SALON

Wednesday, Sep 15, 2010 6:30 PM UTC

What the mosque meant to Paladino’s success

The Tea Party upstart was more extreme than opponent Rick Lazio on Park51. Were GOP voters listening?

By

Topics: 2010 Elections, War Room, New York, New York City, Park51,

What the mosque meant to Paladino's successCarl Paladino and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf

Buffalo millionaire Carl Paladino’s decisive victory over former Congressman Rick Lazio in the New York Republican gubernatorial primary Tuesday has been taken by several observers, including Laura Rozen and Maggie Haberman at Politico, as evidence that Lazio’s intense focus on the “ground zero mosque” issue was a failure.

And that seems indisputable: Lazio spent the last couple months of his campaign talking almost exclusively about the mosque, denouncing the Park51 project and demanding investigations into the Muslims behind it. He still lost.

Lazio’s loss does not prove, however, the Park51 issue was unimportant to GOP voters. Paladino actually took a more extreme anti-mosque position than Lazio — and, like his opponent, hit on the issue ad nauseum.

Let’s go to the tape.

First, check out this ad, in which Paladino promises to use eminent domain to block what he calls “a monument to those who attacked our country”:

That ad aired in August in every market in the state, reportedly supported by a mid-six figure buy. He ran a similar radio ad calling for the proposed Park51 site to be made into a “war memorial.”

The mosque is listed at the very top of the Issues page on Paladino’s website. He easily went toe to toe with Lazio in his rhetoric about the sanctity of ground zero:

Carl believes Ground Zero is much larger than the footprint of the Twin Towers. In fact, Ground Zero is the entire lower Manhattan district where the dust cloud fell. That cloud contained the remains of the many men and women murdered.

Carl doesn’t view this as a religious issue. He sees it as all about ideology – an ideology of hate bent on the destruction of America.

Here’s a campaign picture of Paladino caressing a pillar at the old Burlington Coat Factory that is the proposed site of Park51. Here he is comparing Lazio to the nefarious mosque organizers.

And here’s Paladino explaining to a reporter what he thinks of Muslims:

Reporter: Do you think that is a positive message to express to young New Yorkers, especially young New Yorkers?

Paladino: Absolutely.

Reporter: That we should be looking over our shoulders thinking that Muslims are trying to take over.

Paladino: We better start.

Reporter: You want to teach that to our children?

Paladino: Yes, because that’s the real world out there, and that’s what our troops are fighting for and dying for in those two wars.

And finally here is Paladino on MSNBC staking out his ground on the mosque. 

What to make of all this? New York Republican voters may simply have found Paladino’s anti-mosque message more convincing than Lazio’s anti-mosque message. Or perhaps they weren’t voting on the Park51 issue at all. It’s impossible to say for sure without exit polling data.

Justin Elliott is a reporter for ProPublica. You can follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More Justin Elliott.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 16 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
318 points319 points | 269 comments
vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
261 points262 points | 23 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
224 points225 points | 31 comments
vote
Austerity Kills: Brian McArdle, a 57-year-old man who had had two strokes and could barely walk, was found "fit for work" by a government subcontractor, and had his benefits stopped. He died the next day.
107 points108 points | 11 comments
vote
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”: The sci-fi classic that never was.
84 points85 points | 16 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations