Our guest blogger is Charlie Eisenhood, a student at New York University and the Editor-in-Chief of the New York City-based blog NYU Local.

This morning, New York GOP Gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino spoke and answered questions from political journalists at a breakfast forum hosted by Crain’s New York Business. Paladino locked up the Republican primary largely by stoking anti-Muslim hate. He spent much of his campaign loudly attacking the Park51 community center planned for lower Manhattan as a “monument to those who attacked America.”

After winning the nomination, Paladino reiterated his opposition to the Muslim community center and absurdly said he feared that it would bring “sharia law to America.” ThinkProgress asked Paladino this morning if he would consider appointing Muslim judges if elected to office. Paladino stopped for a moment, then said, “oh please,” as he ignored the question and walked away:

TP: Mr. Paladino, I’m a student journalist. If you’re elected governor would you appoint Muslim judges?

PALADINO: Oh, please.

TP: Mr. Paladino, why won’t you answer my question? Mr. Paladino, are you concerned with sharia law?

Watch it:

While Paladino has made a name for himself confronting reporters and speaking his mind on controversial topics, he refusal to answer a simple question may speak volumes about his about treatment of the Muslim American community. Paladino has said that he would regulate the construction of community centers based on religion. Would he also select judges based on how they worship God?

On Tuesday night, Buffalo-based businessman and tea party favorite Carl Paladino clinched the GOP nomination for the New York gubernatorial race. Given Paladino’s history, it’s clear why he has become a tea party favorite.

In emails obtained by WNYMedia.net and verified for their authenticity, Paladino was caught forwarding racial messages about President Obama, birther claims, pornography, and bestiality. When confronted about his emails, Paladino blamed the Democrats. Paladino’s big outside-the-box policy idea is to construct prison dorms for welfare recipients.

But perhaps what has made Paladino most loved among his base is his fervent, angry opposition to the Islamic center project near Ground Zero. He has called Park 51 an “affront to the American people” and claimed “it’s about the Islamists wanting to illustrate that they have conquered America by taking down the World Trade Center.” If elected governor, Paladino has pledged he would use the power of eminent domain to take the site.

Paladino’s radical, divisive, and disturbing record isn’t setting well with one of New York’s most famous Republicans — former Sen. Alfonse D’Amato. “He is dangerous, at the least, he is mean spirited and he tries to divide people,” D’Amato told WCBS 880′s Peter Haskell. Along with former New York City Mayor Ed Koch and former State Comptroller Carl McCall, D’Amato also signed his name to an open letter declaring Paladino unfit for office:

The victory of Carl Paladino in the Republican Primary was a disappointing day for all New Yorkers. This state has a long history of electing highly qualified, forward-looking statewide candidates — both Democrats and Republicans. Yesterday, however, anger overcame reason and enabled a fringe element to choose the Republican nominee. The end result was the selection of Mr. Paladino, a divisive figure simply not fit to lead this great state.

At a time when we need leaders who can bring New Yorkers together, Mr. Paladino practices a destructive brand of politics that will divide our state. […]

We need a governor who can take on the special interests, not one who is a special interest. We also need a governor who will bring New Yorkers together to take on our common challenges, not drive us apart. Through his own words and actions Carl Paladino has proven himself unfit to serve as Governor – he is exactly the wrong person to lead our state.

D’Amato is a hardcore Republican. His opposition to Paladino is just further evidence of the growing cleavage within the GOP among its right-wing fringe and its leadership.

[updat

A consistent theme that has developed among conservative politicians this year is to degrade and demean the unemployed who are seeking unemployment benefits. From former House Speaker Newt Gingrich attacking a man who paid into the unemployment insurance system for 35 years for seeking benefits, to Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) suggesting that the availability of meager unemployment insurance was causing the unemployed of his state to sit back and wait instead of seek work, the conservative assault on the unemployed appear to have no end. Now, New York GOP gubernatorial primary candidate Carl Paladino, “a wealthy Buffalo real estate developer popular with many tea party activists,” is openly advocating for the creation of special prison dorms for recipients of unemployment insurance where they can receive special training and lessons in “personal hygiene“:

Republican candidate for governor Carl Paladino said he would transform some New York prisons into dormitories for welfare recipients, where they could work in state-sponsored jobs, get employment training and take lessons in “personal hygiene.” [...]

Paladino first described the idea in June at a meeting of The Journal News of White Plains and spoke about it again this week with The Associated Press. [...]

Asked at the meeting how he would achieve those savings, Paladino laid out several plans that included converting underused state prisons into centers that would house welfare recipients. There, they would do work for the state — “military service, in some cases park service, in other cases public works service,” he said — while prison guards would be retrained to work as counselors.

“Instead of handing out the welfare checks, we’ll teach people how to earn their check. We’ll teach them personal hygiene … the personal things they don’t get when they come from dysfunctional homes,” Paladino said.

Paladino did explain to the Associated Press that any such prison dorm scheme would be voluntary. What he failed to explain is why, as a tea party conservative, taking people away from their families to taxpayer-funded facilities to try to re-educate them is in any way conservative.

One of the newest heroes of the Tea Party movement is “outspoken” Buffalo businessman Carl Paladino, a multimillionaire who has railed against “liberal elites.” Earlier this month, he officially declared his Republican candidacy for New York’s gubernatorial race. However, WNYMedia.net reveals that Paladino has “regularly forwarded pornography and racially degrading material to friends on the Internet.” The Buffalo News reports:

[WNYMedia.net managing director Marc] Odien released e-mail pictures that supposedly show Miss France having sex with a man, a photo of dancing African tribesmen entitled “Obama Inauguration Rehearsal,” a photo of President Obama and the first lady doctored to simulate a 1970s pimp and prostitute, and an e-mail showing chimpanzees doing an Irish dance entitled “proof the Irish discovered Africa.”

As WNYMedia.net notes, the “Obama Inauguration Rehearsal” was “very popular in the white supremacist community and has been posted at the Neo-Nazi Stormfront website.” Here’s the picture from the October 2009 e-mail that shows “President Obama and the First Lady dressed in 70s-era blaxploitation pimp and prostitute costumes while attending a formal event at the White House”:

Today at a Tea Party rally in Buffalo, Paladino first said he had no idea what was in the e-mails, but when pressed further and told the nature of the messages, he blamed it all on…Democrats:

Q: Do you condemn the stuff that was forwarded in those e-mails?

PALADINO: I don’t know. I don’t know what e-mails you’re referring to specifically. I wouldn’t even know half of them if I saw them.

Q: Let’s take a look at some of them. … Is that appropriate for somebody who’s running for governor to forward to other people? It’s a very simple question.

PALADINO: Is it appropriate for the Democrats to want to smear —

Q: Carl, I’m not asking about the Democrats.

PALADINO: They can hear the rumblings, okay, of something happening.

Q: What does this have to do with the Democrats?

PALADINO: Everything.

Paladino later said that Democrats were trying to “mischaracterize” the messages and he didn’t know if they were “true” because he was just forwarding what was sent to him by other people. Watch it:

The statement from Campaign Manager Michael Caputo is equally confusing, with Caputo arguing that the “political establishment” must feel “threatened by Carl’s drive the take Albany back for taxpayers.” “It figures that members of the Party who brought us record taxes, record spending and record debt would want to change the topic from reform to having sex with horses and S&M parlors,” he added. The organizer of the Buffalo Tea Party is standing behind Paladino, stating, “He’s not a racist. He was just passing on some nonsense in an e-mail. Everybody does things that are not 100 percent pure.”

A spokesman for state GOP Chairman Ed Cox, however, also condemned Paladino: “The racially and sexually inappropriate nature of Mr. Paladino’s emails is disturbing to say the least, and stands in stark contrast to what the Republican Party stands for and the values it promotes.”