The Editorial Board: With threats, Paladino blows up his own rationale for

Paladino is seeking the Republican nomination in the newly drawn 23rd Congressional District. He’s running his campaign in just the way voters have learned to expect: like a runaway truck in a school zone.

The latest red flag on Paladino’s candidacy was raised by the Republican Party, itself, with leaders publicly reporting that Paladino threatened them for supporting his opponent in the Aug. 23 primary, Nicholas Langworthy.

With those verbal assaults, Paladino undermined his own rationale for running, which he defined in June as “getting at the core issues and being able to explain them properly and getting consensus on them.”

Here’s Paladino’s idea of getting consensus with the Orchard Park Republican Committee. Its leader, Harold Fabinsky, said Paladino recently called him, “demanding to know why we endorsed Langworthy and not him.”

“I reminded him he never called or asked to appear before our committee,” Fabinsky said. “That’s when he became threatening and abusive, saying, ‘I’m going to get you, I’m going to get Orchard Park Republicans, and I’m going to get Orchard Park.’ “

Other Republican leaders in Erie County reported similar confrontations. Speaking to WIBV-TV last week, West Seneca party leader Patti Stephens also reported a “threatening” phone call from Paladino.

“It shows a very negative side of a character for someone who’s running for office,” she told the station. “What I do know is that when you make a threat like that, I’m not going to back down. You don’t get to bully people because you didn’t get your way.”

Bullying is what Paladino does.

Hamburg Chairman Daniel O’Connell echoed Stephens’ comments. Responding to Paladino’s complaint that his committee endorsed Langworthy without speaking to him, O’Connell laid it out clearly: “I told him nobody on the committee wanted to endorse him. He has way too much baggage and is not electable.”

This is the same bully who ran for governor in 2010 and who was run off the Buffalo School Board in 2017. He shows no judgment; no ability to regulate himself and certainly no talent for “getting consensus” – on anything.

In truth, it seems entirely possible that consensus is not Paladino’s goal. As Fabinsky observed, Paladino’s threats are part and parcel of the divisiveness that is tearing the country apart.

“I’ve been involved for a long time and never saw stuff like that at this level,” he said. “It concerns me that we’re becoming too polarized and too angry.”

It is an essential point. Conservatives can be conservative and liberals can be liberal without the rhetorical bomb-throwing that has become endemic to our politics. It is neither necessary nor healthy….