Governor Race Tightens as Bloomberg Backs Cuomo
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE AND ELIZABETH A. HARRIS
Michael Appleton for The New York Times Michael R. Bloomberg and Andrew M. Cuomo, just before Mr. Bloomberg endorsed Mr. Cuomo for governor.
Updated, 12:50 p.m. | 9-22-10
Andrew M. Cuomo’s painstakingly-constructed veneer of political inevitability began to crack on Wednesday, as a new poll showing his Republican opponent, Carl P. Paladino, within striking distance underscored growing strains within his campaign over how to grapple with Mr. Paladino’s unexpected strength in the race.
Just hours after the poll came out, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg publicly endorsed Mr. Cuomo, and much of the back-and-forth with reporters that followed focused on the coming fight with Mr. Paladino and his recent caustic comments about Mr. Cuomo.
Released Wednesday by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, the poll found that Mr. Cuomo, the state attorney general and Democratic candidate for governor, leads Mr. Paladino by just 49 percent to 43 percent among likely voters, driven by overwhelming support for Mr. Paladino by voters considering themselves part of the Tea Party movement.
The poll surveyed 751 New York voters defined by Quinnipiac as likely to vote in November — as opposed to earlier polls that surveyed all registered voters — and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points.
Mr. Cuomo has for many months been the prohibitive favorite to be New York’s next governor and, accordingly, he has run a classic Rose Garden campaign for much of that time, tightly controlling his public appearances and in the last week refusing to engage with Mr. Paladino’s attacks on him.
But the new poll suggests that Mr. Paladino, a wealthy Buffalo real estate developer who romped to victory in the Republican primary last week, may prove to be more than a mere distraction.
At an appearance in Manhattan with Mr. Bloomberg, who announced that he would endorse the attorney general, Mr. Cuomo, looking somber, reiterated that he would not respond to Mr. Paladino’s more outrageous provocations, which have included suggestions that Mr. Cuomo lacks the back bone to face his attacks.
But Mr. Cuomo began to draw more a far more direct comparison to Mr. Paladino than he has in the last week, saying that he welcomed a debate over which candidate was better equipped to bring change to the state Capitol.
“In terms of the issues, that is a conversation that I’m excited to have,” said Mr. Cuomo. “Who has a better plan to change this state? Who has the experience to change this state? Who’s been part of changing Albany, versus who has been part of the pay-to-play system of Albany. That’s a dialogue I’m excited to have.”
Mr. Cuomo also sought to finesse the issue of outrage, arguing that while he understood voters’ anger at the political establishment, only he could harness it into a productive force for change.
“So we’re all angry!” Mr. Cuomo said. “Okay, what do you want to do? We can have an anger party, celebrate our anger. Or we can say let’s take that anger, let’s take the energy, let’s focus it and actually do something to correct the problem. Let’s actually have progress for the state. And that’s what my campaign is all about.”
Mr. Cuomo added, “My campaign says take the anger, understand the anger, acknowledge the anger, but use the energy and bring it to a positive place. Have a plan.”
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Paladino Promises a Relentless Attack Against Cuomo
By DAVID HALBFINGER AND ELIZABETH A. HARRIS
Carl P. Paladino, the winner of the Republican primary for governor, conducting a radio interview in his offices in downtown Buffalo on Wednesday morning.
BUFFALO — Fresh from having romped to a lopsided victory in the Republican primary for governor, Carl P. Paladino vowed Wednesday to attack Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo “like General Patton,” saying he would exploit Mr. Cuomo’s “immaturity” and his “ego.”
“We’re going to charge, charge, charge,” Mr. Paladino said in a wide-ranging 40-minute interview with The New York Times on Wednesday morning. “General Patton, when they told him to get up there to the bulge and bring his Third Army and help those soldiers up there — it didn’t matter who was in his way. He charged, charged, charged.”
Sitting in the corner office of his real estate company in downtown Buffalo, with his late son Patrick’s gray pit bull, Duke, at his feet, Mr. Paladino said he would assail Mr. Cuomo’s record as federal housing secretary. And he would seek to blame Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, for the broader dysfunction of state government.
“This guy Sheldon Silver, who he calls one of his best friends, was first to endorse him,” Mr. Paladino said referring to Mr. Cuomo. “I hold him as very much a part of this last government.”
Later, Mr. Paladino referred to Mr. Silver, the powerful Assembly speaker, as a “dictator.”
And, echoing a widespread conservative argument, he asserted that Mr. Cuomo had “lit the fuse” on the nation’s housing crisis by pushing to lower lending standards at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two quasi-public mortgage giants.
Asked what he saw as Mr. Cuomo’s vulnerabilities, Mr. Paladino replied: “His immaturity. His ego. I think insular is a very good word for him.”
Mr. Paladino did not elaborate in great detail, but said the first time he noticed those characteristics was when he saw that Mr. Cuomo, arriving at an event, waited for his car door to be opened rather than open it himself, and did the same when entering a building.
Mr. Paladino dismissed concerns that the Republican Party would be rocked by his nomination, saying he had already fielded a congratulatory call from the party’s state chairman, Edward Cox. “We’re on the same page,” Mr. Paladino said. “He’s getting on the bus with us and we’re all going to the dance together.”
Having spent some $3 million of his own money to win the primary, Mr. Paladino insisted he would not bypass heavily Democratic Manhattan and Brooklyn in the fall campaign, but did not make firm commitments, saying only that he would buy ads in the city’s costly television market “at the appropriate time.”
He did, however, give some specifics on his plans to taunt Mr. Cuomo into debating him, saying he would send thousands of duck calls to Tea Party organizations around the state.
Mr. Paladino also sought to explain his rationale for proposing turning prisons into dormitories where welfare recipients could be given classes on hygiene.
When he was in the military training troops at Fort Dix in New Jersey, Mr. Paladino said, “We had to teach them basic things,” even that they should clean themselves daily and brush their teeth twice a day.
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