With Latest Polls Showing a Tightening of Scores of Midterm Contests, Republicans Have Failed to Take Into Account the Growing Numbers of Non-White, Heavily Democratic-Leaning Voters While the GOP Is Becoming What the Democrats Were as Recently as the 1950s: An Almost Lily-White, Southern-Dominated Party

REPUBLICANS TURNING INTO THE NEW DIXIECRATS — Regardless of how Republicans fare in next week’s midterm elections, the party faces a crisis of long-term survival as the nation’s population becomes more and more racially and ethnically diverse. By continuing with the infamous “Southern Strategy” hatched by Richard Nixon’s campaign more than 40 years ago that alienated blacks and is now driving away Latinos, the GOP is turning into an almost all-white, Southern-dominated party, even as the white proportion of the U.S. population is shrinking, according to the Census Bureau. Unless the GOP expands its appeal to non-white voters, it will inevitably fall into permanent minority status by mid-century, if not sooner. (Image courtesy Photobucket.com)

(Posted 5:30 a.m. EDT Tuesday, October 26, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

For months now, the Republicans and just about every media pundit across the country have been virtually crowing about how the GOP will take over both houses of Congress in next week’s midterm elections.

Historically, with the notable exception of the post-9/11 election of 2002 — when the dominant issue was national security and the “war on terror” — the party in control of the White House has suffered losses in every midterm congressional election since 1934.

But according to the latest round of pre-election polls, many key races have tightened — some rather dramatically — and are now rated too close to call.

It now appears that the Democrats are within striking distance of at least blunting the GOP advance — if not keeping control of Congress — which could make for a very long election night next Tuesday.

Powering the Democrats’ late surge is a massive get-out-the-vote effort by the party aimed at African-Americans, Latinos, Asians and other non-white voters who are comprising an ever-growing segment of the electorate, as well as by exploiting a growing disgust among moderate voters with an unprecedented multi-million-dollar blitz of highly negative — and in many cases, outright inflammatory — TV and radio ads by “independent” groups on behalf of GOP candidates.

President Obama himself has embarked on a cross-country blitz of his own, becoming the “campaigner-in-chief” exhorting the millions of young people who voted for him in 2008 to vote to preserve the Democrats’ congressional majority in 2010.

The contests for the House and Senate aren’t the only races where there is a last-minute Democratic surge. Several contests for governor are showing the Democratic candidate coming from behind to either surge into the lead or turn the race into a neck-and-neck contest — and in one state in particular (New York), the Democrat is on track to bury his GOP opponent in an overwhelming landslide.

ADS URGING LATINOS IN NEVADA NOT TO VOTE TRACED TO GOP OPERATIVE

Adding to the late Democratic surge is a backlash by Latinos against what they regard as an anti-Latino assault by Republicans and their conservative allies.

In Nevada, a series of Spanish-language TV and radio ads urging Latinos not to vote in protest of Congress’ failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform has been met with open derision by Latino community leaders. The ads were paid for by an organization that calls itself “Latinos for Reform” — which was quickly exposed as being led by Robert de Posada, a conservative pundit and a former Republican Party official.

“Don’t vote this November,” an announcer on the ad says in Spanish. “This is the only way to send them a clear message. You can no longer take us for granted.”

De Posada fiercely defended the ads, insisting that “We’re saying to people, you need to look at the record of the candidates and understand that in a civic engagement situation, you have the options of not necessarily voting. You should not be told you have no option but to support the lesser of two evils.”

SPANISH-LANGUAGE TV NETWORKS REJECT THE SPOTS

Both of the nation’s two major Spanish-language TV networks, Univision and Telemundo, have refused to broadcast the ads, with Univision saying they run directly counter to the network’s own non-partisan public-service campaign encouraging Latinos to participate in the electoral process. The network also yanked the radio spot from its Las Vegas station within hours after it went on the air.

“Univision will not be running any spots from Latinos for Reform related to voting,” a network spokesman said in a statement. “It is also important to clarify that while Mr. Robert de Posada has on occasion provided political commentary on Univision, representing one of various points of views, he is not in any way affiliated with Univision. Univision prides itself on promoting civic engagement and our extensive national campaigns encourage Hispanics to vote.”

Within hours of Univision’s decision, its rival, NBC-owned Telemundo, told the Associated Press that it, too, would not broadcast the spots. De Posada’s group had planned to run the ads in Nevada, Florida, California, Texas and Colorado from now through election eve, but was forced to scuttle the plan after Univision and Telemundo gave the ads the thumbs-down.

De Posada told ABC News that although he has halted purchasing airtime for the ads, he intended to push forward with the spots on the Internet, including YouTube. He also plans to file a complaint against Univision and Telemundo with the Federal Election Commission.

Under current law, TV and radio stations cannot edit or refuse political ads paid for by candidates’ campaigns, but they are free to accept or reject ads by outside groups.

‘DON’T VOTE’ ADS ‘OVERT ATTEMPT AT SUPPRESSING LATINO VOTE,’ SAYS LULAC

The ads were roundly condemned by Latino community leaders and even by some Republican candidates. In a statement issued last Tuesday, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the nation’s oldest and largest Latino civil rights organization, branded the ads “cynical” and an overt attempt at suppressing Latino voter turnout.

“This is overt voter suppression, and it’s ugly,” said LULAC President Margaret Moran. “It is precisely because of this latest voter suppression tactic that Latino voters should vote.”

President Obama also slammed the ads during a roundtable with reporters from Spanish-language media. “I think it is terrible,” he said. “It is a cynical political ploy to try to drive Latino votes to benefit a Republican candidate in Nevada who would never vote for immigration reform.”

The campaign of Tea Party-backed Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle condemned de Posada’s ads — but only after her Democratic opponent, incumbent Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, blasted her for not denouncing the ads sooner.

“No ad should ever discourage voters from voting or expressing their opinions at the ballot box,” Angle’s spokesman Jarrod Agen said in a statement to ABC News.

The Angle campaign issued its statement a day after Reid, speaking on the campus of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, ripped into Angle’s initial silence on the matter. “Can you think of anything less patriotic and more un-American?” Reid asked a group of students after casting an early ballot. “It’s the American thing to do — to vote. How can she [Angle] possibly not speak out against what they’ve done?”

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF GOP STILL FOLLOWING NIXON’S ‘SOUTHERN STRATEGY’

The episode is but the latest in what this column asserted back in April is the GOP’s wholesale writing off of the Latino vote — a continuation of the party’s infamous “Southern Strategy” that alienated African-Americans more than 40 years ago — driving both voter blocs firmly into the Democratic column.

But the GOP is writing off non-white voters at its own peril, for the strategy is also transforming the Republican Party into what the Democratic Party used to be before the 1960s: An overwhelmingly white and deeply conservative party whose voting base is most heavily concentrated in the Deep South and Rocky Mountain West.

There are some who argue that today’s GOP is turning into “the New Dixiecrats,” a reference to the conservative Southern whites who bolted from the Democratic Party in 1948 in protest of the party adopting a civil rights plank at its national convention and later formed the segregationist States’ Rights Party, better known as the “Dixiecrats,” who ran with Senator Strom Thurmond as its presidential candidate.

FLYING UNDER THE RADAR: THE BROWNING OF AMERICA’S POPULATION

Amid all the heat of the 2010 election campaign, one fundamental factor that is likely to have a determining effect on next week’s vote — and every election thereafter — has been flying under the media radar: The changing demographic face of the American electorate.

In his inaugural address, President Obama referred to America’s changing face when he said, “Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans . . . What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.”

Even before Obama’s election, the shift was already becoming evident: America is becoming browner, as non-white Americans become a greater and greater proportion of the U.S. population and white Americans conversely contract toward losing their majority status by mid-century, according to the Census Bureau.

Already, the white proportion of the U.S. population has fallen from 75.7 percent in 1990 to 71.6 percent in 2000, the Census Bureau reports. With the results of the 2010 Census still to be made public, the bureau estimates that the white proportion has fallen further to 65.8 percent today — barely a two-thirds majority — and projects it will shrink to barely 60 percent 15 years from now.

NON-WHITES ALREADY EXCEED 40 PERCENT OF NATION’S UNDER-18 YOUTH POPULATION

Already, non-whites comprise more than 40 percent of the youth population of America under 18 years of age, according demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution. And they comprise an outright majority of the youth population in eight states: Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, New York and Texas.

In Hawaii, the president’s native state, non-whites are an outright majority of the state’s total population, with Japanese-Americans alone comprising 52 percent of the state’s residents. Frey projects that non-whites will become the majority of the youth population nationwide within the next decade.

“[Latinos] accounted for 50 percent of national population growth since 2000, compared with 14 percent for Asians, 13 percent for blacks, and 17 percent for whites,” Frey reports, adding that while the white U.S. population is projected to fall into minority status by 2042, its preschool population is likely to fall to that status by the end of this decade.

Meanwhile, the U.S. population as a whole is getting older, as the 78-million-strong Baby Boomers — born between 1946 and 1964 — are inexorably approaching senior citizenship. But the older the age group, the whiter is gets; an overwhelming 80 percent of senior citizens are white, Frey reports.

These twin developments will inevitably create a serious cultural — and political — gap between the older and younger generations that Frey predicts will be much wider than the cultural war between the Baby Boomers and their World War II “GI Generation” parents in the 1960s.

GOP IS BLANCHING WHILE AMERICA TURNS MORE COLORFUL

Nowhere is the widening gap between mostly-white older America and multiracial younger America more evident than in the political sphere. The 2008 election revealed just how stark the divide is, with young voters — especially non-white and racially-mixed young people — strongly preferring Obama, and older voters — especially white seniors — breaking solidly for Republican John McCain.

Throughout the 2008 campaign, rallies for the Democratic candidates drew substantially multiracial crowds, while turnout at rallies for GOP candidates were almost exclusively white, including a town hall-style meeting for McCain and several rallies for then-GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, in which several attendees openly expressed racist or anti-Muslim viewpoints about Obama.

‘BLANCHING’ OF GOP ACCELERATES WITH RISE OF TEA PARTY MOVEMENT

That pattern has since accelerated with the rise of the Tea Party movement, which has proven to be a major force to be reckoned with inside the GOP. Demographic surveys found that the Tea Party movement is virtually devoid of participation in it by non-whites.

Likewise have been this year’s Republican primaries. In state after state, the results found that turnout was overwhelmingly — in some states, almost exclusively — among white voters, as African-Americans continued to shun the GOP in droves, and Latino turnout nosedived to record-low levels — the latter the clearest sign yet of a backlash by Latino voters — even conservative Cuban-Americans in South Florida — against Republicans over the volatile issue of immigration.

As non-white Americans become a greater and greater proportion of the nation’s population and electorate, the GOP is facing a stark choice: Either expand its electoral appeal to non-white voters, or else find itself relegated permanently to minority-party status — or even electoral oblivion, replaced by a new party — within the next 20 years.

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Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

New Poll Shows Cuomo Skyrocketing to an Commanding 35-Point Lead and Cruising Toward Biggest Landslide Victory in N.Y. Gubernatorial Race Since His Father’s 1986 Re-Election; Only 11 Percent of Voters Have Favorable View of Paladino and Solid 59 Percent Majority Say Tea Party-Backed Republican is Unfit to Serve as Governor

NEW YORKERS TO PALADINO: “WE’LL TAKE YOU OUT, BUDDY!” — Those now-infamous words shouted by Carl Paladino (left), the Tea Party-backed Republican nominee for New York governor, in a heated clash with a reporter on September 30 might become his political epitaph, as Paladino’s poll numbers have plunged dramatically since his Tony Soprano impersonation and a series of anti-gay remarks so inflammatory that his openly gay nephew publicly rebuked him and the rest of the Paladino family forced the candidate to issue an apology. His Democratic rival, Andrew Cuomo (right) has skyrocketed to a commanding 35-point lead, according to a New York Times poll published Monday, just a week before next Tuesday’s election, with a solid 59 percent majority of likely voters saying Paladino is unfit to be governor. (Photos: Getty Images)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Tuesday, October 19, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

PLATTSBURGH, New York — With just two weeks to go before the Empire State’s voters cast their ballots, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Andrew Cuomo has rocketed to a commanding 35-point lead over his Tea Party-backed Republican rival, Carl Paladino, according to a new poll released Monday — with an astonishingly large majority of respondents saying that Paladino’s “angry,” “bigoted” and “obnoxious” personality makes him unfit to be governor.

The poll by The New York Times showed the state attorney general holding a better than two-to-one lead over Paladino, 59 percent to 24 percent, a gain of four points since a Quinnipiac College poll released on October 8. Meanwhile, support for the multimillionaire Buffalo businessman plunged 10 points from the 34 percent Paladino garnered in the Quinnipiac survey.

If Cuomo’s huge lead remains intact by election day, he would be on track to score the greatest landslide victory in a New York gubernatorial election in the state’s history — topping the 33-point landslide of his father, Mario Cuomo, who buried his GOP opponent, Andrew O’Rourke, 64 percent to 32 percent, to win a second term in 1986.

Paladino’s standing with voters — already damaged by his highly-publicized confrontation on September 30 with a reporter in which Paladino, acting like a Mafia boss, threatened, “I’ll take you out, buddy!” — plunged into a free fall after he made a series a highly inflammatory anti-gay remarks, including a speech on October 9 at a conservative Jewish synagogue in Brooklyn in which the candidate said that children should not be “brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option.”

SURVEY FINDS A SOLID MAJORITY JUDGING PALADINO UNFIT TO BE GOVERNOR

The Times poll, conducted Sunday through Friday of last week, found an astonishing 59 percent of respondents saying that Paladino does not have the temperament that makes him fit to serve as the state’s chief executive, and that 55 percent said the millionaire Buffalo real estate developer has neither the political nor governmental experience required for the office. More tellingly, 43 percent of respondents had an unfavorable opinion of Paladino, while only 11 percent viewed him favorably.

Poll respondents, when asked what came to mind the most about Paladino when his name was mentioned, answered with a variety of highly negative descriptions of him, including “angry” — by his own admission, Paladino said he was “mad as hell” — “bigoted” for his anti-gay diatribes and “obnoxious” for his confrontation with New York Post reporter Fred Dicker.

TEA PARTY-BACKED REPUBLICAN RAN NEARLY EVEN WITH CUOMO IN SEPTEMBER

In a September 22 Quinnipiac College poll, Cuomo led Paladino by only six points, 49 percent to 43 percent, powered at the time by solid support among Republicans (83 percent) and independents (49 percent). A separate poll by Survey USA released the same day showed Cuomo leading 49 percent to 40 percent.

But on September 30, Paladino sank the already-heated campaign to succeed outgoing Governor David Paterson into the gutter when he accused Cuomo, a divorced father of three, of cheating on his former wife, Kerry Kennedy, a daughter of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, without furnishing a shred of proof to back him up.

Later that same day, Paladino came unglued — in full view of TV news cameras.

When challenged by Dicker, the Post’s state news editor and Albany bureau chief, to provide evidence to back up his accusations against Cuomo, Paladino accused the reporter of working for the Cuomo campaign and, acting as though he were Tony Soprano, the fictional New Jersey organized-crime boss in the acclaimed television series, “The Sopranos,” warned Dicker, “I’ll take you out, buddy!”

The equally tough-talking Dicker, the dean of the Albany press corps, demanded to know how Paladino would “take him out” — widely interpreted as a threat of bodily harm. Paladino then replied, “Watch!” before he was hustled away by his aides while an indignant Dicker shot back, “Are you threatening me?”.

In fact, it was Kennedy who was cheating on Cuomo, not the other way around. Kennedy was having an affair with Bruce Colley, a New York restaurateur and socialite. Colley confirmed the affair in 2003 just days after Cuomo and Kennedy announced they were ending their marriage. Paladino ultimately retracted his claim against Cuomo, admitting that he had no proof.

(Paladino’s clash with Dicker ultimately cost him the editorial support of the arch-conservative Post, owned by media baron Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. The tabloid on Monday endorsed Cuomo, branding Paladino “undisciplined, unfocused and untrustworthy — that is, fundamentally unqualified for the office he seeks.”)

PALADINO IGNITES FIRESTORM WITH ANTI-GAY TIRADES

Support for Paladino already was declining when, on October 8, the Republican went on the attack against gays, telling an ultraconservative Hasidic Jewish congregation in Brooklyn that children should not be “brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option. It isn’t.”

Paladino made clear his opposition to same-gender marriage, telling congregants at another Brooklyn synagogue, “I oppose the homosexual agenda, whether they call it marriage, civil unions or domestic partnerships. Marriage is between a man and a woman!”

The timing of Paladino’s anti-gay remarks, amidst a rash of suicides of young people — including a New Jersey college student who jumped off the George Washington Bridge — who were bullied for being gay or perceived as gay and just two days after the vicious beating and sodomizing of two teen-agers by a Bronx street gang in a rampage of anti-gay violence, ignited a firestorm of outrage from across the political spectrum.

Undaunted, Paladino took aim at New York’s annual Gay Pride Parade two days later, when, appearing on the “Imus in the Morning” radio show, said, “I don’t think I’d be proud to take my child to a gay pride parade where you have these men in Speedos and otherwise naked grinding against each other up in the back of a truck. I think it’s disgusting.”

Less than an hour later, on NBC’s “Today” show, Paladino repeated his remarks, saying that “children should not be exposed to that [homosexuality] at a young age. They don’t understand this. It’s a very difficult thing. And exposing them to homosexuality, especially at a gay pride parade — and I don’t know if you’ve ever been to one — but they wear these little Speedos and they grind against each other. It’s just a terrible thing. Why would you bring your children to that?”

HOMOPHOBIC RANTS INFURIATE PALADINO’S OPENLY GAY NEPHEW

The candidate’s homophobic rants drew a sharp public rebuke from his nephew, Jeff Hannon, who is openly gay. In an interview with the Post, the 23-year-old Hannon, who worked for the Paladino campaign until his uncle’s anti-gay tirades, said that he personally was “very offended” by his uncle’s remarks and abruptly quit the campaign. He hasn’t shown up at Paladino headquarters in Buffalo for more than a week.

The newspaper quoted a Paladino campaign staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, as saying Wednesday that other campaign workers were concerned for Hannon’s whereabouts, particularly in the wake of the recent suicides. “Everybody was talking about it today. They are worried about him,” said the staffer. “They think he’s upset.”

So, apparently, was the rest of the Paladino family as well. Numerous press reports said that the family demanded that the candidate issue a public apology — which he did in a written statement last Tuesday. “I sincerely apologize for any comment that may have offended the gay and lesbian community or their family members,” the Paladono statement said. “Any reference to branding an entire community based on a small representation of them is wrong.”

Paladino’s campaign manager, Michael Caputo, confirmed that the candidate’s family has pressured him to apologize, out of concern for Hannon. “Carl felt the sting of this directly through his family and thought through his response with many inputs,” said Caputo.

The candidate’s apology, however, cost him the support of the far-right ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Yehuda Levin, whose anti-gay views are only slightly to the left of the gay-hating extremist Kansas cult leader, Fred Phelps.

“Mazel tov,” Levin told reporters after Paladino’s mea culpa, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “We’ll have a coming-out party. But when he came to me three days ago, he didn’t know that? I find this to be condescending.”

Paladino might have a problem with the Gay Pride parade, but he apparently doesn’t have a problem with lesbians, according to the Web site WNYMedia.net, which published on Wednesday another set of X-rated e-mails purportedly sent by Paladino to his friends. The images include a photo of two lesbians in flagrante delicto, with a one-word comment: “Awesome.”

PALADINO WAS LANDLORD TO TWO BUFFALO-AREA GAY BARS

The Tea Party-backed GOP nominee’s anti-gay outbursts were made even more bizarre when the New York Daily News disclosed Wednesday that Paladino was the landlord to two Buffalo-area gay bars from 2004 to 2006 — one of which was co-owned and managed by his son, William Paladino.

A review of liquor license records by the newspaper found that the younger Paladino co-owned and operated Cobalt, a nightclub in downtown Buffalo housed in one of many buildings owned by his father from May 2004 through July 2006. A 2005 review of Cobalt in the Buffalo News described the nightspot as “Way Gay,” noting, “The queens, the techno, the cocktails, the kind of gyration normally confined to Manhattan was in full flaming force at Cobalt.”

But in late 2005, the younger Paladino abruptly renamed the club Tantra and converted it to a straight nightclub — retaining all the straight bartenders and firing all the gay staff, according to a gay former bartender, Kevin Van Wagner, who told the Daily News, “The way that they did it was really horrible. They told us we were no longer going to be a gay bar, that we [gay bartenders] were no longer going to have jobs.”

William Paladino is now a top executive of his father’s Buffalo-based Ellicott Development Company, a property management, leasing and real estate development firm.

The other gay nightspot, Buddies II, which is still operating, was housed in another Paladino-owned building in 2005 and 2006, according to liquor license records. The bar it described itself as a “bar where anyone and everyone is welcome [and] prejudices are left at the door.”

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Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

Amid Rash of Suicides of Youths Who Suffered Anti-Gay Bullying, N.Y. Gang of ‘Ultra-Macho’ Thugs Go on Homophobic Rampage in Bronx Borough, Brutally Beating and Sodomizing Gay Teenager With Baseball Bat and Forcing His Partner to Burn Him With Cigarettes; While Officials Condemn Attacks, ‘Boss’ Paladino Condemns Gays

SIX FACES OF MACHISMO-FUELED ANTI-GAY HATE — Six members of a Bronx street gang were taken into custody by New York City police Friday after they allegedly went on a rampage of hate-filled violence against gays, in which a 17-year-old gay youth was brutally beaten and sodomized with a baseball bat and his teen-aged partner was forced to burn him with cigarettes. The gang then allegedly attacked and sodomized with a plunger handle another teenager whom they perceived to be gay. The rampage came amid a rash of deaths of other teens who killed themselves after enduring relentless anti-gay harassment. (Photos: Vic Nicastro/New York Daily News)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Tuesday, October 12, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

NEW YORK — Monday, October 11, was not only Columbus Day in the United States and Thanksgiving Day in Canada.

It was also National Coming Out Day, an internationally observed civil awareness day for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered people (LGBTs) to let their families, friends and colleagues know who they are — commonly referred to as “coming out of the closet” — and to talk about what it means to be LGBT in a heterosexual-dominated world.

The day is observed by members of the LGBT communities and their supporters on October 11 every year (Today, October 12, in the United Kingdom). But this year, National Coming Out Day has been overshadowed by the recent deaths of at least six teenagers who were driven to suicide after they were relentlessly bullied for being gay or for being perceived as gay.

The suicides include the highly publicized death of Tyler Clementi, 18, a first-year Rutgers University student who jumped off the George Washington Bridge after learning that a sexual encounter he had with another male student in his dorm room was secretly broadcast live on the Internet.

Adding to the pall is news of an “ultra-macho” New York City street gang, driven by an extreme hatred of gays, going on a homophobic rampage in the Bronx borough on Friday, brutally beating and sodomizing a 17-year-old gay youth with a baseball bat and forcing his teen-aged partner to burn him with cigarettes.

The gang attacked and sodomized a second teenager with the handle of a toilet plunger, then beat up and robbed an adult male before they were apprehended by police. The fourth victim turned out to be the older brother of one of the youths who were attacked, police said.

GANG MEMBERS REPORTEDLY LAUGHED, BRAGGED ABOUT ATTACKS WHILE IN JAIL

The suspects showed no remorse while they were locked up over the weekend, the New York Daily News reported Monday. In fact, the suspects considered it amusing that they were being branded “degenerate monsters” by the New York media, according to a cellmate at the Bronx House of Detention.

“They thought it was funny — one of them was laughing,” the cellmate told the Daily News.

The witness, who was identified only by his first name, Danny, was in jail on an unrelated charge of marijuana possession. “He was saying ‘I’ll take five years.’ They were all joking around like it was funny,” he said. “They had no fear.”

The rampage was swiftly condemned by city officials. “These suspects employed terrible, wolf-pack odds of nine against one, odds which revealed them as predators whose crimes were as cowardly as they were despicable,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told reporters. “This was not part of an initiation. This was a reaction to the fact that [the victims] had engaged in homosexual activity.”

“These attacks are appalling and are even more despicable because the victims were clearly targeted in acts of hate simply because they are gay,” City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said. Mayor Michael Bloomberg branded the rampage “an act of pure evil.”

The rampage occurred less than a week after police arrested two suspects for allegedly pummeling a gay man inside the landmark Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village — the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement — and a third suspect in connection with the beating of three other gay men in Manhattan’s heavily gay Chelsea district.

WHILE OTHER POLITICIANS CONDEMN ATTACKS, ‘BOSS’ PALADINO CONDEMNS GAYS

But as the latest round of homophobic violence was roundly condemned by public officials, one New York politician chose instead to condemn gays.

Tea Party-backed Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino — who made nationwide headlines September 30 with his Tony Soprano-like confrontation with a reporter in which he threatened, “I’ll take you out, buddy!” — went on the attack against gays, telling a Hasidic Jewish congregation in Brooklyn that children should not be “brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option. It isn’t.”

Paladino made clear his opposition to same-gender marriage, telling congregants at another Brooklyn synagogue, “I oppose the homosexual agenda, whether they call it marriage, civil unions or domestic partnerships. Marriage is between a man and a woman!”

In a slam at Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo, Paladino added, “Tell your people that I am the religious-values candidate and my opponent is the ultra-liberal, socialist social extremist that he is!”

RUTGERS STUDENT’S SUICIDE RESULT OF ANTI-GAY ‘CYBER-BULLYING?’

The rash of violent anti-gay assaults in New York and elsewhere comes against the backdrop of a disturbing increase in suicides among teenagers who have been the targets of relentless bullying because they were gay or were perceived to be gay.

In the highly publicized New Jersey case of Tyler Clementi’s suicide, two other Rutgers University students, identified as Dharun Ravi — a roommate of Clementi — and Molly Wei, were charged with two counts each of invasion of privacy after allegedly placing a Web camera in Clementi’s room on September 19 and broadcasting Clementi’s sexual encounter live on the Internet without his or his partner’s knowledge, according to a written statement by Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan.

Under New Jersey law, it is a crime to collect or view images depicting nudity or sexual contact involving another individual without that person’s knowledge or consent, and to transmit or distribute such images. If convicted, Ravi and Wei could face up to five years in prison. Authorities are still investigating whether Ravi and Wei can be held accountable for Clementi’s death.

A Twitter page allegedly operated by Ravi — now offline — contains tweets in which Ravi claims credit for broadcasting Clementi’s sexual encounter on the Internet. “Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into Molly’s room and turned on my Webcam,” Ravi allegedly wrote. “I saw him making out with a dude. Yay!”

OTHER TEEN SUICIDES CAUSED BY ANTI-GAY BULLYING

Clementi’s death is the sixth known suicide of a teenager in recent months as a result of being “outed” or having endured relentless anti-gay harassment or intimidation. Among the other deaths:

# Seth Walsh, a 13-year-old Tehachapi, California boy who hanged himself from a tree in his back yard after years of being bullied. He died in a local hospital September 28 after nine days on life support. Police investigators interviewed some of the young people who taunted Seth the day he hanged himself. “Several of the kids that we talked to broke down into tears,” Police Chief Jeff Kermode said. “They had never expected an outcome such as this.”

# Asher Brown, a 13-year-old Houston eighth-grader who shot himself in the head September 23 after enduring what his mother and stepfather say was constant harassment from four other students at his middle school. Asher, his family said, was “bullied to death” — accused of being gay, some of his tormentors performed mock gay sex acts on him in his physical education class.

# Billy Lucas, a 15-year-old Greensburg, Indiana high school student, who hanged himself September 9 in a barn at his grandmother’s home. Friends say that he had been tormented for years. “He was threatened to get beat up every day,” a close friend and classmate of Billy said. “Sometimes in classes, kids would act like they were going to punch him and stuff and push him. Some people at school called him names,” the classmate said, saying most of those names were anti-gay epithets.

# Zac Harrington, a 19-year-old Norman, Oklahoma man who killed himself October 4 after attending a City Council meeting in which he endured anti-gay invectives from opponents of a resolution recognizing October as LGBT History Month. The resolution passed by a 7 to 1 vote — but not before Harrington heard opponents voice claims that gays would try to “infiltrate” the school system and flatly reject the notion that gay and lesbian couples had a civil and constitutional right to marry, while others invoked religious approbations against homosexuality.

CELEBRITIES SPEAK OUT, LAUNCH ANTI-BULLYING CAMPAIGN

The rash in teen suicides has prompted a slew of celebrities — including Ellen DeGeneres, Dr. Phil McGraw, Kathy Griffin, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper and others — to speak out and launch a campaign to stop the bullying and further youth suicides.

Cooper, appearing on DeGeneres’ talk show “Ellen,” lashed out at the use of anti-gay slurs and epithets — taking direct aim at actor Vince Vaughn’s upcoming movie, “The Dilemma,” in which Vaughn’s character proclaims, “Ladies and gentleman, electric cars are gay.”

“I just find those words, those terms — we’ve got to do something to make those words unacceptable, ’cause those words are hurting kids,” Cooper said. “Someone else I talked to recently said that the words people use and the things people say about other kids online, it enters into their internal dialogue. . . I think we need to really focus on what language we’re using and how we’re treating these kids.”

For her part, Griffin — who for the last several years has appeared with Cooper on CNN’s New Year’s Eve special — is donating all proceeds of her December 16 comedy show in Los Angeles to The Trevor Project, an organization focused on suicide prevention among LGBT youth.

For some celebrities, including DeGeneres, gossip blogger Perez Hilton, “Glee” creator Ryan Murphy and advice columnist Dan Savage, the campaign is deeply personal: They have first-hand experience with having been bullied during their own youth for being gay.

Having once been a closeted gay teen in an all-boys high school, Hilton told ABC News that he’s “wholeheartedly committed” to the cause. “What’s really powerful is to admit and acknowledge that we’ve all been bullies,” he said. “I’ve been a bully, I can still be a bully on my Website. The point is to not be a bully to the point where someone is going to want to kill themselves — threatening violence, calling them homophobic names repeatedly.”

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Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

In New York, Carl Paladino Acts Like a Mob Boss by Threatening to ‘Take Out’ Reporter; In California, Meg Whitman Is Exposed as Hypocrite on Volatile Issue of Employing Illegal Immigrants; In Delaware, Christine O’Donnell Is Caught Lying on Her Job Resumes

GOP CANDIDATE FOR N.Y. GOVERNOR THE TONY SOPRANO OF POLITICS? — From the day he won the his party’s nomination, Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino (left) made good on his promise that the campaign to become New York’s next governor — already nasty — would get a lot nastier: Not only has he accused his Democratic rival, Andrew Cuomo, of infidelity, but in an extraordinary confrontation captured by TV cameras, the Tea Party-backed GOP nominee acted like the fictional New Jersey Mob boss Tony Soprano (right) when he made a threat against Fred Dicker, state news editor of the New York Post, telling Dicker, “I’ll take you out, buddy!” When the equally tough-talking Dicker asked him how he’d “take me out,” Paladino replied, “Watch!” (Photos courtesy Buffalo News and HBO)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Tuesday, October 5, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

With just a month to go before the November 2 midterm elections, the campaign has been jolted by a series of controversies involving Republican candidates, in what appears to be a repeat of the scandal-plagued GOP campaign of 2006.

In quick succession over the past week, Carl Paladino, the Tea Party-backed Republican nominee for governor of New York, made headlines for hurling lurid accusations against his Democratic rival, state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, accusing him of infidelity after Paladino acknowledged his own extramarital affair — and threatening to “take out” a reporter who challenged him to provide evidence.

On the other side of the country, Meg Whitman, the GOP nominee for governor of California, suddenly became embroiled in a scandal when her former housekeeper, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, sued Whitman for anti-Latino discrimination and her attorney accused Whitman — who has talked tough on the campaign trail about employers who hire illegal immigrants — of rank hypocrisy.

And in Delaware, Christine O’Donnell, the Tea Party-backed Republican candidate running for Vice President Joe Biden’s old Senate seat — already plagued by one controversy after another over her past history as a Christian Right activist — was caught having lied about her education on her job resumes.

PALADINO ACTS LIKE MOB BOSS — IN FULL VIEW OF TV NEWS CAMERAS

Paladino took the campaign for New York governor into the gutter on Wednesday when he accused Cuomo of having “paramours” — only hours after he told a reporter for WNYW-TV, the Fox station in New York City, that the already-nasty race would get a lot nastier. “I don’t mind being nasty, okay?” Paladino told the station.

“Has anybody asked Andrew Cuomo about his paramours?” Paladino asked in an interview with Politico.com, referring to Cuomo’s 13-year marriage to his former wife, Kerry Kennedy, a daughter of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

“When he was married — or asked him why his wife left him or threw him out of the house? Has anybody ever done that?” Paladino — who admitted having an extramarital affair of his own a decade ago that produced a daughter — demanded.

But, in fact, it was Kennedy who was having an extramarital affair — with Bruce Colley, a New York restaurateur and socialite. Colley confirmed the affair in 2003 just days after Cuomo and Kennedy announced they were ending their marriage.

Challenged by a New York Post reporter to provide evidence to back up his accusations against Cuomo, Paladino — in full view of television news cameras — accused the reporter of working for the Cuomo campaign and, acting as though he were Tony Soprano, the fictional New Jersey crime boss in the acclaimed television series, “The Sopranos,” warned the reporter, “I’ll take you out, buddy!”

When the equally tough-talking Fred Dicker, state news editor of the Post and the dean of the Albany press corps, demanded to know how Paladino would “take him out” — widely interpreted as a threat of bodily harm — Paladino replied, “Watch!” before he was hustled away by his aides while an indignant Dicker shot back, “Are you threatening me?”.

Paladino admitted the following day — after his confrontation with Dicker made front-page headlines across the state — that he had no proof of Cuomo’s alleged infidelities, acknowledging that he made the accusation out of frustration with questions about his own affair.

CUOMO STRIKES BACK AT PALADINO — HARD

For his part, Cuomo said Friday that Paladino’s claims that he was unfaithful to Kennedy was “hurtful” and “destructive” to his three children. “Now he says it was a baseless accusation,” an angry Cuomo told reporters during a campaign stop inthe New York City borough of Staten Island.

The Cuomo campaign struck back hard with a blistering TV ad that accused Paladino, a Buffalo-area real estate developer, of having “given almost a half-million dollars to politicians and who gets insider deals from Albany.”

The ad claimed that Paladino “got a 1.4 million-dollar tax break to create jobs, but his official filings show that only one job was created.” and blasted the Tea Party-backed Republican as “a welfare king who got rich by milking New York taxpayers.”

PATERSON, PALADINO CAMP IN ANGRY WAR OF WORDS

Meanwhile, Governor David Paterson denounced Paladino as “unfit for public service” at a business breakfast, citing a series of pornographic and racially offensive e-mails Paladino sent to friends before launching his gubernatorial campaign six months ago. One of those e-mails included an image of President Obama dressed as a pimp and First Lady Michelle Obama dressed as a prostitute.

Paterson, who shared the dais with his predecessors, George Pataki and Elliot Spitzer, said he understood the anger over taxes and government excess that is powering the Tea Party movement, but that such anger should not feed the “shrill and . . . pedestrian antics of individuals who are unqualified to hold office at all, let alone be governor or United States senator.”

Paladino’s campaign spokesman Michael Caputo blasted back at Paterson, calling the governor, who is legally blind, “addled” — a derogatory term for a person with attention deficit disorder, or ADD, which Paterson does not have — and pointing out that Paterson was investigated for taking free tickets to the World Series and for getting involved in a domestic-violence case against a top aide who subsequently resigned.

“Nearly all New Yorkers are counting down the days until he stops embarrassing this state,” Caputo said.

WHITMAN ROCKED BY SCANDAL OVER HIRING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT HOUSEKEEPER

In California, the campaign of Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, who spent months on the campaign trail talking tough against employers who hire illegal immigrants, was rocked to its core Wednesday by Whitman’s bombshell admission that the billionaire former eBay CEO and her doctor-husband had themselves employed an illegal immigrant as their housekeeper.

Whitman insisted that she didn’t know that her nanny and housekeeper of nine years, Nicky Diaz Santillan, was an illegal immigrant until the housekeeper acknowledged her undocumented status last year, to which Whitman said she responded by firing her.

But Diaz, in a emotional press conference in Los Angeles with her attorney Gloria Allred, told reporters that Whitman was dismissive when Diaz asked for her assistance in obtaining legal immigrant status and told her upon her dismissal, “From now on, you don’t know me, and I don’t know you.”

Whitman “treated me like a piece of garbage,” a tearful Diaz said. “She treated me as if I were not a human being.”

Allred said that the Social Security Administration had alerted Whitman and her husband, Dr. Griffith Harsh, back in 2003with a latter notifying them that Diaz’ Social Security number did not match the number the agency had in its database — which, the attorney said, should have served as a “red flag” about Diaz’ legal status.

Whitman hotly denied ever receiving such notification, and a campaign spokesman blamed Diaz. “Nicky handled all of the mail into and out of the house,” Whitman spokesman Andrea Jones Rivera said.

But almost immediately after Whitman’s denial, Allred produced a copy of the Social Security Administration’s letter, dated April 2003, in which the agency informed Whitman and Harsh that, “We can’t put these earnings on the employee’s Social Security record until the name and Social Security number you reported agree with our records.”

The copy of the letter included a handwritten note addressed to Diaz that read, “Nicky please check this. Thanks.” Allred said the handwriting was that of Harsh, which the attorney said proved that, at the very least, Harsh knew that there was a problem with Diaz’ status with the Social Security Administration. Harsh acknowledged that the handwriting on the letter was likely his, but said that he has no memory of receiving the letter.

The revelation about Diaz came only a day after Whitman and her Democratic opponent, former Governor and current state Attorney General Jerry Brown, clashed over immigration in their first televised debate, with Whitman saying she “wouldn’t support a path to legalization” for illegal immigrants and that “we have to secure the borders” and called for the imposition of tougher sanctions on employers who hire illegal immigrants.

The fallout from the Whitman scandal was swift. A conservative political action committee issued a statement Thursday demanding the arrest of both Whitman and Diaz for “numerous immigration and employment law violations.”

William Gheen, president of the right-wing Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee (ALIPAC) demanded that Diaz “be charged and deported” and that Whitman “face the existing penalties under current U.S. law as well.”

IN DELAWARE, O’DONNELL CAUGHT HAVING LIED ABOUT HER EDUCATION ON JOB RESUMES

Ever since she scored a stunning upset victory in the September 14 Delaware Republican Senate primary over former Representative Mike Castle, Tea Party-backed nominee Christine O’Donnell has endured one embarrassing revelation after another, primarily video clips of controversial remarks on social issues stemming from her past role as an arch-conservative social activist with ties to the Religious Right.

O’Donnell, who first gained national exposure in the mid-1980s as a spokeswoman for conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly’s Concerned Women for America, had been dogged by her statements on masturbation, the use of condoms, the fight against AIDS, the role of women in the military, and even witchcraft.

But now, O’Donnell has come under fire for apparently having made false statements about her education on her job resumes.

Oxford University in Britain and Claremont Graduate University in California both denied O’Donnell was a student in their institutions, contrary to statements on her resumes that she was a student at the two schools.

Rod Leveque, a spokesman for GCU, issued a statement to TalkingPointsMemo.com declaring flatly that “Claremont Graduate University has no student or education record for an individual named Christine O’Donnell.”

In fact, O’Donnell received a Lincoln Fellowship in 2002 from the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank which is not related in any way to Claremont Graduate University.

The university’s denial came just days after it was revealed that O’Donnell falsely listed Oxford University in the educational record portion of her profile page on the professional social network, LinkedIn.com. The page has since been taken down.

Actually, O’Donnell was a student of the Phoenix Institute, a conservative Christian educational organization which rented space on the campus of one of Britain’s two most prestigious universities — home of the world-famous Rhodes Scholarships.

The new controversies come on the heels of earlier questions about O’Donnell’s tenure at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a conservative think tank which O’Donnell sued for gender-based discrimination. O’Donnell’s $6.9 million lawsuit claimed that ISI “violated its promise to allow Miss ODonnell time to take Master’s degree classes at Princeton.”

But O’Donnell’s campaign manager, Matt Moran, later acknowledged in a statement to the conservative Weekly Standard magazine that O’Donnell did not have her Bachelor’s degree at the time she filed her lawsuit and only audited one undergraduate class at Princeton.

NEW CONTROVERSIES AN EERIE ECHO OF SCANDAL-PLAGUED 2006 GOP CAMPAIGN

The sudden eruption of controversies involving Republican candidates in this year’s midterm elections is eerily reminiscent of the scandal-plagued — and ultimately ill-fated — GOP campaign in 2006 to keep control of Congress.

Remember Mark Foley? The Florida Republican congressman resigned in disgrace after revelations that he had sent sexually suggestive e-mails to teen-aged male Capitol Hill pages.

Foley later claimed that he was gay, but sources familiar with Foley told The ‘Skeeter Bites Report that they could not recall Foley ever having had relationships with adult gay men and that, to the contrary, strong evidence emerged elsewhere that the disgraced former congressman had a pedophile, rather than homosexual, orientation.

Then there was Representative Don Sherwood (R-Pennsylvania), who in 2004 allegedly assaulted Cynthia Ore, a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair. No criminal charges were ever filed against Sherwood, but Ore later filed a $5.5 million civil lawsuit against Sherwood, accusing him of repeatedly assaulting her during their relationship. On November 8, 2005, Sherwood and Ore ended the lawsuit by reaching a settlement, the terms of which were not released.

The relationship became public only when Veronica Hannevig, who ran against Sherwood on the Constitution Party ticket in 2004, distributed copies of the police report to several newspapers and television stations. As in the Foley case, the House Republican leadership knew about Sherwood’s indiscretions, but took no disciplinary action against him. Sherwood subsequently lost his bid for re-election.

The Republican Hall of Shame class of 2006 also includes:

# Then-Representative Jim Gibbons, the 2006 Republican nominee for governor of Nevada, who was dragged into a scandal in which there were allegations that he made unwanted sexual advances toward a woman on the night of October 13, 2006 — a Friday — and assaulted her outside a Las Vegas restaurant when she refused. Despite what came to be known as the “Friday the 13th scandal,” Gibbons won the election, only to see his tenure as governor plagued by continued controversies. He lost his bid for re-election in the June 9 GOP primary.

# Representative Bob Ney (R-Ohio), who was brought down by the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal. Ney was forced to resign from Congress after he pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and making false statements in relation to the scandal. Ney was identified in the guilty pleas of Abramoff, former House Minority Whip Tom DeLay’s deputy chief of staff Tony Rudy, former DeLay press secretary Michael Scanlon and former Ney chief of staff Neil Volz for receiving lavish gifts in exchange for political favors. Ney now hosts a radio talk show in West Virginia.

# The chief of staff of Representative Rodney Alexander (R-Louisiana), whose former page was one of the first to receive inappropriate e-mails from Foley — who was sued by a former member of his staff for sexual harassment. Royal Alexander (no relation) was accused of engaging in “a course of misconduct” toward Elizabeth Scott, who worked as a scheduler for Representative Alexander form 2005 to 2006. including “inappropriate sex-based comments, ogling and touching.” The congressman’s office maintained Scott made her claims in retaliation for having been demoted by Royal Alexander for incompetence. Within months following Royal Alexander’s unsuccessful run for Louisiana Attorney General in 2007, the case was dismissed.

NEW SCANDALS LIKELY TO MAKE GOP’S GOAL OF RETAKING CONGRESS MUCH HARDER

With the new scandals roiling an already volatile campaign, the GOP’s sky-high hopes of retaking Congress have suddenly been thrown into doubt. And the fact that these new controversies have erupted right at the beginning of the all-important final month of the campaign — perhaps the 2010 edition of the long-dreaded “October Surprise” — could not come at a worse time for the Grand Old Party.

But with the electorate still very much in a throw-the-bums-out mood over the continued sour economy, it remains to be seen whether this latest turn of events will translate into a third consecutive anti-Republican backlash at the polls.

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Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.