Paladino’s Accidental Running Mate Is Also His Mop-Up Man

The New York Times

Carl P. Paladino, right, the Republican candidate for governor, with Gregory J. Ed

He was booed in Harlem once a crowd realized he was Carl P. Paladino’s running mate. He has regularly reassured audiences that Mr. Paladino was speaking only metaphorically and would not really bring a baseball bat to Albany. And he has tried, with limited success, to make peace with gay leaders stung by Mr. Paladino’s description of their parades as “disgusting.” 

As New Yorkers collectively cringe every few days at Mr. Paladino’s boorish behavior and provocative pronouncements, Gregory J. Edwards, a mild-mannered former dairy farmer, has been thrust into the most thankless job in New York politics: translating, explaining and at times mopping up after him.

Mr. Edwards has embraced the role earnestly, if a bit warily. And it came to him largely by accident: he entered the race this summer as Rick A. Lazio’s choice for lieutenant governor, and he had never heard of, never mind met, Mr. Paladino, a Buffalo businessman. In the topsy-turvy Republican primary that followed, Mr. Lazio lost, but Mr. Edwards won, so he agreed to a shotgun marriage with Mr. Paladino.

Now, the task of defending Mr. Paladino’s curious, at times circuslike campaign has fallen on Mr. Edwards, 50, a square-jawed onetime Boy Scout prone to giving lectures about the American health care system and ending conversations with the word “neat.” (As in: “How neat!” to a candy store owner who gave him a box of chocolates.)

It is not an easy or especially joyous role. Even die-hard Republicans give him grief. A few nights ago, a middle-aged woman who described herself as a Fox News junkie walked up to Mr. Edwards at a local Republican Party cocktail party outside Rochester and, without an introduction, started to gripe about Mr. Paladino. “We just wish he were a bit more normal,” she told him.

While Mr. Paladino’s antics have made him a staple of local and even national television coverage, the vast majority of New Yorkers could not pick Mr. Edwards out of a lineup.

For the last four years, he has been the county executive of Chautauqua (sha-TAH-qua) in western New York, where he was born and raised, a farm-freckled, overwhelmingly white district of 139,000 — roughly the population of a neighborhood in Manhattan.

Politically, the pairing is less than ideal: filling the Republican ticket with two white men from the same corner of the state has raised questions about their ability to relate to a wildly diverse state. But Mr. Edwards’s appeal is broader than geography: as county executive, he demonstrated that Mr. Paladino’s brand of Tea Party-infused politics, with its push for small government and low taxes, could be successfully turned into policy.

He eliminated three county agencies, merging them with existing offices. He reduced the public employment rolls, starting with his personal staff: he relies on a single full-time aide, compared with the four his predecessor had. And he cut property taxes four years in a row, making him a heroic figure within the state’s Republican Party.

To his obvious chagrin, however, he was forced to raise next year’s property taxes — a decision that he attributes to reckless financial management in Albany and that he credits with inspiring him to run for lieutenant governor. “We found ways to do our job better,” he said. “But the state had offloaded their responsibilities onto county government.”

Like most Republican leaders, Mr. Edwards originally expected Mr. Lazio to capture the party’s nomination in September easily. Yet a few days after a lopsided primary, he found himself sitting across the table from Mr. Paladino at a diner in downtown Buffalo for what amounted to a job interview.

There was uneasiness on both sides. “Who was this guy behind the public presentation?” Mr. Edwards recalled wondering of Mr. Paladino. But over eggs and coffee, they bonded over a common contempt for Albany. Back at home, Mr. Edwards pored over a 40-page campaign manifesto that Mr. Paladino had written with his trademark flare and frankness. (“Are you kidding?” read one passage.)

Mr. Edwards, who practiced law until he became county executive, said he was quickly satisfied that behind the caricature of Mr. Paladino was a man with a serious plan for restructuring the state’s bloated bureaucracy and taming its runaway spending. “I couldn’t have run with a guy who was just angry,” he said. Still, it’s hard to overstate the differences between Mr. Paladino, who is impulsive, volcanic, ample-bodied and olive-skinned, and Mr. Edwards, who is analytical, restrained, athletic-looking and bleached of any ethnicity.

Mr. Edwards did not shy, during an interview, from discussing Mr. Paladino’s shortcomings, even as he sought — and at times strained — to add a positive spin.

On his tirades: “He is an absolutely passionate person.”

On his competence: “He is a very bright guy.”

On his public gaffes: “All of us are human, all of us are subject to our own frailties.”

He allowed that Mr. Paladino’s unpredictable eruptions had occasionally “distracted Carl and the campaign,” but, he hastened to add, “it was not his intention.”

After a series of high-profile missteps by Mr. Paladino, Mr. Edwards said, he urged him to focus his public remarks on a narrow set of campaign issues rather than rehashing his past. “We need to focus on the future, not what happened a decade ago,” he recalled advising.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Edwards has emerged as a deft political ambassador, smoothing off Mr. Paladino’s rough edges and deflecting criticism of his volatile style.  After Mr. Edwards had held court for two hours at a community center in the village of Phelps, about 40 miles outside Rochester, an older man pressed him to explain Mr. Paladino’s foot-in-the-mouth utterances. 

“He does speak in metaphors, he does,” Mr. Edwards said, trying to recast Mr. Paladino’s threat to “take out” a reporter from The New York Post. “He has used that when talking about the failed leadership in Albany. We are going to take out the trash and remove it — that is what he is talking about.”

The man, Floyd Ridley, a 79-year-old Democrat, seemed satisfied, calling Mr. Edwards “very impressive.”

Despite some reservations, Mr. Ridley said after the session had ended, Mr. Edwards had “fortified it to the point where I will be confident in pulling the lever for Paladino.” His only regret was that his wife, who dislikes Mr. Paladino, had not been there.

“She has only heard the bad things,” Mr. Ridley said. “I think it would have changed her mind.”

Mr. Edwards appears to specialize in converting seemingly lost causes. Near the checkout aisle of a grocery store in Geneva, N.Y., he met Dale Riley, 63, a retired water pump manufacturer who vowed he would never vote for Mr. Paladino after reading about the candidate’s temper and the way he had lashed out at a reporter.

“That really turned me off,” Mr. Riley said.

Suddenly, Mr. Edwards sprang into action. “He reacted aggressively,” he acknowledged to Mr. Riley. “Would it have been better for him to do it a different way? Yeah. But I want to let you know how emotional it was for him.”

Mr. Riley seemed to warm to the campaign after listening to Mr. Edwards’s defense. As their conversation wound down, Mr. Riley turned to Mr. Edwards’s aide and pointed to the orange and black pin on his chest, which read “Paladino-Edwards.”

“Can I have it?” he asked.

The aide handed it over and Mr. Riley pinned it to his jacket, a Paladino doubter no more.