Will the Real Carl Paladino Please Stand Up?

Paladino and PaladinoDespite thinking for days that he was talking to Carl Paladino, the Republican running for Governor of New York, Imus learned this morning—when the real Carl Paladino stopped by—that it had in fact been an imposter, albeit a pretty hilarious one.

Paladino swooped into the I-Man’s Fox studio this morning on a whim, and tried to clarify comments he made yesterday about homosexuals before a group of Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn.

Claiming he wanted to make clear his anti-gay marriage position, Paladino had said children should not be “brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is acceptable.” Today, he told Imus his position is predicated on his religion.

“My feelings on homosexuality are the same as the Catholic Church,” he said. “I have no problem with homosexuals, none at all. But marriage is a sacred thing.”

His inflammatory statements, he argued, were an attempt to show how sharply he diverges from his Democratic opponent Andrew Cuomo, who recently brought his daughters to a gay pride parade, on this issue. “I don’t think I would be proud to take my child to a gay pride parade, where you had these men in Speedos, and otherwise naked, grinding against each other on the back of a truck,” Paladino said.

He added, “I think it’s disgusting.”

Imus wondered if mixing religion with policy was a good idea, but Paladino insisted, “My religious believes are the basis for my feelings.” He conceded that as Governor, he would uphold that laws of the state of New York “even if they disagree with my personal feelings.”

As the uncle of a gay man, Paladino has seen firsthand the discrimination experienced by his nephew, and promised to protect all New Yorkers from such forms of abuse. “I will advance the interests of everybody in the State of New York,” he said, adding that he’s more interested in fixing the State’s reckless spending and taxation, taking on corruption, and controlling Medicaid than he is the subject of gay marriage.

“But the main focus is jobs,” he said, though he never quite articulated how he plans to make more of them.

Paladino accused Cuomo of dragging the campaign “into the gutter” by calling him a homophobe, an anti-Smite, and a racist. “People in Buffalo know me better than that,” Paladino said of his hometown.

Charges of racism flew when it was revealed recently that Paladino had forwarded friends several salacious and racially charged e-mails with jokes about President Obama. Some also contained pictures, and Paladino recalled receiving an e-mail where Obama and his wife Michelle were made to resemble a pimp and a prostitute.

“I looked at it, and I re-sent it,” he said. “I don’t even think I laughed at it, but it was during a political season, and you’ve got all that sort of stuff.”

As for the budget he so desperately wants to fix, Paladino blamed much of the problem on Medicaid, the cost of which he said is 100 percent higher in New York than in California, the next highest state per capita.

“Why do we have emergency benefits that allow people—complete strangers—to come to the State of New York, get their operations, take care of this, that, and the other thing, and then they go back home?” he asked. “Why do our taxpayers have to suffer those burdens?”

He also questioned the need for Obama-care, which he said will add 1.5 million people to New York’s Medicaid rolls. “The people of New York want some answers, and Andrew refuses to answer them,” said Paladino, who didn’t provide any answers either.

The government, he continued, “is totally out of sync with the people it’s representing,” people who “want to feel in their hearts that they’re doing the right thing for their children, and their grandchildren.” Paladino accused the politicians currently running New York State—the Democrats—of not sharing the family values he was raised with; case in point: Andrew Cuomo dragging his daughters to a gay pride parade, and taking bribes while he was Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton administration.

Though the real Carl Paladino, a developer in upstate New York, insisted he is not a crook, the fake Carl Paladino claimed otherwise.

“I’m definitely a crook,” he said. “Also, I didn’t know we had a gay nephew.”

-Julie Kanfer