With the overwhelming support of Republicans in western New York, Buffalo businessman Carl Paladino was able to cruise to the party’s 2010 nomination for governor before he suffered a crushing loss that fall to Andrew Cuomo.
On Tuesday, Paladino, now with a laundry list of controversial statements from the years since then, hopes many of those same voters can lift him to a primary victory that will almost certainly lead to a win later this fall.
The primary for New York’s redrawn 23rd Congressional District, spanning the Buffalo suburbs through the southwestern part of the state, sets Paladino against Nick Langworthy, the chairman of the state GOP.
The campaign has been a 12-week sprint after Rep. Chris Jacobs, R-N.Y., announced he would not seek re-election after he expressed support for a ban on assault-style weapons. There is a separate special election Tuesday to fill the brief remainder of Jacobs’ turn.
Both candidates have sought to highlight their closeness to former President Donald Trump, while Paladino is endorsed by Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 3 House Republican — which caused consternation among GOP leaders, given Paladino’s well-documented history of making incendiary and racist comments, NBC News reported in June.
Polling has been sparse and all over the map. An independent survey released this month by Associates of Buffalo found a neck-and-neck battle, while a Paladino campaign survey last month suggested he was up by 30 points. The winner of the matchup is almost assured of winning the general election, as the Cook Political Report rates the district as a safe Republican seat.
Republican strategist Michael Caputo, a Paladino ally, said the district’s heavily Republican makeup will work in Paladino’s favor.
“It is the most Republican district in New York and one of the most Republican districts in the Northeast,” said Caputo, a former Trump administration official. Referring to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, he said: “And there are elements of the kind of McConnell wing of the Republican Party in New York and many, many Democrats who just cannot get used to something that is increasingly inevitable. And that’s that they’re going to be calling him Congressman Paladino. Suck it up. Get used to it.”
Paladino’s bid has brought renewed attention to his rhetoric. Soon after he entered the race, he sparked backlash over a post on his Facebook account claiming mass shootings this year in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo were “false flag” operations. Then, audio of an interview Paladino gave to Buffalo’s WBEN radio last year was unearthed in which he said Adolf Hitler was “the kind of leader we need today.”
Paladino said in a statement that the remarks were a “serious mistake,” but he argued that they were not in proper context. But just last week, Paladino told Breitbart Radio that Attorney General Merrick Garland “should not only be impeached, he probably should be executed,” after the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate this month, according to The Associated Press. He said later in the same interview that he was “just being facetious,” which a spokesperson reiterated to The Buffalo News.
“Carl does not think Garland should be executed, and when you listen to the interview, when asked what he meant, he stated he was being facetious,” the spokesperson told the paper.
In 2016, Paladino, then a member of the Buffalo Board of Education, made racist remarks about then-first lady Michelle Obama’s being “let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla,” and said he wished then-President Barack Obama would die of mad cow disease after having sex with a cow. He later said he “could not have made a worse choice in the words I used to express my feelings.”
A source close to Paladino, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the race, suggested that Paladino’s habit of headline-making comments has not had much of a negative impact with primary voters.
Paladino has “admitted to a lot of things that have come out that he didn’t really mean,” this person added. “Again, being kind of a normal average Joe, people can identify with that. Because everybody kind of says something stupid once in a while.”
Chris Grant, an adviser to Langworthy’s campaign, cited the competitive nature of the race to argue that voters do care about Paladino’s past comments.
It is not a choice between “crazy Carl and a crazy socialist Democrat,” Grant said. “It’s between crazy Carl and a very Trumpy, very conservative younger candidate who isn’t going to embarrass the district.”
The race has been bitterly contested. Paladino allies have criticized Langworthy for campaign materials that they say make it appear as if Trump endorsed his campaign. Paladino also sent a letter asking all GOP county leaders and many GOP activists to urge Langworthy to step down as chairman, accusing him of being conflicted and of improperly using party resources to boost his candidacy. Langworthy has denied the accusations.
Kendric Payne, a vice president at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit government watchdog group, told NBC News in a statement: “This is more of a conflict of priorities than a conflict of interest.”
Langworthy’s campaign, meanwhile, has sought to compare Paladino, who is celebrating his 76th birthday Wednesday and would be one of the oldest House freshmen ever elected, with President Joe Biden. And his ads have attacked Paladino for years-old donations to Democrats and for Planned Parenthood’s being a tenant in a building his company owns.
“Carl Paladino is like the Joe Biden in this race,” Grant said in response to the conflict-of-interest accusations. “So I get that it’s difficult for him to walk and chew gum at the same time.”
Asked about the attacks on his age, the source close to Paladino said: “Does [Langworthy] realize that 75% of the Republican primary voters in this district are over age 55? Is that really a wise move?”
Trump has not made an endorsement in the race. He has close ties to both candidates, which each has touted throughout the campaign. Trump supported Paladino’s 2010 gubernatorial bid, and, in turn, Paladino was an early supporter of his first presidential bid. Meanwhile, Trump backed Langworthy’s bid to become state party chairman, which was ultimately successful in 2019.
But while Trump has not offered his backing, a pair of influential House Republicans with big ambitions have. Stefanik, who held a tele-rally for Paladino on Monday evening, announced her support for Paladino almost immediately after Jacobs announced his retirement. And Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., the chairman of the influential Republican Study Committee, announced his support for Langworthy in early July. Banks is a potential rival of Stefanik’s for a leadership post in the next Congress.
A New York Republican close to Langworthy, who requested anonymity without authorization to speak about the race, mentioned being “cautiously optimistic” about his chances.
“Everyone thinks that because he won that gubernatorial primary so handily and the vote from western New York was ridiculous,” Paladino will walk away with Tuesday’s election, this person said. “But it was a different time. Granted, there was controversial stuff about him, but not to this level.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
