While Lazio may ignore the blunt-speaking Buffalo businessman, no one else can.
Republican candidate for New York governor Carl Paladino speaks to supporters at a chicken barbecue at Long Branch Park in Liverpool on Aug. 30. Dressed as Uncle Sam is Tom Kazmierczak of Oneida. Dressed as a chicken at right is Amber Garcia of Buffalo. Paladino faces a primary election Sept. 14 against Republican Rick Lazio.Syracuse, NY -- Rick Lazio walked into the Onondaga County Republican Committee’s annual clambake ten minutes before it ended.
A few people were nursing their drinks in the dark and the other candidates were gone.
Lazio walked confidently up to the television cameras and summarized his race against Democrat Andrew Cuomo for governor in the November election. As always, Lazio breezed by the fact that he has to first win Tuesday’s Republican primary.
Hours earlier, when there were still people and clams, Carl Paladino stopped at each table to shake hands and ask people to vote for him instead.
By the time he left, many in the crowd of loyal Republicans said they were afraid to say out loud how they planned to mark their ballots Tuesday.
Paladino is not the kind of polished candidate Republicans are used to running for the state’s top office. But money, anger and the rallying cry of Tea Party patriots could lift his outspoken, underdog campaign to the party line.
A Quinnipiac University poll last week showed Lazio with a 12 percentage point lead over Paladino, but there’s a huge block of voters who said they were undecided or could change their minds.
The primary for governor is not even on the radar of the other candidates, who would normally coordinate appearances as a ticket.
Ann Marie Buerkle, a Republican candidate for Congress, said that she had not heard from either candidate. When asked who would get her vote, she paused.
“I haven’t really thought about it,” she said, adding that she would support the designated candidate.
Republican New York gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio speaks to reporters at the Onondaga County Republican Committee's annual clambake Wednesday at Hinerwadel's Grove in North Syracuse. At a convention earlier this year, the Republican Party designated Lazio to run for governor.
Lazio, 52, has been a public prosecutor, a Suffolk County legislator, and served four terms in Congress. In 2000, Lazio lost a very visible race for U.S. Senate to Hillary Rodham Clinton. After that, he went to work as president and chief executive officer of the Financial Services Forum, a non-profit policy group for chief executive officers, and as a member of the executive committee of J.P. Morgan Chase.
A Wall Street job title is difficult to talk about on the campaign trail. Opponents further defined the job as a Wall Street lobbyist and said that he took a $1.3 million bonus in 2008, during the federal bailout.
Lazio talks about his business experience on the campaign trail to say he knows what business owners and investors want.
Still, Lazio has not gained traction in his race against Cuomo, the attorney general, and he has had a difficult time raising money. He had only $502,000 to spend at the end of last week. Cuomo, by comparison, has no primary opponent and had $23.6 million in July, his latest filing deadline.
Lazio’s weakness became an opportunity for Paladino, 63, a millionaire.
Paladino won only 8 percent of the vote at the party convention that nominated Lazio to run. But he forged on, promising to spend $10 million of his own money. So far, he has reported spending $2.6 million. He tapped into the Tea Party network and collected enough signatures to challenge Lazio to a primary. Supporters also collected enough signatures to put his name on a new minor-party line, called the Taxpayer’s Party, in November.
Paladino doesn’t have to put on much of a show to lend credibility to his campaign slogan, “I’m mad as hell.” He had to delete the “hell” from his signs so people would put them in their yards. But that is the only evidence of a political correctness filter. He has said that President Obama worships himself, Gov. David Paterson is a drug addict, Sheldon Silver “fits the bill of an anti-Christ or Hitler” and that he wants to clean out Albany with a baseball bat.
The comments make people cringe, but get their attention in a way that Lazio has not.
“Do I think Carl Paladino wants to go down to Albany and beat people with a baseball bat? No. That’s the kind of things we say to each other as New Yorkers,” said Bob Smith, the former Onondaga County Republican Chairman who intends to vote for Paladino.
Since the convention, Paladino said he has secured the endorsement of eight Republican Committee chairs.
In Central New York, Cayuga County Chairwoman Cherl Heary announced in August that she would support Paladino.
This week, Lazio claimed the support of Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney in a voter’s guide and Paladino’s campaign called him a liar. Mahoney said she was not taking sides.
Onondaga County Republican Chairman John DeSpirito said he is sticking with Lazio, but he said Paladino is “right on tune with the Republican principles” and he would be able to support him if he wins.
As Paladino gained ground this summer, newspapers started reporting his unorthodox ideas and investigating his background.
An Associated Press story on Thursday said that one of Paladino’s development companies pleaded guilty to a felony charge a decade ago for failure to detect asbestos in a Syracuse bowling alley he was demolishing.
The New York Times reported that Paladino has funneled campaign contributions to candidates through his businesses, which have names no one would recognize, such as JP Group. As he rails against liberals, records show, he has donated to Democrats Hillary Clinton, Charles Schumer and Al Gore.
Other reports have been critical of the Empire Zone and other tax breaks he takes on his real estate holdings and the millions of dollars his companies receive from state agencies who rent space. He holds about $85 million in leases with state agencies, according to The Buffalo News.
Paladino was accused of forwarding racist and sexually explicit e-mails, which his campaign manager acknowledged, but said did not represent his own views.
There have been revelations about his family life. He has acknowledged fathering a daughter out of marriage and keeping the information from his wife. His son, who died last year in a car crash, had a history of addiction, reports have said.
He has had trouble reducing his ideas into television sound bytes, a problem he blames on reporters, whom he jokes should have term limits.
Paladino’s plan to put welfare recipients to work has been reduced to his “prison plan” in headlines.
Paladino wants to transform some New York prisons into dormitories for welfare recipients and the unemployed to work, train and take lessons in personal hygiene. He said the plan, called the Dignity Corps, is based on the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression.
The plan was ridiculed.
Lazio and Paladino have similar positions on many issues, including opposition to a proposed mosque near the World Trade Center and the idea that state government should be smaller and integrity restored. The two differ in the delivery.
Lazio has used the $100 million mosque proposal to push Cuomo. Lazio believes Cuomo should use his powers as attorney general to investigate the group’s fundraising.
Paladino said it doesn’t matter who paid for it. He believes it’s an insult to put a mosque anywhere a cloud of dust containing human remains fell over Lower Manhattan. When he is governor, he said, he would “stop the Mosque that very day by any legal means necessary.”
On reducing the size of government, Lazio wants to review all state agencies within the first 100 days to see which ones should be merged, closed or run more efficiently. He says he would start with the Legislature, which spends almost $1 million to support 212 lawmakers.
Paladino says he wants to cut 20 percent of the workforce. He wants the good public employees to provide information about their coworkers and bosses who don’t work hard enough, misuse state cars and expense accounts and double dip on the state pension system.
Paladino appeared at a rally in Onondaga Lake Park last week with two people dressed as chickens to demonstrate his annoyance that Lazio would not debate him.
“Mr. Lazio has no message. The message doesn’t ring. He doesn’t illustrate fortitude and he doesn’t illustrate very basic things like a sense of responsibility to tell your electorate what you’re about,” he said.
Lazio rarely talks about Paladino.
“I stay very focused, as I always have on the general election,” he said.
Lazio said it’s easy to throw stones and criticize, but he is trying to have a more hopeful message about jobs and strong communities.
Lazio said the state doesn’t need a “shock jock” for governor.
Michael Caputo, a Paladino spokesman, responded, “If Rick Lazio thinks that voters prefer an easy listening disc jockey to go in and try to work with Albany and continue the status quo, he’ll be truly surprised on Tuesday.”
Contact Michelle Breidenbach at mbreidenbach@syracuse.com or (315) 470-3186.