Carl Paladino, The Donald Trump Of Western New York, Loses GOP Primary For Congress

Carl Paladino, the GOP candidate who recently called for Attorney General Merrick Garland to be executed, has lost his primary for Congress.

New York state Republican Party Chair Nick Langworthy, a former Paladino ally, won his party’s nomination in the conservative 23rd Congressional District.

Langworthy, 41, pitched himself as a supporter of the policies of former President Donald Trump — but didn’t have the baggage and drama of Paladino and his “three-ring circus.”

“When you confront a bully you punch him in the face and you take him down a peg,” Langworthy told supporters Tuesday night. “And we did that here in this district tonight and we sent a loud and clear message that people want decent, stable, honest, conservative Republican leadership.”

The Associated Press declared Langworthy the winner shortly after 12:30 a.m.

Paladino, 75, is essentially Buffalo’s own Donald Trump. A bombastic real estate developer, he’s frequently found himself in the national spotlight for comments like praising Adolf Hitler and claiming that children were being “brainwashed” into accepting gay people.

Paladino was the New York co-chair of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, although the former president did not endorse in this race.

Shortly before the Associated Press declared Langworthy the winner ― but when it became clear what way the race was tipping ― Paladino’s campaign put out a statement that took a page out of Trump’s playbook, raising the specter of voter fraud.

“We are seeing a number of statistical irregularities in a number of counties that we will be looking in the coming days. We want every single legal vote to count,” Paladino spokesman Vish Burra said.

In 2010, Paladino ran a disastrous campaign for governor against Democrat Andrew Cuomo, receiving attention for forwarding pornographic emails to friends that were then leaked to the media. “Awesome,” he wrote on several of them.

And in late 2016, when Artvoice, a local publication, asked Paladino and other Buffalonians about their hopes for the new year, he used the opportunity to call former first lady Michelle Obama a man who should live with gorillas and said he hoped former President Barack Obama died from having sex with a cow.

Those comments led to attempts to oust him from his position on the Buffalo school board, although he wasn’t kicked off until August 2017 for improperly disclosing private board matters.

Paladino easily carried his home turf, Erie County, where Buffalo is located. But Langworthy picked up all the counties in the Southern Tier region of the district.

Langworthy racked up more endorsements from local Republicans in the district, although Paladino had the backing of Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), who is the No. 3 Republican in the House. Paladino’s loss is also a blow to Stefanik and her clout. When the seat opened up in June with the retirement of Rep. Chris Jacobs (N.Y.), Stefanik quickly backed Paladino — reportedly much to the surprise and frustration of other House GOP leaders, not to mention Langworthy.

Paladino certainly has his detractors in the Republican Party. In June, Keith Wofford, who is Black and was the GOP’s 2018 nominee for New York attorney general, put out a statement calling Paladino a “straight-up, old-school racist.”

“There are many times where people have called one Republican or another a racist, and I have explained to those accusers why they were wrong,” Wofford said. “But Carl Paladino is a racist. Not ‘racially insensitive’; not ‘unsophisticated’; a straight-up, old-school racist.”

Jacobs, who had been running for reelection, announced his retirement after receiving intense backlash within his party for supporting an assault weapons ban. He took that position after a white supremacist murdered 10 people at a Tops supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Buffalo on May 14.

“If an assault weapons ban bill came to the floor that would ban something like an AR-15, I would vote for it,” Jacobs said, adding, “I can’t in good conscience sit back and say I didn’t try to do something.”