COLONIE -- "That wasn't easy," Carl Paladino said as he took the podium to accept the state Conservative Party's gubernatorial nomination.
The line elicited a big laugh from the 60-odd delegates assembled Wednesday afternoon at the Holiday Inn Turf on Wolf Road -- including a number of supporters of former Congressman Rick Lazio, who gave up the Conservative line on Monday after winning it overwhelmingly in the Sept. 14 primary.
"I had a great team before I walked in here," Paladino told the crowd, "and now I've got the greatest team."
State Conservative Chairman Michael Long, a Lazio supporter, described the nomination as the end of a combative phase in his relationship with Paladino, a wealthy Buffalo developer whose win in the Republican primary shocked many members of the GOP establishment.
Paladino's win on the Republican line was more than shocking to state Conservatives: It imperiled the party's chances of winning 50,000 votes in the general election, the threshold required to maintain its regular ballot line.
The day before the primary, Long had called Paladino a sure loser in the general election and "a dangerous candidate" for Republicans -- a comment that Long amended slightly Wednesday as he answered press questions with Paladino at his side: The candidate was dangerous, Long said, "to the liberals of this state and to the dysfunction of Albany."
Lazio bowed out without endorsing Paladino, who he lumped in with Democratic nominee Andrew Cuomo as "flawed individuals." Lazio was hastily nominated for a state Supreme Court judgeship, one of the get-off-the-ballot mechanisms that allowed the party to replace him with Paladino. (The other options included Lazio's death or departure from New York.)
Long insisted the party hadn't tossed Lazio aside to shore up its ballot line. "It came about that Mr. Lazio and Mr. Paladino and the Conservative party had more in common," he said. " ... We all have one thing in common: Andrew Cuomo should not be elected governor of the state of New York."
Aside from a few proxy abstentions, the only vote against Paladino came from Ross Brady, a Brooklyn delegate. Outside the meeting, the slightly subdued Brady -- a Lazio supporter -- said his vote was "a matter of conscience."
In contrast to that placid scene, Paladino and his campaign manager Michael Caputo got into a Wednesday-evening dustup with New York Post columnist Fred Dicker at the Sagamore in Bolton Landing, where Paladino was addressing a Business Council meeting.
Outside the gathering, Dicker asked Paladino to provide evidence of a charge he had made to Maggie Haberman of the website Politico in an interview that appeared online late in the afternoon: that Cuomo had been unfaithful to his former wife, Kerry Kennedy.
As seen in video shot by the local cable news station YNN, Paladino refused to provide evidence, and accused Dicker of sending a photographer in pursuit of pictures of his 10-year-old daughter -- the child of Paladino's own extramarital affair. Dicker denied the charge and Paladino's accusation that the journalist was a "bird dog" or "stalking horse" for Cuomo.
After Paladino peeled off, Dicker came close to physical confrontation with Caputo. "You're off our Christmas card list," the campaign manager said.