“It’s like a game show,” Martin J. Golden, a Republican state senator from Brooklyn, said Wednesday. “There’s no reason to have hammered this out as long as he did. It’s a fiasco.”  Of course, had Mr. Paterson announced his choice earlier, he could have avoided the embarrassing sequence of events that unfolded on Wednesday night.  The high-stakes nature of the appointment, with the political celebrity of the contenders and the intense interest they drew, seemed to catch Mr. Paterson off balance at times throughout the nearly two months since Mrs. Clinton’s name first surfaced as a potential secretary of state to Mr. Obama.  The speculation that followed the governor wherever he went often has been a tripwire for a man known for a relaxed approach to managing and a tendency to speak off the cuff.  Some of the confusion has been of his own doing, and other times it has been caused by the actions of those under consideration.  Ms. Kennedy’s swing through upstate New York in December turned into a media circus as hordes of television cameras and reporters followed her from Syracuse to Rochester to Buffalo for meetings with officials.  The trip caused two members of New York’s Congressional delegation, Steve Israel of Long Island and Carolyn B. Maloney of Manhattan, to make their own whistle-stop tours upstate this month, inviting criticism that they were adding to the frenzy.  For his part, Mr. Paterson has conducted the selection process much like a business owner placing a want ad. He has encouraged people to reach out to him, invited them in for interviews and asked candidates to fill out a lengthy questionnaire that asked things like whether they had ever been fired from a job or had employed illegal immigrants as household help.  Mr. Paterson’s secrecy only fueled the speculation: He refused to release the questionnaire and he would often not answer when asked whom he had interviewed.  And when he has disclosed information about the process, often the result has been confusion. For example, his aides said on Tuesday that he had interviewed Byron Brown, the mayor of Buffalo, late that afternoon. But earlier in the day Mr. Paterson told reporters he had essentially settled on a choice.  Despite the vagueness of many of his public answers, Mr. Paterson has rarely shied away from the opportunity to speak about the issue. When he was in Washington this week for the inauguration, he was interviewed by MSNBC and CBS and twice by CNN.  He even told reporters at an inaugural ball on Tuesday night that he had spoken with the actress Sharon Stone about the appointment. “Sharon Stone mentioned someone, but I don’t remember who it was,” a tuxedoed Mr. Paterson said.  And he has seemed to relish the attention at times. While making his way across the ballroom floor at the Washington Convention Center on Tuesday night, he could not take more than a few steps without being stopped by people eager to offer unsolicited advice.  Some have accused him of exploiting the moment.  “It looks like sort of a cat-and-mouse game, like he’s having fun with it,” said George H. Winner, a Republican state senator from Elmira.  Mr. Paterson rejects that notion. “Believe me. The last thing I need right now is any more attention,” he said.  With Ms. Kennedy exiting the field, however, Mr. Paterson is assured of more attention.  A news analysis article in some editions on Thursday about criticism of Gov. David A. Paterson’s handling of the selection process for a senator to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton misidentified, in some copies, one critic who likened the ordeal to a “game show.” He is Martin J. Golden, a Republican state senator from Brooklyn  not Martin Connor, a former Democratic state senator.  A version of this news analysis appears in print on , on Page A29 of the New York edition with the headline: In Casting a Senator, Double-Takes By the Governor. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
At times, Gov. David A. Paterson seemed caught off balance by the scrutiny he faced after he became responsible for filling a vacant Senate seat.