Metro

Carlbatross around the GOP’s neck

ALBANY — Two words explain why Democrats swept all of New York’s statewide offices and won several other important races Tuesday as Republicans scored tremendous victories across the nation: Carl Paladino.

A sizable moderate and independent-leaning portion of Republican voters was so turned off by the bombastic Buffalo bomb-thrower’s menacing rhetoric, homophobic and misogynistic outbursts, penchant for pornography and racist “jokes,” smear-mongering attacks on his opponent and downright nasty disposition that they flocked to vote for Andrew Cuomo.

The anti-Paladino stampede — which gave Cuomo a near-historic 28-point landslide — took down such promising GOP hopefuls as comptroller contender Harry Wilson and would-be attorney general Dan Donovan, both backed by Mayor Bloomberg, as well as a dozen lesser-known congressional, state Senate and Assembly candidates, GOP and Democratic insiders said yesterday.

COMPLETE ELECTION 2010 COVERAGE

“The Democrats hung Paladino around our necks wherever they could and I don’t blame them for doing it,” a prominent Republican consultant told The Post.

“Cuomo had very long and wide coattails and they really cost us,” he continued.

Paladino’s antics and the impact of his nearly $10 million in TV advertising dominated the headlines for months, marginalizing most of the Republican campaign effort.

While Wilson and Donovan recognized Paladino as political poison and refused to endorse him, they clearly didn’t go far enough to distance themselves from the standard-bearer of the GOP ticket.

They should have learned the lesson of 1990, when several leading Republicans parted ways from another disastrously embarrassing candidate for governor, Pierre Rinfret, and won their elections as a result.

“He definitely hurt us,” Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassau) said of Paladino.

“I think [comptroller candidate] Harry [Wilson] would have been able to pull it out . . . There’s no question that we were hurt at the top of the ticket, ” Skelos continued.

A big question in Republican ranks is why state GOP Chairman Ed Cox, Richard Nixon’s son-in-law and an experienced political operative and onetime US Senate hopeful, didn’t denounce Paladino’s conduct, thereby providing cover to other Republican candidates.

“It was clear from the start that Ed didn’t want Paladino, recognized what a disaster he was,” said the GOP operative.

“But Ed lacked courage to go out there and make it clear to voters that Paladino didn’t represent mainstream Republican views or conduct,” he continued.

Skelos, asked if Cox should remain as state chairman, responded, “I think we should have a serious political discussion on how we move forward to build the party in New York state.”

That’s the same promise of self-examination made by GOP leaders four years ago after another Democratic sweep of statewide offices, although their excuse then was that 2006 was a strong Democratic year.

To make the same claim again in a year of sweeping Republican victories brings to mind Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

fredric.dicker@nypost.com