Seeking a reset of his faltering campaign for governor, Carl P. Paladino bought a three-minute advertisement on local television stations in Buffalo on Thursday to try to persuade New Yorkers that he is a serious candidate for governor, despite recent flare-ups and angry outbursts.
Looking composed, Mr. Paladino offered no apologies, not even for an altercation with a New York Post reporter that catapulted him to national prominence while sowing fears among fellow Republicans about his temperament.
Instead, Mr. Paladino, a Buffalo businessman, tried to refocus the conversation on the severity of the state’s problems and his belief that traditional politicians cannot be trusted to solve them.
“Our state is in a death spiral,” Mr. Paladino said in the advertisement, filmed near his office in Buffalo. “We pay the highest taxes in the country. Spending and debt are widely out of control, and many in our Legislature are crooks. Our state is hemorrhaging jobs; our young people move as soon as they graduate. Upstate and downstate are dying.”
The advertisement followed a tumultuous week for Mr. Paladino, who faced criticism for injecting personal attacks into the race, including an off-the-cuff suggestion that his Democratic opponent, Andrew M. Cuomo, had engaged in extramarital affairs. He was also criticized for suggesting on Tuesday that the powerful State Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, was a criminal.
Even Roger J. Stone Jr., an informal adviser to Mr. Paladino and a longtime Republican consultant, publicly criticized Mr. Paladino’s strategy this week and urged a new direction — remarks that dismayed Mr. Paladino, an aide said.
No comments:
Post a Comment