Cuomo endorsed by SI borough president

Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro on Friday gave Attorney General Andrew Cuomo his endorsement for governor, saying Cuomo's opponent, Republican businessman Carl Paladino, would be unable to accomplish what will need to be done to address the state's looming deficit.

"There's many changes that have to be made, and Paladino could not do it," Molinaro told reporters at a news conference at the Staten Island Ferry terminal.

The nod is significant because Molinaro's own Conservative Party gave Paladino its ballot line at a party convention Wednesday.

Molinaro said he was uninterested in discussing Paladino's much-publicized confrontation with a New York Post reporter or Paladino's suggestion, later withdrawn, that he had evidence that Cuomo had been unfaithful to his former wife.

"It's his own personal business, it has nothing to do with me, let him do what he wants to do," Molinaro said. "But New York State, in my opinion, would shut down if he was governor."

In an unrelated event, Cuomo said his daughters were being turned off to politics after hearing GOP opponent for governor Carl Paladino's "baseless accusations" - later withdrawn - that he had been unfaithful to their mother.

"My children read the papers," Cuomo said of the comments Paladino had made in an apparent effort to discourage the press from interest in his own child by a woman not his wife. "It's not easy for them to go through this."

Calling the talk "negative and disgusting," he said he had talked to his daughters and "explained to them the truth" about the reports in the media, which he said "demean this state."