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United States News Title: Paladino, Cuomo Rival, Set to Spend at Will He is explosive, he does not play by the usual rules, and his throw-the-bums-out message has clearly connected with voters. He is also rich, and threatens to drive his populist crusade with millions of dollars in advertisements. That combination makes Carl P. Paladino, the newly minted Republican nominee for governor, a potentially tricky opponent for Andrew M. Cuomo, who many believed would face a more placid candidate this fall, Rick A. Lazio, a former congressman. On Wednesday, top Democrats and strategists for Mr. Cuomo, acknowledging that Mr. Paladino has tapped into genuine anger at Albany, said they would move to turn the focus away from that message and onto the man, who they say is unfit for the job. In an interview, the Democratic state party chairman, Jay Jacobs, described Mr. Paladino as a “wacko,” and the Cuomo campaign promised to release a tough attack ad within days that would portray Mr. Paladino as unacceptable to New Yorkers. They intend to keep reminding the public of his more outrageous moments, like his circulation of bigoted and pornographic e-mails and his likening of the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, to the Antichrist. And they said they expected Mr. Paladino to continue to supply them with ammunition. “The best spokesperson to win votes for Andrew Cuomo is Carl Paladino,” said Phil Singer, a consultant to the Cuomo campaign. “Our strategy is to just let him talk.” Mr. Paladino, for his part, vowed to attack relentlessly, and in an interview Wednesday morning said he would exploit Mr. Cuomo’s vulnerabilities like his “immaturity” and his “ego.” With Duke, his pit bull, resting at his feet, Mr. Paladino said he would assail Mr. Cuomo’s record as federal housing secretary and seek to blame him for the dysfunction of state government. “We’re going to charge, charge, charge,” he said in his Buffalo office. “General Patton, when they told him to get up there to the bulge and bring his Third Army and help those soldiers up there — it didn’t matter who was in his way. He charged, charged, charged.” Mr. Paladino, of course, will be charging steeply uphill against Mr. Cuomo, a familiar face with strong approval ratings as attorney general and a commanding lead in a heavily Democratic state. And Republicans are not rushing to align themselves with Mr. Paladino. The party’s nominees for comptroller and attorney general both said Wednesday they would not be endorsing anyone in the governor’s race. Democrats also question whether Mr. Paladino’s unabashedly angry tone — with his promises to “take a baseball bat to Albany” — would appeal to independents and suburban moderates, the sorts of voters that Republicans have traditionally counted on to overcome the nearly 2-to-1 Democratic registration advantage in the state. Still, Democrats and analysts pointed to a number of risks that Mr. Paladino’s candidacy poses to Mr. Cuomo, chief among them the possibility that Mr. Paladino could use his money to try to soften his rougher edges for a general-election audience. With that in mind, Mr. Cuomo’s allies raced to begin to define Mr. Paladino, particularly to downstate voters who have not yet heard much about him. In a joint statement, former Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato, a Republican, and the Democrats Edward I. Koch and H. Carl McCall, respectively former New York City mayor and former state comptroller, denounced Mr. Paladino as “a divisive figure simply not fit to lead” New York. Democrats said with prevailing political winds against them this year, their priority was to motivate core constituencies, like minorities, women and labor unions, to try to offset the conservative surge Mr. Paladino has generated. In addition, Mr. Cuomo will have to avoid focusing so much of his time on trying to disqualify Mr. Paladino that he fails to make a persuasive case to voters that he, despite his lineage and long record in politics, is the more capable agent of change in Albany. Indeed, Mr. Cuomo began making that argument on Wednesday, releasing a new advertisement saying he has the experience and independence to deliver needed reform. Bruce Gyory, a Democratic consultant not involved in the governor’s race, pointed to Mr. Cuomo’s centrist calls for a property tax cap, spending cuts and standing up to public-sector unions. “The question is, can Paladino take this energy force he’s generated among upstate Republicans and translate that into getting Independent support and Democrats to defect?” he said. “The Cuomo platform is giving him precious little space with which to do that.” Mr. Jacobs, the state Democratic chairman, said Mr. Cuomo’s policy proposals would stand in stark contrast to those of Mr. Paladino, who gained attention recently for suggesting housing welfare recipients in vacant prisons to teach them job skills and hygiene, and for telling an upstate crowd recently that residents of Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx, were “not like us.” “If we can make sure that people understand that Democrats are angry, too, about our problems, and have sensible solutions that they’re proposing to fix them, then a fair-minded public will look at him as the wacko that he appears to be,” Mr. Jacobs said. Still unclear is how much of his fortune Mr. Paladino is willing to spend against Mr. Cuomo, who has $24 million. Mr. Paladino previously said he would spend up to $10 million on the race, but on Wednesday he suggested he might exceed that amount, and an aide said the campaign believed Mr. Cuomo could be defeated with less than $20 million. Mr. Cuomo will also have to decide soon whether to debate Mr. Paladino, if only to counter Mr. Paladino’s contention that Mr. Cuomo is afraid to face him. (Mr. Paladino plans to send thousands of duck whistles to supporters and to send aides in duck costumes to Cuomo events.) “He’ll avoid debating Paladino as long as he can,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic consultant who is not working with the Cuomo campaign. “The danger of debating him is when you have an opponent who’ll say or do anything, you can’t prepare for him.” With Mr. Paladino’s team led by the consultant and provocateur Roger J. Stone Jr., Democrats and analysts also said Mr. Cuomo should take pains to maintain the cool manner and self-discipline that have characterized his public persona in recent years, even as he remains shadowed by an earlier reputation for vindictiveness. They noted that Mr. Paladino had referred several times to Mr. Cuomo as “Andrew” in a taunting manner in his victory speech on Tuesday night. “He has to not give evidence that he’s the man people fear he is, rather than the man people hope he is,” Gerald Benjamin, a political scientist at SUNY New Paltz, said of Mr. Cuomo. But Mr. Sheinkopf, who advised Mr. McCall in 2002 in his successful primary bid for governor and credits his own goading of Mr. Cuomo with helping knock him out of that contest, said Mr. Cuomo had acquired plenty of self-control in the years since. “Taunts won’t work,” he said. Wherever it leads, the race promises to be like no other in memory, if only because of Mr. Paladino’s uninhibitedness. In the interview on Wednesday, when asked about his plan for teaching welfare recipients hygiene in converted state prisons, he recalled that when he was in the military, training soldiers at Fort Dix, “we had to teach them basic things,” even that they should clean themselves daily and brush their teeth twice a day. From there, in the kind of impulsive tangent that his admirers find refreshing and detractors find off-putting, Mr. Paladino segued into a reverie about the inside of barracks bathrooms and their lack of privacy. Elizabeth A. Harris contributed reporting. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Looks like another vote for Marijuana Reform Party this year!!!
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#1. To: WhiteSands (#0)
EPT?
here's what the Buffalo media says about him: http://www.allbusiness.com/government/government-bodies-offices-regional-local/14297252- 1.html Once again, the tea party is played for suckers.
Does Paladino have a chance?
everyone has a chance. Cuomo has $24 million and a 33 point lead in the polls though.
Yes.
I saw his mug quite a bit on the TV news last night.
I'd vote for Paladino over Cuomo if I had them as the only choice. The best governor that this state has seen since I've been here was Pataki and he ran on the same premise if a bit more understated. I thought he did a fine job. I think Paladino, when all is said and done, is a shrewd whack job. We tried that recently with Spitzer. Yea...I voted for him.
I suppose these final weeks before the elections will be interesting to watch - all over the country.
Personally, I think the GOP is in for a surprise...self infiicted. I'm trying to figure out the logic that believes: Independent voters who in two consecutive elections put the more progressive candidates into office are now going to turn on a dime and put right wing whack jobs in.
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