Carl P. Paladino, a Buffalo multimillionaire who jolted the Republican Party with his bluster and belligerence, rode a wave of disgust with Albany to win his party's nomination for governor of New York on September 14, 2010.
Mr. Paladino became one of the first Tea Party candidates to win a Republican primary for governor, in a state where the Republican Party has historically succeeded by choosing moderates. He toppled Rick A. Lazio, a former congressman who earned establishment support but inspired little popular enthusiasm.
Mr. Paladino’s defeat of Mr. Lazio, 52, raised the possibility of a lopsided general election contest with Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, who has amassed a $24 million war chest.
It put at the top of the Republican Party’s ticket a volatile newcomer who has forwarded e-mails to friends containing racist jokes and pornographic images, espoused turning prisons into dormitories where welfare recipients could be given classes on hygiene, and defended an ally’s comparison of the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, who is Jewish, to “an Antichrist or a Hitler.”
He laced a speech in mid-October with antigay remarks, telling a gathering that children should not be "brainwashed" into thinking that homosexuality was acceptable, and criticized his opponent for marching in a gay pride parade earlier in the year.
Mr. Paladino, who portrays Mr. Cuomo as the favored candidate of the political elite, showed surprising strength against his opponent in a poll released in late September. Although a subsequent poll showed Mr. Cuomo with a comfortable lead, his painstakingly constructed veneer of political invincibility began to crack, and he and his advisers struggled to find a strategy for engaging with a combative new opponent.
A CAMPAIGN CATCHES FIRE
Mr. Paladino, a first-time candidate who roamed the state with a pit bull named Duke and stayed late after campaign events to hug supporters, swamped Mr. Lazio by a ratio of nearly two to one, lifted by strong showings in Erie and Niagara Counties, where his message of economic populism was especially resonant.
Mr. Paladino, 64, energized Tea Party advocates and social conservatives with white-hot rhetoric and a damn-the-establishment attitude, promising to “take a baseball bat to Albany” to dislodge the state’s entrenched political class.
Mr. Paladino’s unpredictability and devil-may-care approach to campaigning, coupled with his willingness to say almost anything and to spend millions from his fortune, could pose unwelcome challenges for the exceptionally risk-averse Mr. Cuomo.
Mr. Paladino’s platform calls for cutting taxes by 10 percent in six months, eliminating cherished public pensions for legislators, and using eminent domain to prevent the construction of a mosque and community center near ground zero. Those proposals could make Mr. Cuomo’s farthest-reaching reform ideas seem meek by comparison.
The sweeping agenda caught fire with Republicans, especially those far from New York City and distrustful of the party’s moderate wing.
EARLY YEARS
Mr. Paladino’s father, Belesario, who immigrated to this country from Italy at age 6, raised three children on Buffalo’s East Side and became a city water inspector. For the older man, the home was an oasis amid a taxing blue-collar life.
Carl, the oldest, revered his father, whose second job, selling and repairing medical equipment, paid for the son’s parochial school education — a luxury in their neighborhood — and for his college tuition.
His father sent him to St. Bonaventure University, a small Roman Catholic institution 90 minutes south of Buffalo that seemed insulated from the upheaval of the 1960s. Even among his crowd, Mr. Paladino was an admitted square, organizing weekend social events, playing chess into the wee hours and performing drills with his R.O.T.C. unit.
After graduating in 1968, he received a deferment to attend Syracuse University College of Law. He drove home each weekend, a 300-mile round trip, to work on a newspaper printing press to help pay for his classes.
Three years later, he traveled with his pregnant wife to Fort Bliss, an Army post in Texas, where he was soon given command of 200 soldiers training for combat in Vietnam, where he expected to be sent. Mr. Paladino’s unit, however, would not be deployed.
BUSINESSMAN TURNED POLITICIAN
Mr. Paladino made his name in Buffalo, first as a lawyer and then as a real estate magnate. He developed a knack for spotting buildings with huge moneymaking potential. His net worth has been estimated at $150 million.
Critics point out that he is the largest landlord for state offices in Buffalo, despite his denunciation of government spending. His lease agreements to various agencies total $10 million a year, according to the state comptroller.
Mr. Paladino, with the help of the Republican consultant Roger J. Stone Jr., has fashioned a campaign around anger ("I'm mad as hell," his slogan reads), far-right conservatism (he calls global warming a "farce") and reform in Albany (he frequently talks of "cleaning out the dirty trash"). He has pledged to reduce state spending by 20 percent in his first year.
Even as he has ignited passions from Staten Island to Schenectady, Mr. Paladino has endured a series of embarrassing episodes, including the revelation that he forwarded e-mails that included racist slurs to friends. Mr. Paladino's personal life has also been in the spotlight. His son Patrick had a history of addiction. Mr. Paladino has acknowledged fathering a daughter outside of his marriage but points out that he supports the girl and maintains a strong relationship with her. To help deflect criticism over his past, he hired a campaign manager who specializes in crisis management.
Although Mr. Paladino has styled himself as the anti-establishment candidate bent on reforming state government, he is himself a quintessential capital insider. Over the years, he has quietly funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to candidates across the state through a technique that campaign finance experts say major donors have often used to mask their donations and avoid public scrutiny.
INSIDER V. OUTSIDER
An analysis by The New York Times has showed that Mr. Paladino has given money to an assortment of politicians — including governors, state legislators and judges — through about two dozen obscure corporate entities under his control. With the entities bearing names as varied as 2468 Group, 8927 Group, JP Group and Slade Group, it would be nearly impossible for anybody reviewing campaign finance disclosure reports to know that the source of the money is Mr. Paladino himself.
The money he has given governors and state legislators is also notable because Mr. Paladino has considerable business interests before state government. In 2002, for example, the administration of Gov. George E. Pataki awarded one of Mr. Paladino’s companies tax incentives under a special program intended to encourage economic development. The tax breaks coincided with 10 donations totaling $33,000 that Mr. Paladino made to Mr. Pataki’s re-election campaign that year through seven corporate entities under the businessman’s control, according to a review of state records. The donations were made before and after tax breaks were granted.
Among other things, the analysis by The Times shows that Mr. Paladino, who holds himself out as a fiery ideologue on the campaign trail, has been highly practical in the way he has doled out money, contributing to both Democrats and Republicans. Blair Horner, the legislative director for the New York Public Interest Research Group, said the contributions by Mr. Paladino showed that he was no different from other businessmen taking advantage of loopholes in the state’s lax campaign finance system.
The Times analysis of Mr. Paladino's donations showed that he has given nearly $450,000 over the last decade largely through corporate entities under his control.
THE REAL RACE BEGINS
An inflamed electorate, brimming with anti-incumbent fervor, was supposed to be a rare blessing for New York’s frayed and forlorn Republican Party, improving its long odds against Mr. Cuomo. Now, however, the party has become a victim of that passion and rage as those sentiments are channeled against it by Mr. Paladino.
Mr. Paladino has shown that he is explosive, he does not play by the usual rules, and his throw-the-bums-out message has clearly connected with voters. But he will be charging steeply uphill against Mr. Cuomo, a familiar face with strong approval ratings in a heavily Democratic state. Senior Democratic officials said they still believed that Mr. Cuomo would win, but expressed concerns that he was not doing enough to galvanize his own base, and suggested that he needed to confront Mr. Paladino directly.
Others questioned whether the Cuomo campaign’s response to Mr. Paladino’s victory in the primary — allowing surrogates to express doubts about his fitness for office — had only played into Mr. Paladino’s assertion that Mr. Cuomo was too tied into the status quo to change it.
Attacking Mr. Paladino could inadvertently prolong what might otherwise be a short-lived postprimary boomlet for Mr. Paladino, or resurrect Mr. Cuomo’s reputation for political hardball and brashness, a reputation he has worked for years to shed. One thing was clear: any notion that Mr. Cuomo can ignore Mr. Paladino is now gone.
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