Elizabeth Benjamin reports in the NY Daily News:

New York Democrats have privately set a deadline of early November for Gov. Paterson to turn his poll numbers around or they’ll urge him not to run next year.

“The idea is to let him get through the budget and get through the summer,” said a prominent Democratic donor who sees the fall elections as the cutoff for Paterson’s improvement.

“Nobody really wants to go to a sitting Democratic governor who’s African-American and say, ‘Hey. You’re a disgrace. Get out.'”

Paterson allies hold out hope he’ll be able to mount a timely comeback, but admit his historically low job approval rating – a March Siena poll pegged it at 19% – presents a significant challenge.

“Even if he went up 100%, it wouldn’t be much,” the donor said. “The goal is to be close to 50, but I think if he could climb over 40%, he can begin to show real momentum.”

The question is: Can he do it in time?

It took just two months for Paterson’s favorability rating to plunge from 54% to 29% – a rate Siena poll spokesman Steve Greenberg called “staggering.”

Greenberg said Paterson “certainly can come back in time, [but] it would be incredible to see it come back in two months.”

“It could happen in a number of months, and only if he has good issues,” Greenberg said. “It depends on how you define ‘fast enough.'”

A “number of months” might not be quick enough for members of the New York congressional delegation, whose fate in the next round of redistricting after the 2010 census lies in the hands of whoever controls the Senate.

If Paterson doesn’t improve and refuses to bow out gracefully, Democrats worry having him at the top of the ticket could imperil their tenuous 32-to-30 hold on the Senate majority.

“It’s fish or cut bait after these elections,” one Washington Democrat said. “”If he can’t put it together by November, you’re going to see some real calls for a new slate.”

Paterson has taken steps to right his listing administration. He shook up his staff, presided over passage of an almost on-time budget and recently adopted a tougher tone with the Legislature on getting a Metropolitan Transportation Authority bailout deal.

Critics have panned the budget for spending too much and being negotiated almost entirely in secret. Paterson has defended the plan, saying federal stimulus aid accounts for the spending increase.

Paterson will hit the hustings this week for a statewide tour to tout projects funded with stimulus cash. He will join local, state and federal lawmakers at each stop.

Anyone seeking to get Paterson out of the 2010 race will have to tread lightly. He is New York’s first black governor, although he wasn’t elected to the post, having inherited it after Eliot Spitzer got caught up in a prostitution scandal. He is also legally blind.

The man on whom Republicans have pinned their hopes, Rudy Giuliani, has said he’ll decide after the ’09 elections whether to run for governor next fall.

Observers said it would be impossible for someone like state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to challenge Paterson unless black and Hispanic lawmakers provide “cover” by calling for the governor to step aside.

Cuomo angered Democrats with his failed 2002 primary challenge to then-state Controller Carl McCall – the first black candidate for governor.

Assemblyman Keith Wright, a Harlem Democrat and Paterson ally, called it “silly” for anyone to set deadlines for the governor’s resurrection and said the “good work” Paterson has been doing will boost his poll numbers.

“Anybody that underestimates the governor at this point does so at their peril,” Wright said. “This is a very savvy, astute student of politics and political trends. … Did he need a minute to get his sea legs? Yes. But he’ll be there.