When WNYC’s Brian Lehrer asked him about the infamous emails during a recent radio interview, Mr. Paladino was indignant. “I’m human,” he said. “I’m human like you and like everybody else. So don’t pontificate to me, O.K.?”
Mr. Lehrer left it at that.
Mr. Paladino’s defiance has its downsides, even for a campaign predicated on combat.
Last month, the candidate floated the idea that poor New Yorkers could be relocated to refurbished prisons to receive job training and lessons in “personal hygiene”. (Mr. Caputo produced a Web video casting the idea as a CCC-inspired “Dignity Corps”).
Last week, Mr. Paladino said that the boroughs he liked were Staten Island and Queens, because they were like upstate. (Mr. Caputo said he was responding to a question about travel.)
“The challenge is that Carl has deeply held beliefs and an incredible urgency to communicate them. And if he’s told it’s not going to go over well with the political class, it encourages him,” he said. “The difficult part as a political consultant is to force yourself to climb over the sides of the box and join him. That’s a very hard thing to do.”
The challenge, according to the campaign, is not to rob Mr. Paladino of his blunt exceptionalism but simply to get him to use words and terms that won’t muddle his message. But Mr. Paladino isn’t always receptive to the advice.
“Sometimes, you know he’s thinking in his head, ‘Screw the two of them, I’m going to say what I want,’” said Mr. Haggerty. “And then he says it.”
MR. PALADINO’S CAMPAIGN has embarked on a multimillion-dollar ad and mail blitz in the primary’s final week, designed and targeted by the veteran pollster Tony Fabrizio. And, should Mr. Paladino pull off the upset, there’s always the possibility of some darker arts. “We’re going to be rolling out a lot of things that have never been seen before in American politics,” promised Mr. Caputo.
The last time Mr. Caputo made a ripple in New York politics was in 2007, when he started two anti-Eliot Spitzer Web sites from his tugboat–an effort that happened to coincide with Mr. Stone’s new gig as an adviser to the Senate Republicans in Albany.
And the two men remain close.
They met in the late 1980s, when Mr. Caputo left Buffalo to join Jack Kemp’s nascent bid for president, but he arrived in Washington too early, and had the good fortune to be hired in the interim as a driver for Mr. Stone. “Roger’s like a big brother to me,” Mr. Caputo said. “I’ve had problems in my life, and the first person I call is Roger Stone.”
(But Mr. Caputo insisted his Spitzer Web sites were born out of his own problems with the governor.)
“I can assure you that we will do everything legal and possible to win this election,” Mr. Caputo said. “Watch this space. The Internet’s a wonderful thing. The people of New York are wonderful people. There’s a lot of potential out there to get the truth out about Andrew Cuomo.”
“It will be fun–no matter what happens–between September and November when Carl wins the primary,” said Mr. Haggerty. “You can say what you want, but you know it’s going to be a great show.”
“I keep saying: I can’t wait for the day after the primary. I don’t know who we’re going to have to control more–Caputo or him. You know what I mean? They’re aching to swing,” he said. “And it’s like, ‘O.K., guys, one step at a time.’”
rpillifant@observer.com
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