Housekeeping ain't no joke.

Look at all the "reality" shows we have - what do they have in common?  They all involve people scheming, manipulating, and being mean to one another.  That's what we call entertainment nowadays.

What I think worked the magic to unscrew this was Patterson loudly announcing he would be appointing Richard Ravitch as Lieutenant Governor.  This was a move of legal dubiety, since the state Constitution apparently makes no provision for such an appointment while the state law governing public officers apparently requires such an appointment:  "the governor shall appoint"  officers when vacancies occur.  So there was shaping up to be a donnybrook fight in the courts and Espada got the word that changing back would be much easier for all involved, particularly him.

The funny part was in the NYDN editorial, where they praised Patterson's choice of Ravitch to high heaven, viz.:

First, Paterson settles the critical question of who would be in charge should the governor be incapacitated.

The answer is that New York would not fall into the hands of a two-bit crook and coveter of the throne like Sen. Pedro Espada. Instead, the state would be led by a man who has enjoyed distinguished careers in the private and public sectors, not least rescuing mass transit from collapse as Metropolitan Transportation Authority chief in the 1980s.

Second, Paterson pushes the Senate toward emerging from the paralysis of infantile, destructive bickering in that, as lieutenant governor, Ravitch would wield the gavel and serve as a potentially tie-breaking vote. Deadlock be gone.

Third, the Paterson administration - indeed, Albany at large - gains a wise head who has no political ambitions, is expert on issues ranging from transportation to finance and can speak with enormous credibility about the dire challenges that loom over the state far beyond the senatorial shambles of the moment.

Never in long memory has the Capitol been more in need of adult supervision than it is today. The Legislature has been reduced by boss rule to a collection of check-cashers with virtually no sense of the greater responsibility. They had also gotten it into their heads, with some grounds, that Paterson was an easy mark.

And then there was their praise of Ravitch himself:

Not that I'm complaining, but you have to wonder why a smart, distinguished, seemingly sane guy like Richard Ravitch would come anywhere near here these days.

Ravitch is, by all accounts, a hell of a public servant. And hell is exactly what he's signing up for by accepting Gov. Paterson's dubiously legal appointment as lieutenant governor.

Maybe he's atoning for some long-forgotten transgression of his youth. Maybe he's building up a surplus of good karma.

Whatever his reasons, Ravitch the good solider is marching smack into the middle of a snake pit at the Capitol.
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It's not that Ravitch isn't up to the challenge.
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He helped save the city from bankruptcy in the 1970s as head of the state's Urban Development Corp. Then he steered the Metropolitan Transportation Authority through a fiscal crisis in the early '80s.
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So the question isn't whether Ravitch is qualified for this lousy job.

The question is, why would he want it?

He has nothing to prove as a good citizen.
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The only plausible explanation is that Ravitch has adopted the firefighters code: When everyone else runs out of a burning building, you run in.

Espada's electoral future is, itself, dubious.  The Bronx DA has been poking around his alleged residences trying to find out whether he actually lives within his district, talking to the neighbors, pulling in the housekeeper late in the evening for an extended interview, and such.  Lately, there has been a rash of reports of NYS Assembly-people and Senators not living in their districts (usually, they're representing poorer-darker districts and living in a "second" home in a richer-whiter area), and a big prosecution would not be an unexpected climax to that media campaign.  

I think, when all is said and done, Espada may be happy to walk away from his current job without an indictment and go into the much-more lucrative and much-less regulated field of lobbying his prior colleagues.  And I think Messrs. Wink, Blink and Nod all came to that consensus and the deal was done.