life to prove people wrong, to show them I could do things they didn’t think I could do,” he said. “This is just another.”