If you’re somewhat politically involved, there’s a very good chance that in recent weeks, you’ve been subjected to a variety of emails from local developer and unfortunate politician Carl Paladino. Earlier missives had branded former Senator Al D’Amato a “predator”, while more recently he’s turned his venom on State Senator Tom Libous.
No, I don’t know enough about Senator Libous to adequately explain why Carl Paladino would publicly embarrass him. But Don Clarey, the chairman of the Albany County Republican Committee had something to say about it:
From: Donald Clarey [mailto:donclarey@xxxxx.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2012 1:11 PM
To: Carl Paladino
Subject: RE: Letters to Senator Tom Libous
Dear Carl, I am tired of your pathetic screeds that you send me. The latest, about Senator Libous has caused me to respond.
I have known Tom for over thirty years – long before you became a Republican. Tom Libous has done more for the Southern Tier and the State of New York than you have done for the Niagara Frontier and our State. While no elected official is perfect, Tom compares favorably with his predecessor, Majority Leader Warren M. Anderson – perhaps the greatest legislator this State ever had. But I am sure that by your standards you would consider him a RINO for working to Save New York State with Governor Carey (gasp! a Democrat).
I have read your rantings and ravings over the past several months and frankly they show how ill-informed you are about civic affairs and politics. Let us do a little math: The Governor is a Democrat (in part because of you). The Democrats control 100 of 150 seats in the Assembly (many from Buffalo). The Republicans, until the recent Special election in Brooklyn, controlled that body by one seat. Is that a formula for enacting the laws you mentioned in your letter? Unlike you, I live in the real world. While I would like the Triborough Amendment and the other measures you mentioned repealed, it can’t happen under the current political make up. Your efforts to undermine Senator Skelos and his members will only make it worse. Nice job. By the way, I know you were trying to get a primary opponent against George Amedore here in Albany. It was fun to chase you ass out of Albany County on that one.
I am embarrassed that I voted for you in the primary and general election in 2010. Your clownish, thug-wannabe campaign cost us Harry Wilson’s victory, one House seat (NY1), and at least one Senate seat. Your continued effort to hurt the Republicans lead me to believe you are a double-agent on behalf of the Democrats – by the way, when did you switch parties?
I sure that irrelevance is hard to take – and you sure are taking it harder than most; please crawl back into your clown car and drive it back into the hole you came out of.
By the way, take me off your email list. I am afraid you might forward racist, obscene, and misogynistic e-mails like you have done in the past.
With minimum high regard,
Donald A. Clarey
Chairman Albany County Republican Committee
That’s entertaining enough, and good reading. But Carl felt compelled to reply:
In response to your letter below Don, whatever you think Tom was, he has evolved today into a sellout—a poster child for term limits. I have no ego to fulfill sir. If relevance is on your mind, you should be concerned with your own. You obviously have learned little in your career about public service. Running for office was only the beginning statement for me.
You say you know about enacting laws. Did you know it takes three to do anything in Albany?
If the Republican party continues in its present disarray with only good old boy leadership it will continue its trip into true irrelevance. We fought hard to regain a Republican majority in the Senate. The only way to hold on to that was to provide real opposition to the liberal progressives advancing a Republican agenda and Republican values. Even after their defeat of 2010, the Senate RINOs chose to run scared and climb in bed with the Cuomo/Silver cabal. They played footsie with each other using illusion and theatrics with a complicit press scared of the Albany ghosts.
As long as the Republicans control 1/3 of the of the vote in Albany they can veto anything. That’s where the bargaining comes in, Tit for tat. Did you see any of that in the last session? Of course not. The RINOs make excuses like that to hide their incompetence. Do you really think Dean Skelos has the intelligence and ability of a Warren Anderson? Warren would have beat the loving hell out of the democrats over the last 2 years.
By the way I did not try to get an opponent for Amedore and you did not chase my ass out of town. If I had tried to do something, the likes of you wouldn’t stop me.
Also Harry Wilson only lost because you and your RINO buddies advised him not to campaign with me. Had he stood at my side in the mid and western parts of the state he would have gotten the same percentages I got there and he would have won. You obviously are not intelligent either.
Like your treacherous predecessor Graziano, you live in a unique area of the state where the people do not suffer the financial peaks and valleys suffered elsewhere in New York. You are insulated from reality by the thousands of fat and comfortable state jobs living off the fat of the land. You never suffer recessionary pressures. You live and participate in the Albany petri dish of corruption and incompetence. You read a newspaper (frightened by the Cuomo/Silver threat of intimidation) more interested in advancing the progressive elitist agenda than doing the right thing for the taxpayer. Why? Because you are one of the worst of the RINOs. You get excited when in the presence of the three men in a room power brokers. You’re the loyal slob willing to kiss their rings to get into their favor for the nickel dime patronage and breadcrumbs they throw at you.
I watched the smitten look on your face when at the Republican convention in Rochester the Reda, LaValle, Savino RINO boys hijacked the convention and denied Wendy Long the party endorsement by railroading the 2nd vote. You just sat there on your fat ass. You said nothing as the terrible injustice was performed before your eyes.
At the convention my assistant had the proxy of Melody Burns. You intimidated and assaulted her with your finger in her chest yelling at her that you wanted her to vote for Bob Turner instead of Wendy Long. I learned about it later or you would have met me at that time. Need I remind you that 63% of the rank and file in the 2010 primary for Governor voted against the good old boys insular candidate Lazio and County chairs like you. Wendy Long kicked the ass of her 2 opponents in this year’s primary. The writing is on the wall but it seems that the RINOs are still in denial.
You see Don, the days of you and the good old boys are coming to an end very quickly. If the best that Libous can do is to send a washed up politician like you after me it illustrates just how weakened and insecure he is. He had an opportunity to change his tune but chose the easier and cowardly way. If you and he can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen, move out of state and let his committee on vacancies pick a good successor. What happens when he gets indicted? Does he have such little regard for his constituency and for that matter his family that he will put them through that nonsense. Whining and foolish letters like yours will get you nowhere. You should work on getting yourself a life.
There’s more.
From: Rob Simmons [mailto:rrsimmons@xxxxx.net]
Sent: Friday, August 03, 2012 11:18 AM
To: Carl Paladino
Cc:donclarey@xxxxxx.com
Subject: Re: Carl Paladino to Donald Clarey
What is the value to the NY GOP of this sort of public lashing?
Robert R. “Rob” Simmons
Congressman, 2001-2007
Colonel, USAR, Retired
268 ———————
Stonington, CT 06378
Did Carl just let that one go? What do you think?
Rob, the N.Y. GOP is in disarray. They’ve lost the trust of the people. The rank and file are held captive by a bunch of self-interested, lazy and corrupted Albany establishment RINOs including a good number of Republican legislators and County Chairmen who would rather bathe with the Cuomo/Silver progressives who feed them an occasional breadcrumb.
They seek to keep their patronage and campaign contributions to protect and fund their incumbency and live off the bone marrow of the taxpayers. As a result the status quo in Albany is alive and well and there is no viable opposition to call out the progressives who seek to create a permanent democratic majority by having the most liberal social welfare programs known to mankind which invite every Tom, Dick and Harry to come to New York to lay on the backs of New York taxpayers.
The Cuomo/Silver cartel have perfected the art of illusion and theater. It is not an oversight that there is absolutely no transparency in state government. It’s part of the art form that protects the deceitful establishment and the incumbency of incompetent and dysfunctional elected officials. The entitlement people coming to the state in droves are passing on their way in the exiting vibrant youth who can’t find a job and the taxpayers who can’t stand the tax burdens. The status quo is killing business and jobs in New York with debilitating taxes and regulation.
The NY GOP only has a faint pulse at best. The State Party commands no respect and therefore cannot raise money to support statewide candidates. It is more about hapless locomotion by an establishment group of unintelligent office holders, downstate county chairs and good old boys like Skelos, Maziarz, Libous, Clary, Reda, LaValle, etc., etc., etc., or washed up greedy lobbyists like D’Amato. They are all opportunistic narcissistic parasites intent on squeezing the last juice out of the grape rather than advancing the rank and file needs and values. It’s not hard to connect up the dots.
Until we clean up the Republican party leadership the party will not grow into a viable alternative for New Yorkers.
Is there anything else you need to know Rob?
The whole thing takes petulant bullying to a new level. But I won’t now leave you with any sort of snarky analysis of how Don Carlxote is tilting at windmills throughout the state. Instead, I link to the “Breaking Point Blog”, which fisks all of Carl’s recent insults and analyzes it in a provocatively titled essay.
In government, even a person identified as a political firebrand doesn’t approach a fraction of the divisiveness or resistance to compromise showcased in Paladino’s writings. And this is true even in the current political climate where divisiveness and non-compromise is the order of the day, especially among Republicans. To Paladino, anyone on his side of the aisle who strays in the least measure from his vision for the party is a target for being branded, in his terminology, a RINO (Republican In Name Only). And woe unto he who is marked by Paladino’s scarlet letters, for Carl Paladino speaks for the “grassroots/tea party” base of the Republican Party, and without them, as he threatens to Senator Libous, “your career as an elected official will end this year.”
Indeed, Paladino’s messages are full of intimations of a kind of political insight that extends far beyond the observational and into the prophetic. “The Albany establishment is on its way out,” he writes without a trace of uncertainty. “In a few years it will be gone.” The man is so blindly assured of his viewpoints on everything that he has apparently convinced himself that he can tell the future.
But in view of the rest of his remarks in a number of letters, I’d say that that’s not just an outgrowth of his unquestioning convictions. Rather, it’s part and parcel of a severe messianic complex. His letters are permeated with unrestrained anger, but they are also paradoxically peppered with slightly religious language. Apart from painting himself as the sole arbiter of judgment as to one’s true allegiance to the Republican Party, which, incidentally, he formally joined only seven years ago, he also takes up the mantle of a priestly dispenser of political absolution.
The whole thing is worth a read. Now, why is it that this person is – at least as far as politics is concerned – now considered to be a well-funded paranoiac, but is still afforded some semblance of respect by WNY voters and media?
On April 28th, 
In an article that appeared in Sunday’s Buffalo News
