HORNELL — Carl Paladino’s priorities couldn’t be clearer this week as he addressed about 50 supporters in this Steuben County city’s downtown park.

The New York City boroughs of Queens and Staten Island are “just like us,” the Republican gubernatorial candidate said to his fellow upstaters. The rest of the heavily Democratic city is a different story.

“That leaves Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn — and they can have them,” he said. “First, you can’t get around down there, and secondly, there aren’t many Republicans.”

As the Buffalo attorney and developer crisscrosses the state in the days before the Sept. 14 primary, he makes clear his disdain for the politics of the great metropolis to the south. He rails against Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver — a Manhattanite and Democrat — and against the taxes and fees he says New York City Democrats have imposed on small upstate manufacturing centers like Hornell.

“What are we doing selling power out of state?” he asked, referring to policies on upstate hydropower. “Why not offer it to communities in Western New York if they do that? Utility costs are higher in upstate New York than anywhere.”

“Then you’ve got Bloomberg down there saying, ‘Give us your poor of America,’ ” he added, referring to New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. “Easy for him to say. He’s a billionaire.”

Areas with concentrations of conservative Republicans are gaining nearly all of Paladino’s focus these days as he races party rival Rick Lazio to the Primary Day finish line. He campaigned this week in Syracuse, Cortland, Binghamton, Elmira, Hornell, Olean, Niagara Falls and Staten Island. Next week he heads to Long Island — Lazio’s home turf — which may yet prove the most contested battleground of all.

Paladino’s challenge is to solidify his Western New York base and hold his own in metropolitan suburbs like Long Island, said Jack Cookfair, a Re-publican campaign consultant in Syracuse who often speaks with Paladino but does not work for him.

“I’ve spent a lot of time working on Long Island, and it’s not all the Hamptons and the North Shore,” Cookfair said. “It’s Patchogue and Babylon and Brookhaven and people Carl appeals to.”

Paladino’s stops in Syracuse and Hornell especially offered “targets of opportunity,” where Republican primaries for the State Senate will draw

a fair number of Republican voters, Cookfair noted. And since a rare GOP gubernatorial primary is expected to draw the most conservative of Republicans, Cookfair believes that Paladino’s itinerary has a purpose.

“Presumably he is targeting these middle-class, ethnic enclaves where people are most likely to respond to his message,” Cookfair said.

The latest Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday shows Lazio leading Paladino, 47 percent to 35 percent, among Republicans likely to vote in the primary, as Paladino narrowed Lazio’s lead to 12 percentage points, down from 16 last month.

“With many of his supporters open to changing their minds, Rick Lazio has a shaky lead,“ said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute and a veteran observer of New York politics. “The people who like Carl Paladino are more likely than Lazio’s voters to have made up their minds to stick with him.”

“But an awful lot of voters don’t know much about [Paladino],” Carroll added. “Can he convince enough voters that he’s the Republican to run against Andrew Cuomo with a big TV blitz in the next two weeks? We’ll have to wait and see.”

Another Quinnipiac poll a month ago showed Lazio leading Paladino, 39 percent to 23 percent, among Republicans, with 33 percent undecided. Lazio led the previous poll, on June 22, 46 percent to 17 percent, with 28 percent undecided.

Paladino spokesman Michael R. Caputo said the campaign’s own research shows the primary “much closer today.”

“Today begins our media push,” Caputo said Thursday. “We’re on television and radio full-force, hitting Republicans’ mailboxes and gearing up for a big finish at a time when the [Quinnipiac] poll shows Rick’s voters are looking for another candidate. And Rick is out of cash.”

In Hornell, Paladino seemed to connect with his audience with his cutting, direct and sometimes vicious criticism of Albany. He acknowledges he has been controversial but explains it all away with his trademark excuse of “I’m not politically correct.”

“If they don’t know how to bring home the bacon, fight the establishment and take on Sheldon Silver, then we don’t want them,” he said. “And in Washington, they talk about redistributing wealth, and they talk about Obamacare. God knows that they’ll talk about next.”

Mary Soukup, of nearby Haskinville, said she read about Paladino’s scheduled appearance in the Hornell Evening Tribune and decided to check him out. She especially admires his “passion.”

“He seems fearless, and I like that,” she said. “I will vote for him after this rally today.”

Mary McCormick, of Hornell, reflected an anti-Albany mood by noting that Paladino seems more oriented toward people. “He focuses on issues of the people, and there are an awful lot of them in Albany who don’t,” she said.

Along the streets of Hornell, just about everyone has heard of Paladino, even if they are not totally familiar with him.

Larry Ames, of Canisteo, enjoying a meal in the Texas Cafe, knew Paladino was running “for something to straighten out the government.”

“I’ve seen him on TV, and I think he might be all right,” Ames said. “But no matter who we put in, it can’t be straightened out.”

For all his criticism of entrenched powers, Paladino is still courting the Republican establishment — most of which supports Lazio. But his campaign sold 230 tickets at $100 each Tuesday for an Olean fundraiser, and he gained two more GOP county organizations this week — Chemung and Ulster — the farthest afield yet from his Buffalo base.

John Buckley, Hornell’s lone Republican alderman and the city’s GOP chairman, also pledged his support during this week’s rally. “I met Carl in Corning back in July and realized right then he was the only one of the three running for governor who was talking at all about making New York more business-friendly,” he said.

Other Republicans running in primaries were eager to be seen with Paladino in Hornell, while congressional candidate Tom Reed — a Lazio supporter — showed up, too.

“He does uncork some comments, and that’s refreshing,” said Reed, the former Corning mayor who is running for the seat vacated earlier this year by Rep. Eric J. J. Massa, D-Corning. “What he’s talking about is what we should be talking about.”

But if Paladino is enjoying any success, it stems from connecting with people like Clarence and Joan Coombs of Hornell. They are part of the upstate base Paladino needs, and so far he has impressed them.

“I like that he’s not an insider,” Joan Coombs said. “Anybody I vote for this year has got to be someone who’s not been in office before. When they’ve been there long enough, they forget that they work for us and not the other way around.”

Cookfair, the Republican consultant, said the Coombses are just the kind of voters Paladino is trying to attract. “The people who are mad know who he is,” he said. “And there are lots of them.”

rmccarthy@buffnews.comnull