Cuomo: Voters take Paladino remarks with grain of salt

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Friday that New Yorkers know they should take rival Carl Paladino's cracks about Cuomo's "prowess" with "two grains of salt."

Asked by reporters after an abortion-rights rally in White Plains about Paladino's three-minute gubernatorial campaign infomercial on Thursday in which he said Cuomo's "prowess is legendary," Cuomo said he hadn't watched it.

"I've got better things to do," the Democrat said, sounding a little weary. He repeated his promise to keep his campaign out of the "gutter."

"You want to talk about real issues, talk about real issues. If he [Paladino] wanted to wage a substantive campaign, he would have . . . I've put out hundreds of pages of thought-out positions," Cuomo said.

The rally was hosted by Planned Parenthood Advocacy of New York and the Westchester Coalition for Legal Abortion-Choice Matters, which added their endorsements to the pile for Cuomo.

Also Friday, Paladino, the Republican and Conservative nominee, found something nice to say about Cuomo, sending out a news release commending him for extracting a guilty plea on corruption charges from former state Comptroller Alan Hevesi.

But the faint praise came with Paladino's typically caustic criticism. The Buffalo developer also questioned why Cuomo didn't prosecute another former comptroller, H. Carl McCall, or Democratic Party fundraiser Steve Rattner, whom Cuomo investigated but never charged in connection with his state pension probe.

"Andrew Cuomo has shown a disturbing pattern of letting Democrat bigwigs like McCall and Rattner off the hook," Paladino said in a statement. "Andrew's not a prosecutor, he's a selective prosecutor."

Earlier, Cuomo was asked in White Plains whether the Oct. 18 Newsday-News12-Hofstra debate will be the only one before Election Day.

"We have one debate now, and we'll keep talking," he said.

A reporter asked: Are you open to more debates? There were three last time.

Cuomo: "Well, we'll keep talking."