Paladino calls Cuomo 'bad, mean-spirited'

OSWEGO - Andrew Cuomo "is a bad, mean-spirited person," Carl Paladino told a sports-bar crowd Saturday on a campaign swing through upstate New York.

"He's the poster child for everything that's wrong with Albany. He's a mean-spirited, bad person," Paladino, the Republican nominee for governor, told about 40 people inside the Press Box sports bar in downtown Oswego.

The remarks were not the first time Paladino's criticism of Cuomo, the state attorney general and Democratic nominee for governor, turned personal. Earlier this month, he questioned Cuomo's parenting skills because he took his two young daughters to the New York City Gay Pride Parade. Saturday's comment came after Paladino criticized Cuomo for not prosecuting more corruption in Albany, a theme he has hit hard in the final days of the campaign trail.

Asked by reporters later to elaborate, Paladino said of Cuomo: "That's the reputation around town isn't it. He tried to portray me that way as angry. Talk to people in his own office, anyone who has ever worked with him, anyone who has ever dealt with him when he was his father's [former Gov. Mario Cuomo] political guy. He's not a kind person. He does scare people."

In an e-mailed response to Newsday, Cuomo spokesman Josh Vlasto said: "The Carl Paladino campaign should by now be known to all New Yorkers as 'the rantings of a mad man.' "