The Republican Carl Paladino, a multimillionaire real-estate businessman from Buffalo, has received strong Tea Party support and is up against the Democratic state attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, son of the former governor Mario Cuomo, in one of the most talked-about races of the midterms.
Cuomo has won broad support across the New York business community, campaigning on a platform of freezing public salaries and taxes in the state, reform of Medicaid and limiting spending increases to the rate of inflation.
Paladino, 64, hit news headlines across the world recently when he told an audience of Orthodox Jewish leaders in Brooklyn: “I didn’t march in the gay parade this year – the gay pride parade this year. My opponent did, and that’s not the example we should be showing our children . . . I don’t want them brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option – it isn’t.” Cuomo accused him of “a stunning homophobia”.
Paladino also became the news when it emerged that he reportedly emailed racist jokes and pornographic images to his friends and suggested tbat he would “take out” a New York Post journalist for scrutiny of his family and his extramarital affair.
A New York Times poll conducted between 10 and 15 October shows Cuomo running ahead of Paladino by 59 per cent to 24 per cent among likely voters, suggesting that New York will come out in favour of Cuomo.
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