By Jordan Heller
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Despite Carl Paladino's urging that the campaign for New York State governor should be about "bigger issues, not affairs," the Republican nominee spent more than a third of his three-minute TV ad Thursday talking about just that.
The Tea Party-backed upstate billionaire spent time in the much-buzzed-about ad criticizing the journalists who have covered his personal life.
"Are you having an affair now? How many have you had? When was your daughter conceived?," Paladino said, mimicking reporters' questions to him regarding his family.
"Does the media ask Andrew such questions? Andrew's prowess is legendary," he continued, implying that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic nominee, had been less-than-faithful in his former marriage.
Paladino began by addressing his recent spat with the New York Post over the paper sending photographers to the house of his daughter, who was born out of wedlock.
"When somebody went after my 10-year-old daughter, i got angry," he said in the ad. "This leaves my daughter vulnerable to kidnapping or sexual predators."
After more than a minute, Paladino said the campaign must be about "bigger issues, not affairs or divorces, because our state is in a death spiral. We pay the highest taxes in the country, spending and debt are wildly out of control, and many in our legislature are crooks."
Paladino ran the ad in multiple television markets across the state, including Buffalo, Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, Westchester and Long Island.
The ad ran in the wake of a Qunnipiac University poll released Thursday showing Paladino trailing Cuomo by 18 points — a far cry from a Sept. 22 poll that showed Paladino within six points of his Democratic opponent.
"Our own research shows it much closer, but we still have a heavy lift closing the gap whether it's eight or 18," said Paladino spokesman Michael Caputo earlier in the day, according to the Associated Press. "We have a game plan to win."
