Times Plasters More Old Complaints Against NY GOP Gov Candidate Paladino on Front Page
This is still news?
For the second day in a row, the Times rehashed on the front page old complaints against Carl Paladino, Republican nominee for New York, who will face Democrat Andrew Cuomo in the fall. Yesterday the Times worried about the governor's "bluster and belligerence." David Halbfinger on Thursday's front page, "A Cuomo Rival Set to Speak, and Spend, at Will," calls him an "explosive" candidate who "threatens to drive his populist crusade with millions of dollars in advertisements." Why use the word "threatens" to describe buying campaign advertising?
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 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.
Paladino is clearly not the Times' kind of Republican (to be fair, his GOP primary opponent Rick Lazio wasn't either).
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.
You can follow Times Watch on Twitter.
