Within hours of being sworn in, New York's new Governor admitted to an extramarital affair - and so did his wife.

The revelations stunned New Yorkers still reeling from the resignation of Eliot Spitzer last week after he was secretly recorded by the FBI arranging a tryst with a $1,000 an hour call girl.

David Paterson, who took the oath of office on Monday as New York's first black Governor and the first legally blind governor in US history, said he spoke out because “I did not want to be compromised. I did not want to be blackmailed”.

Mr Paterson, 53, and his wife Michelle, 46, gave a joint press conference in the state capital of Albany only a day after receiving a two-minute standing ovation from a crowd that included Hillary Clinton.

“Both of us committed acts of infidelity. This is something, I think, in a regular marriage we would have been wishing to go to our graves with. But after talking it over, we decided to tell the truth,” Mr Paterson said. The couple, who have two children, said their affairs took place during a rocky period in their 15-year marriage.

Mr Paterson said he had liaisons with several women for several years starting in 1999, including a woman on the state payroll.

“I went to Michelle some years ago and said to her I was going to go to counselling, and I wanted our relationship to work.

“After a period of time, we were able to patch things up,” he said. “I was angry, I was jealous and I exercised poor judgment. One day I realised it and I just decided I would go to counselling.”

Mrs Paterson added: “The message I want to send to my children is that a marriage is going to have peaks and valleys but we want to show we are going to get through them. There is no marriage that is perfect.” She gave no details of her infidelity.

Mr Paterson, the son of a powerful Democratic politician who was a member of the “Gang of Four” that dominated Harlem, married Michelle, a healthcare administrator, in 1992. She has a daughter, Ashley, from a previous marriage and the couple have a son together, Alex.

Mr Paterson said he sometimes stayed with a lover at a Days Inn hotel on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, only a short subway journey from his office in his Harlem constituency when he was state senator.

He said the couple had themselves stayed at the Days Inn on the Upper West Side to rekindle their relationship after a marriage counsellor recommended they try “new and exciting things”.

Mr Paterson denied he had used taxpayers' money or campaign funds for any of his liaisons. Campaign records show that he spent $456.46 (£270) for two nights at what was then the Quality Hotel on September 10 and 24, 2001. Mr Paterson has said that he paid for a staff member to stay at the hotel at around that time.

He also denounced what he called a “sporadic rumour in Albany that I had a love child” as untrue.

The new Governor said he knew his personal life was coming under greater scrutiny after Mr Spitzer's sex scandal.

Mr Spitzer is being investigated for possible criminal offences linked to his payments to a front company for the Emperors Club VIP prostitution ring.

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