He was the last person you would expect to find in a car park outside a fire station being used as a polling place in South Carolina. David Paterson will become an historic figure on Monday as the first black governor of New York State and the first legally blind governor in US history.

But only weeks ago I met him and three colleagues outside a polling place during the Democratic primary in Columbia, South Carolina.

Wearing a camel coat he was canvassing voters as they went to cast their ballot. Stuck out in the cold by election rules that keep canvassers away from the polling place, Mr Paterson was trying to approach voters as they went to and from their cars.

This was politics at the very lowest level — the kind of task normally performed by local volunteers on election day. So I was surprised when Mr Paterson introduced himself as the lieutenant-governor of New York.

The softly-spoken Mr Paterson explained that he had come down to South Carolina to campaign for Hillary Clinton. He was in an uncomfortable position as a black man urging Democrats to vote against a black candidate, Barack Obama. Most of the voters would not talk to Mr Paterson because of their Clinton badges, so I spoke to them. Each time I would report back with a smirk that another voter was going for Mr Obama — who eventually won a clear victory.

Mr Paterson, 53, is legally blind since suffering an eye infection at the age of three months, but it is hardly noticeable. He has no guide dog, dark glasses or white walking stick. To outward appearances he could just be short-sighted. He has said he has suffered more discrimination because of his disability than because of his race.

My impression was that he is an unusually genuine and friendly politician. His reputation is that, though the product of the Democratic Party machine, he has been willing to buck the party establishment.

He is the son of the late state senator Basil Paterson, one of the “Gang of Four” politicians, along with the congressman Charles Rangel, the Democratic boss Percy Sutton and the former New York Mayor David Dinkins, who dominated the black stronghold of Harlem. After two decades in the legislature he launched a palace coup to become the state senate minority leader, became majority leader when the Democrats gained control of the state senate and became Mr Spitzer’s running-mate in 2006.

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