Andrew Cuomo, state attorney general Democrat, defeated Republican Carl Paladino in the race for New York governor Tuesday.

‘The people have spoken tonight, and they have been loud and clear, and they spoke all throughout this campaign,’ Cuomo said.

‘They’re disgusted, and they are right, and what they are saying today is they want reform, and they want that government in Albany changed, and that’s what they’re going to get.’

Cuomo beat Paladino, a businessman from Buffalo who had galvanized Tea Party support and made headlines for his outspoken criticism of political insiders in a particularly vicious campaign.

The other losing candidates in the seven-person race were Green Party veteran Howie Hawkins, former New York madam Kristin Davis, Libertarian candidate Warren Redlich, Rent Is Too Damn High Party candidate Jimmy McMillan and Freedom Party candidate Charles Barron.

With 90 percent of the polls reporting, Cuomo officially won the race with more than 61 percent, or 2,314,912 votes. Paladino had 33.7 percent, or 1,266,574 votes. And Hawkins took 1.4 percent, or 52,867 votes. Cuomo takes the chief office in New York, which opened up when Gov. David Paterson dropped his election bid.

As attorney general, Cuomo, 52, pushed to cut government corruption, amp up transparency and reform the student loan industry. He will be the second in his family to win governor of New York. His father, Mario Cuomo, was governor of New York from 1983 to 1994.

Cuomo gained his early political experience as an adviser in his father’s office. He then joined the Manhattan district attorney’s office before becoming attorney general in 2006.

The political math was stacked in Cuomo’s favor. In New York, Democrats outnumber Republicans 8 million to 3.5 million, according to the Onondaga County Board of Elections. There are 500,000 registered members of the Independence Party, 165,000 in the Conservative Party and about 29,000 in the Green Party. About 3 million voters, 19 percent, are registered with no party affiliation.

Paladino, who graduated from Syracuse University’s College of Law, is known for his pledge to take a ‘bat to Albany.’ He promised less spending, less government and fewer taxes, and he took heat for anti-homosexual remarks on the campaign trail.

At the polls Tuesday, voters expressed less enthusiasm for Cuomo and more distaste for Paladino when casting their vote.

Mark Shetsky snapped a photo of his wife and baby outside of Hillside Work-Scholarship Connection, where he voted. Shetsky said he voted for Cuomo mostly to prevent Paladino from winning.

‘It’s a character issue,’ Shetsky said. ‘We can’t have a governor who throws chairs.’

Shetsky said he would have voted for Green Party candidate Hawkins but ‘didn’t want to waste his vote on a candidate that wasn’t going to win.’

That’s a constant hurdle for the Green Party, which succeeded in getting 52,867 votes in this election this year. That many votes secure them an automatic ballot line on the state ballot for the next four years.

Jennifer Sinclaire, 42, said she voted for Cuomo in the hope that he could turn the job market around. Sinclaire felt the effects of the recession firsthand. She watched two companies she worked for go bankrupt.

‘I think he can change things. He has a clear point of view and proved himself a driven leader as attorney general,’ she said.

But Vince Pietrzak, 48, voted straight Democrat except for in the gubernatorial race, in which he picked Paladino. Pietrzak called Cuomo a career politician and said he wanted to see an outsider take on the state’s biggest problem: the economy.

‘We need someone new. Paladino’s a businessman who can make changes,’ Pietrzak said. ‘He’s had some foot-in-mouth problems, but I think it’s peripheral to what he’d do for the economy, which hasn’t improved.’

Tammie Thomas, a single mother of five, born and raised in Syracuse, voted down the Democrat line. ‘People are frustrated right now with the government, but we can’t expect the Democrats to undo years of what the Republicans screwed up,’ she said. ‘People have short-term memories.’

At his campaign headquarters in Buffalo, Paladino ended his concession speech with a message for his opponent, Cuomo.

‘I said I was going to take a baseball bat to Albany,’ Paladino said. ‘My baseball bat is a metaphor for the people who want to take their government back. As the next governor, you can grab this handle and bring the people with you to Albany or you can leave it untouched and run the risk of having it wielded against you because make no mistake, you haven’t heard the last of Carl Paladino.’

At the end of his victory speech Tuesday night, Cuomo rallied the crowd with a unified message for New Yorkers — black, white, straight, gay, rich and poor.

‘Yes, we have challenges; yes, we have to clean up Albany; yes, we have to get the economy running; yes, we have to rebuild trust with the people,’ he said. ‘We’re going to do all that because we’ve faced worse before, but we’re gonna do it united. That’s what makes this state this state, and that’s what’s gonna make this state the Empire State once again.’

jmterrus@syr.edu 

Published on November 2, 2010 at 12:00 pm