This was the week that Carl P. Paladino was to become not a man of anger but a man of ideas, of action and, yes, of amiability.
After nearly coming to blows with a reporter last week, Mr. Paladino, the Republican nominee for governor of New York, gathered with his advisers to complete an extensive campaign platform. He posted a video assuring voters that the race for governor was “not about divorces or affairs,” but about jobs and economic growth. His campaign scheduled a round of interviews on national television.
“We’ve left that gutter politics,” Mr. Paladino told
Matt Lauer on Tuesday on the “Today” show. “We’re interested in talking about the issues.”
But Mr. Paladino could not stay cuddly for long. At each turn, from a ballroom packed with executives in
Midtown Manhattan to the seemingly friendly environs of a
Fox News Radio show, his inner junkyard dog kept slipping its leash.
As a moderator at the Midtown event gently ventured a question about dignity in the governor’s office, Mr. Paladino interrupted with a tirade about
Sheldon Silver, the Democratic Assembly speaker. “The man is a criminal,” Mr. Paladino insisted. “And don’t try to make him look like anything else.”
That comment drew outrage even from critics of Mr. Silver, a powerful lawmaker often cast as a symbol for
Albany’s resistance to change. Yet Mr. Paladino also drew a surprisingly cool reception during a Monday interview with
Bill O’Reilly, who warned his guest that he was in danger of ruining his reputation with voters.
Mr. Paladino replied, “The people of
the state of New York have been maligned, and I’m probably one of the few people with the intestinal fortitude to go and take on these demons in Albany and do the right thing.”
“Alright,” Mr. O’Reilly said, raising his hand in surrender. “Don’t hit anybody, O.K.?”
The tour has demonstrated the difficulty Mr. Paladino faces in trying to become more than the sum of his irritations — even in a year when New Yorkers share those irritations and may hunger for an unconventional candidate.
A survey released on Tuesday by the
Siena Research Institute underscored those difficulties: 61 percent of respondents defined as likely to vote in November agreed with the statement that Mr. Paladino was “a loose cannon who doesn’t have the temperament to be governor.”
Strikingly, 59 percent viewed Mr. Paladino unfavorably, while only 30 percent viewed him favorably. The poll had a margin of error of four percentage points. “While Paladino has quickly become very well known among New York voters,” said Steven Greenberg, a Siena spokesman, “it is not in a good way.”
That survey followed national headlines about Mr. Paladino’s altercation last Wednesday with a New York Post reporter,
Fredric U. Dicker, who challenged Mr. Paladino to provide evidence of accusations he had made that
Andrew M. Cuomo, his Democratic opponent, had been unfaithful to his former wife. Mr. Paladino retracted the attack on Mr. Cuomo the next day, only to raise the issue again the day after that, suggesting he had evidence of misconduct on Mr. Cuomo’s part but refusing to release it.
From the beginning of his campaign, Mr. Paladino has deliberately shaped himself as an unpolished avatar of New Yorkers’ rage, from his promises to “take a baseball bat” to Albany to the slogan — “I’m Mad As Hell Too, Carl!” — emblazoned on his campaign buttons and lawn signs. Now Mr. Paladino seems to be struggling with the new him.
When Mr. Lauer asked whether Mr. Paladino believed voters wanted an “angry candidate,” Mr. Paladino answered the question delicately. “I don’t think it’s anger,” Mr. Paladino said. “I think it’s people that are very frustrated. And I’m just a reflection of that frustration.”
