Cuomo, Paladino both claim to be anti-Albany 'outsider'

LoHud

ALBANY — When nearly 80 percent of New Yorkers say in polls that they are dissatisfied with the state's direction, the strategy for the gubernatorial candidates becomes pretty clear.  Call for change. Attack Albany. Vow independence.

In the race between Republican Carl Paladino and Democrat Andrew Cuomo, the campaign has already been defined by who can be the outsider to reform state government.

For Cuomo, he has refused to personally engage Paladino or lodge the biting criticism on him that Cuomo's surrogates have since Paladino won the GOP nomination in Tuesday's primary.

Cuomo said he wants to talk directly to voters on how he would clean up Albany, citing his record as attorney general for tackling public corruption. Reporters asked Cuomo, the son of former Gov. Mario Cuomo, whether he is a true outsider to tackle the state's woes.

"I don't think people see these concepts: inside, outside, upside down. I don't know what that means," he said Thursday. "We need a person who will reform Albany and knows how to reform Albany. My case to the people of the state will be look at what I've done as attorney general."

Paladino has assailed Cuomo for being part of the Albany establishment, such as accepting campaign contributions and endorsements from unions and lobbyists. Paladino has labeled him "Prince Andrew" and the "Status Cuomo."

The Buffalo businessman says he's the one who can shake up Albany — and do it with a baseball bat, as he has said — because he's not aligned with political parties or their leaders; he's never run for political office before.

He convincingly beat the GOP's establishment pick, Rick Lazio, in the primary.

"Republican, Democrat, the labels don't matter anymore to people. In all these disaffected voters, the people that came out for us, what did you hear?" Paladino said in an interview with Gannett's Albany Bureau. "They don't want the party leaders selecting their candidates anymore."

But Democrats have tried mightily in recent days to define Paladino as a businessman who is no political neophyte. They started running ads that knock him for giving nearly $500,000 in campaign contributions to politicians and for the millions of dollars he receives in leases from the state for buildings he owns in Buffalo. 

Jay Jacobs, the state Democratic chairman, said voters have a right to be angry about state government, which has been plagued by scandal and criticism of dysfunction. 

But, Jacobs said, Paladino's over-the-top talk — such as saying he wants to send Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, to Attica prison and have people "beat him up a little bit" on the way — is not appropriate public discourse.

"I'm not saying that people in upstate and even in downstate shouldn't be angry. They should be angry, legitimately angry," Jacobs said. "It's how you channel that anger, what you do with that anger, and the solutions that come out of that anger that really makes the measure of the man."

Gov. David Paterson called Paladino unfit to serve, citing racist and pornographic e-mails Paladino once sent and his calls for setting up "Dignity Corps" for welfare recipients in upstate prisons.

Paladino, however, has been unapologetic.

Paladino spokesman Michael Caputo said, "Clearly the ruling class in Albany has gotten a very strong message from Tuesday's primary, that the people's revolution led by Carl Paladino is coming down the road to take them out."

Hank Sheinkopf, a New York City-based Democratic strategist, said the campaign will come down to who can define themselves better amid the frustrations voters feel with the state.

A Quinnipiac University poll this month found that 78 percent of New Yorkers say they are either somewhat or very dissatisfied with "the way things are going in New York state."

"Paladino's job is to make himself less fringe," Sheinkopf said. "And then the Cuomo campaign's job is to make sure the records, Paladino's spoken record, which is all we know about him, the things he said, are balanced against Attorney General Cuomo's record of performance."