denier billionaire ATTACKS 14 year-old
Transition Zone
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As a child, NY Republican Governor Candidate "Carl [P. Paladino]
grabbed me by the ear and ran me out the door. He kicked me in the
backside about six times, not hard. He was saying, 'Don't you ever
come back.' That's how I met Carl Paladino."
NYTimes.com Sep 24, 2010 The Provocateur Loading Paladino’s
Slingshot
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
Published: September 24, 2010
He has hired strippers to embarrass a political opponent. He cycles
through eight pairs of eyeglasses to make himself more difficult to
recognize. And he readily shows reporters the scar from a bullet
wound
he says was the result of a drunken encounter with a rival in Russia.
In Diverging New York Polls, Methods Mattered (September 25, 2010)
Michael R. Caputo’s impish spirit and no-holds-barred campaign style
have helped propel his boss, Carl P. Paladino, a relatively unknown
real estate mogul from Buffalo, to the Republican nomination for New
York governor and have Mr. Paladino now menacing the once seemingly
unstoppable Andrew M. Cuomo.
Behind each outlandish advertisement, slingshot tactic and red-meat
riff of Mr. Paladino’s campaign is Mr. Caputo, his campaign manager,
whose high-octane brain plays foil to his candidate’s high-velocity
mouth.
From Mr. Caputo’s pen have come some memorable gibes at Mr. Cuomo,
Mr.
Paladino’s Democratic rival, whom they have dubbed Prince Andrew,
Status Cuomo and Br’er Andrew.
From Mr. Caputo’s mind have come blistering attack advertisements,
including one that featured a fake photo of Mr. Cuomo, the state’s
attorney general, shirtless in the shower and covered in mud, as part
of an effort to portray him as a slimy politician.
During more than two decades in politics, Mr. Caputo has advised
Boris
Yeltsin and promoted Reagan administration policies in Central
America. At one point, he says, fearing that Russian thugs were after
him, he went into hiding on a boat in South Florida with only a
parrot
named August West for company.
He has brought his unconventional approach to American politics as
well — deploying people wearing duck suits and blowing whistles to
drown out opponents at political rallies, and dispatching comely
models outside polling stations to lure more voters to his
candidates.
As he operates behind the scenes, Mr. Caputo, 48, has become an
indispensable coach to Mr. Paladino, who likes to say that he is
still
learning to be a politician. Mr. Paladino considers Mr. Caputo the
campaign’s creative force, devising his go-for-the-jugular
offensives.
“I’m facing some major demons here, and I needed someone who could go
right back on top of them in a matter of minutes,” Mr. Paladino said.
“You’ve got to let them know they are going to get punished.”
Mr. Caputo, who spent much of his childhood in Buffalo, recalls that
he met Mr. Paladino the hard way.
He was 14 and a self-described juvenile delinquent. One day, he was
caught by a newsstand worker stealing a box of change in a building
owned by Mr. Paladino.
Within seconds, Mr. Paladino was rushing downstairs. He grabbed the
boy by the ears, dragged him outside and kicked him in the legs six
times.
“Don’t you ever come back,” Mr. Paladino said, according to Mr.
Caputo.
(While Mr. Paladino does not recall the confrontation, he does not
dispute the account.)
They did not cross paths again until March, when Mr. Paladino was
considering a long-shot bid for governor. Mr. Caputo, who says he was
hoping to settle into a leisurely life after spending much of his
career in crisis management, had just moved back to Buffalo from
Florida to work for his father’s insurance company.
But then Mr. Paladino called. He had heard good things from Roger J.
Stone Jr., a Republican consultant known for his ferocious tactics
who
remains an influential adviser to Mr. Paladino’s campaign. Mr. Stone
was a mentor to Mr. Caputo, who had once served as his driver, and
told Mr. Paladino that his protégé understood that successful
campaigns involved making politics entertaining.
Those who know Mr. Caputo say he shares Mr. Paladino’s sensibilities.
“He’s a colorful character who has found a candidate who is just as
colorful and just as much of a character as he is,” Robert H. Ryan, a
longtime Republican consultant, said.
But Mr. Caputo is his own brand of Republican. He cites Ronald Reagan
and Jerry Garcia as people who have shaped his worldview (he has
attended hundreds of Grateful Dead concerts). He has also written
extensively on protecting the environment.
“He’s a countercultural guy,” said Mr. Stone, who is second only to
Mr. Caputo’s father on Mr. Caputo’s speed-dial. “He’s as likely to
show up in a tie-dyed T-shirt as a three-piece suit.”
Mr. Caputo began his career in message-managing as an Army public
affairs specialist based in Hawaii.
After leaving the military, he worked for conservative politicians,
including former Representative Jack Kemp. His career eventually took
him to countries including Ukraine, Mongolia and Honduras. He said he
was briefly kidnapped in El Salvador on a diplomatic mission for Mr.
Kemp.
Mr. Caputo worked for the United States Agency for International
Development as an adviser to the Yeltsin administration in 1995. It
was in Russia that he got the scar, on his right ankle, from a run-
in,
he says, with a drunken political operative.
When he returned to the United States in 1999, he found the American
political scene boring.
“In Russia, the fascists want to kill you, the communists want to
starve you, and the democrats want to pick your pocket for a while,”
Mr. Caputo said. “I got back to the United States and I realized that
the only difference between John Kerry and George Bush was a degree
of
tax cut.”
He made a cameo appearance in New York politics in 2007 when Eliot
Spitzer was governor, making it his mission to forward negative
articles and unflattering cartoons about Mr. Spitzer to anyone with
influence.
On the Paladino campaign, Mr. Caputo is part of a three-person team
responsible for executing the campaign, which includes Nick Sinatra,
a
former confidant to Karl Rove, and John F. Haggerty Jr., a former
campaign worker for Michael R. Bloomberg whom the Manhattan district
attorney has accused of stealing $1.1 million of the mayor’s money.
On a recent day at campaign headquarters in Buffalo, Mr. Caputo
yelled
at Mr. Paladino as the candidate stumbled through a script for a
YouTube video on a plan to use prison space to teach job skills to
welfare recipients.
“Just think about it, Carl,” Mr. Caputo demanded as he tried to get
his boss to focus.
“It’s not coming good,” said Mr. Paladino, muttering a series of
expletives.
Opponents have denounced Mr. Caputo’s high jinks as crass. “Not every
idea he has is a winner,” his friend Mr. Stone said.
But Mr. Caputo is unapologetic. He wasted no time in cooking up
another madcap advertisement on Wednesday when Mr. Bloomberg, New
York’s billionaire mayor, came out in support of Mr. Cuomo.
In an e-mail to reporters, Mr. Caputo dismissed the two men as
political elites who traveled in the “same royal coach.”
“One upside to this,” Mr. Caputo wrote. “The two can stop passing
Grey
Poupon back and forth from their limousines. It’s holding up traffic
on Park Avenue.”
-- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/nyregion/25caputo.html
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Carl Paladino "believes global warming is a 'farce'".
--http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20016461-503544.html
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Baby killers abroad mean babykillers at home.