Daily highlights from Newsday's political blog

PALADINO: 'NICE' TO GAYS. Despite his remarks about gays, Carl Paladino said he's "not a homophobic" and treats everyone equally. In Buffalo, that is apparently both true and untrue. Tim Moran, publisher for 14 years of Outcome, Buffalo's gay monthly newspaper, said Paladino and his companies have never contributed to or attended the city's annual gay pride parade or other gay civic events. But in 2006 he rented space in his Crosby building to a gay bar, which went under in 2007, Moran said. Paladino's real estate company, Ellicott Development, also bought about $1,000 worth of advertising from Outcome in 2009. The ads were for apartments Paladino's outfit was trying to rent, Moran said.

Moran said Paladino is known to be "very nice to his gay employees" and surmised he is calibrating his recent remarks about gays to appeal to a conservative audience. "He thinks that everybody else is anti-gay so he thinks this is in the mainstream."

CUOMO, DINAPOLI'S 'SITUATION'. As he was walking to his car on East 72nd Street, we asked Andrew Cuomo what Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, the lone statewide Democrat running without the attorney general's endorsement, needs to do to win his backing. "It's not about anything he can or can't do, it's about the situation," Cuomo said. He didn't elaborate further.