'I'll take you out, buddy!' Republican candidate for governor tells reporter during confrontation.
Bolton Landing, NY — Aides had to separate Republican governor's race candidate Carl Paladino and a reporter during an angry exchange before a speech Wednesday night.
New York Post State Editor Fred Dicker asked Paladino to provide proof of his suggestion to the Politico blog that his Democratic opponent, Andrew Cuomo, had extramarital affairs. Cuomo is divorced from Kerry Kennedy, Robert Kennedy's daughter.
Paladino refused but said he would provide proof "at the appropriate time," then accused Dicker of being biased for Cuomo, the state's attorney general. Paladino criticized Dicker because a Post journalist recently went to the home of Paladino's 10-year-old daughter, who was fathered out of wedlock.
"I'll take you out, buddy!" Paladino said to Dicker toward the end of the five-minute confrontation.
"You'll take me out?" Dicker responded. "How are you going to do that?"
"Watch," Paladino said, leaving the scene, the lobby of the Sagamore Conference Center.
"Are you threatening me?" Dicker shouted as Paladino left.
Paladino spokesman Michael Caputo said afterward that a Post photographer recently put the lens of a camera against the daughter's bedroom window while she was practicing for a school dance and she has had bouts of crying and has been calling her father every day since.
Caputo also claimed journalists he didn't name were photographing mail from Paladino's mail box. He said Paladino's campaign would cut Dicker off from interviews, but he later rescinded that.
Dicker has been able to land some of Cuomo's few press interviews on Dicker's Albany radio show on WGDJ-AM.
New York Post reporter Fred Dicker (left) interviews New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg during Dicker's WGDJ-AM radio show. Dicker got into a shouting match with gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino Wednesday night.Paladino branded him a Cuomo employee.
"You're a stalking horse!" Paladino said loudly to Dicker in the confrontation, during which his aides had to step between them. "You work for Andrew Cuomo."
Paladino later told The Associated Press it was the way Dicker "came into my face that was aggravating." He refused to answer questions after a long, well-received speech to the state Business Council.
Paladino raised the question of Cuomo's fidelity in a blog just hours before he was to speak to the Business Council. Dicker wanted to know what gave him reason to do that.
"What evidence do you have?" Dicker said. "Do you have any evidence for the accusation you made? It's a simple question."
Post spokeswoman Suzi Halpin said the newspaper had no comment.
In 1987, Dicker was part of a public shoving match and was knocked to the floor by a top aide to Assembly Speaker Mel Miller as Dicker challenged the aide on payroll issues.
In an earlier press conference in an Albany suburb, Paladino blamed Cuomo for a news story that brought up past incidents among his staffers, including a decades old drunk driving arrest of one aide and the tax problems of another. Paladino called it "nonsense" and declared his family is "off limits."
"You find someone who doesn't have a problem in life," Paladino said in the earlier news conference, following his acceptance of the nomination of the state Conservative Party. Paladino called Cuomo "disgraceful" for what he said was a desperate leak of the information.
"His clip is empty," Paladino said of Cuomo, using a firearms term for a lack of ammunition.
There was no immediate comment from Cuomo.
» Undisputed King Of Albany Press Is Fred U. Dicker [New York Observer]