New York – Still beating back accusations that he was biased against gay people, Carl P. Paladino, the Republican nominee for governor, said on Tuesday that he had made some mistakes in communicating his ideas on the campaign trail.
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In an interview with John Gambling on WOR-AM (710), Mr. Paladino said he had “definitely stepped on my message” in recent weeks, noting the uproar over his recent comments that children should not be exposed to homosexuality in schools and that gay pride parades were “disgusting.”
He also pointed to two other episodes that he said were distracting: his near-altercation with a New York Post reporter and comments he made suggesting that Sheldon Silver, a powerful Albany lawmaker, was a criminal.
But Mr. Paladino did not apologize for his words. He faulted the news media for turning his remarks into an overheated controversy and said he was seeking to turn the focus to policy.
“It just seems like there’s a continuous misstatement, or abuse or exaggeration by certain members of the press that just keep chasing us around,” he said.
Mr. Paladino has consistently pointed his finger at the news media for his campaign troubles, saying reporters have held him to a higher standard than his Democratic opponent, Andrew M. Cuomo.
In addition, Mr. Paladino said it was “probably” a mistake to allow rabbis whose congregations he visited on Sunday to have input into his remarks on gays. One of Mr. Paladino’s speeches on Sunday originally included a line deploring gay lifestyles as “dysfunctional,” but Mr. Paladino said he had crossed out the remark, suggested by a rabbi, before the speech and never intended to deliver it. Still, he was widely condemned when a draft of his remarks that included the line was made public.
Even as Mr. Paladino attempts to shift the focus to policy, he could not resist taking a jab at Mr. Cuomo, the state’s attorney general, saying he should be ashamed for marching in a gay pride parade with his children.
“If he’s really a father, you don’t bring your children and expose them to that nonsense,” he said in an interview with Curtis Sliwa on WYNM-AM (970). ”That’s like taking your kid to a strip show.”
he never should have listened to levine – Levine does not represent Orthodox Jews.
The left leaning media loves Cuomo and his extremist liberal positions. Instead of highlighting his pro-homo, pro-tax, pro-muslim, etc. they spin and highlight Paladino’s words to make him look like a right-wing extremist just as they do with members of the Torah observant community. They call us “Ultra” or “Extremist” Orthodox Activists but they’ll let the real extremist left-wingers slide.
Paladino is obviously crude but his positions are definitely our community’s positions. Rabbi Levin seems to be the only Rav with the courage to speak up and tell it like it should be!
By now we should know how to respond to the media’s misrepresentations and deceptions.
Yidden, open your eyes!! Use your brains!! We’re not lemmings. Study the candidates positions from “reliable” sources NOT from the Times nor from any
self-serving organizations or individuals. Make your own intelligent choices.
At least this guy says whats on his mind. As crazy as that mind might be. Cuomo is stam a liberal oisvorf just like his father. How quickly we forget the years his father was governor. If you want a repeat of the Cuomo years then by all means vote for the son. Me on the other hand am pulling the lever or pushing the button( if the machines work) for this clown.
How come no standing up for his guy all is comments are 100 percent, I would take it even further.
For a man who fathered mamzerim and sent grossly obscene porno to his chevrah via emal to call Cuomo unprincipled because he allowed his older girls to participate in a gay pride parade which included many of the state’s elected officials is truly bizarre.
P.S. For those purists, I know that his child of of wedlock is technically not a “mamzer” under halacha .
He should just keep his mouth shut instead of erring everytime he speaks. To blame rabbis for what he said! What chutzpah. Almost like Bilam’s donkey.
To Reb Paskunyak:
Yidden have opened their eyes while you have closed yours and decided to engage with abominations like levin and paladino because they obcess over the one or two issues which you misrepresent as the primary concerns in this election. What people do in their bedrooms is NONE OF OUR BUSINESS. We need a focus on jobs, health care, budgets etc. not abortion and gay rights. On those economic issues, Cuomo is not ideal either but at least he is a rational and coherent human being whereas Paladino and Levin are hateful bigots of the worst type. Levin parades around like an idiot pandering to every right wing lunatic group that wants a “yiddle mit a beardle and black hat” to prove that they are not anti-semitic.
Paladino is right, the gay “pride” parade is pornography come alive on Fifth Avenue. Topless women flaunting and men pantomiming acts of sodomy…it is no place for children and, in fact, should not have a place out in public on a Sunday afternoon. They should rent the Meadowlands and parade out there, in the swamp.
He has my vote.
#8  212; you got that right!! Most politicians curry favor with the voters saying and doing things they don 217;t really believe in. At least Paladino is not a pretender, though I doubt his unrefined unguardedness will get him the votes he seeks.
To Reb Anonymous #7 :
Rav Levin is in step with many of the Chasidishe Rebbes of today and of yesterday. Many non-Chasidish Rabbonim agree with him to but most Rabbonim, Chasidish & non-Chasidish, are referred to as “Moreh Mereinu”. (or Mereini depending on your persuasion) When it comes to speak up they are moyre of the mereinu! Many Rabbeim are afraid to speak up about issues because they’re afraid of offending anyone. I know of the tremendous support that Rav Levin has in the frum community, from the leadership on down. His detractors are those in our community who have liberal leanings such as the Jewish Deviants (Reform, Conservative, homo, feminists, etc.) and/or self-serving community organizations who are waiting for handouts from the Demorats. Even Agudah is beginning to wake up in parts of the country (such as upstate NY) and support Republicans and Conservatives.
Cuomo is a name of the past. He is a nobody and a nothing. Paladino, as crude as he is, has fresh new ideas and will clean out the shmutz in Albany. No one is perfect but Paladino is our only hope that NY will survive as a viable state. The homo issue is not an obsession except that the media focuses on that issue to take the spotlight off of all the rest of the important issues. He made one specific speech on one particular day at one function attended by religious people and all the media can do is make that his only issue.
Compare both candidates on the important issues and you will agree with me that Paladino is the better candidate for Governor.
To Aryeh
did you vote for Goebels too?? How can a yid vote for such a hate-monger??
“Study the candidates positions from “reliable” sources NOT from the Times nor from any
self-serving organizations or individuals.”
Pakunyak – Isn’t that exactly what this Levin chalerya is – self serving?
What a chillul Hashem this is!!
It is one thing for us to have an understanding of right and wrong, but it’s a completely different thing for us to be seen by the uneducated, unthinking masses as being bigots.
We don’t believe in hating gays, we don’t believe in persecuting anyone at all!
We should not allow ourselves to appear to be aligned with people who have a difficulty differentiating between hatred or violence and love of a moral code!
I won’t bother responding further to Paskunyak. Anyone who can so distort daas torah, make despicable comments about the large percentage of yiddin who are not frum and claim that all the big rabbonim are silently supporting Levin is clearly troubled and suffers from the same terrible need for validation as Levin himself.