It's an old rule of politics that threatening a reporter with bodily harm--while fun and emotionally satisfying--rarely achieves the desired effect. This is a lesson Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino failed to heed yesterday during a confrontation with New York Post state editor Fred Dicker in the lobby of a Lake St. George hotel. Dicker asked Paladino if he had evidence to corroborate his claims that Andrew Cuomo cheated on his wife. Paladino proceeded to accuse Dicker of being a Cuomo shill who was sending Post photographers to menace his 10-year-old daughter. If it happened again, the candidate told Dicker, he'd "take him out." (He also accused Dicker of being a "stalking horse," which was exciting and hilarious.) Somehow, the presence of Paladino's press secretary (who angrily threatened to remove Dicker from the campaign's Christmas card list) only compounded the problem.

Naturally, the whole exchange was caught on cell phone camera by Capital Tonight's Kaitlyn Ross.

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Ray Gustini