(Thumbnai Image:  Times Union)

REPORTER: "This one has the N-word in it, there are other pictures of naked women. In another one there is a picture of a woman performing a sexual act on a horse. Is that appropriate for someone running for governor to forward to other people? It's a very simple question."

Paladino: [silent in deep thought for nearly three seconds]

Members of the media confronted New York Republican Gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino over leaked e-mails with inappropriate video and photoshopped images such as this one of the president and his wife. While Paladino has since apologized, he blames liberal Democrats for trying to smear him.

In a press conference covered by Buffalo's CBS affiliate, WIVB-TV, Paladino says he isn't racist, just flawed and human. 

"I confess to being human and imperfect as are all of God's children. I'm not a racist, and I say that even in some of the e-mails they have hacked from my computer."

Paladino has said upstate Tea Party leaders recruited him to run for governor. At a Tea Party rally, soon after the e-mails were leaked, an organizer for the group tells The Washington Post, Paladino is anything but a racist."

"I believe that the people doing this are hard-core, left-wing, liberal people who are going to stop at nothing to smear him. He's not a racist. He was just passing on some nonsense in an e-mail. Everybody does things that are not 100 percent pure."


According to a poll taken after the scandal broke, Paladino trails front-runner and Democrat Andrew Cuomo in the polls 60 percent to 24 percent. The chairman of the Tea Party Express tells the Times Union, even if Paladino -- was -- recruited by Tea Party heads, he doubts they will continue to back the candidate.


“You saw the e-mails, right? Pornographic, racist, e-mails? How do you think that we would ever support something like that?"


But the president of the Buffalo chapter of the NAACP tells the city's ABC affiliate, WKBW-TV that despite his lapse in judgment, he doesn't think Paladino is a racist. Maybe just thoughtless.


Mesiah: "I'm not saying he's a racist, I'm saying he's totally insensitive to race."

Reporter: “Frank Mesiah is president of the NAACP's Buffalo chapter and says even if Paladino was not the original author of the e-mails, forwarding them is equally insensitive.”

So what do you think?  Do the emails speak for themselves?  Or is Carl Paladino -- the victim -- of a smear campaign?