Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl P. Paladino maintains he was only politically incorrect -- not racist -- when he forwarded a series of e-mails to friends that, among other things, used the N-word and portrayed President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as a pimp and a hooker.

Those e-mails, however, follow a pattern of animosity between the Buffalo businessman and much of the city's black establishment over the years.

Paladino has had running battles with black political figures punctuated with stinging insults -- most famously his claim that Buffalo School Superintendent James A. Williams was hired "because he was black."

He also has a history of making paltry campaign contributions to black candidates and hefty donations to whites running against them.

A Buffalo News analysis of $468,787 in campaign contributions by Paladino and 20 of his companies since 1999 shows that black candidates received only $16,198 -- or 3 percent -- of those donations. And $10,000 of that went nearly two years ago to David A. Paterson after he succeeded Eliot L. Spitzer as governor. Paladino hasn't given a dime to a black politician since.

He has, however, been generous to whites running against leading black politicians in Buffalo, The News found. Paladino dropped at least $55,000 in a decadelong crusade to oust then-Common Council President James W. Pitts from office and contributed and raised more than $75,000 in support of opponents to Mayor Byron W. Brown in his last two elections.

"He has a problem, he definitely has a problem, with African-American leadership," Pitts said.

Paladino declined an interview request for this article, but his friends and family members dismiss accusations that he is racist. They say that:

• As a private citizen, Paladino has extended a helping hand to people of all backgrounds who find themselves in crisis.
• As an employer, he has hired many people of color.
• As a developer, he has done business in inner-city neighborhoods that others have steered clear of.
• As a vocal critic of city schools, he has been a champion of inner-city kids' right to a good education.

"Carl is not a racist," said Larry Quinn, a longtime friend who is managing partner of the Buffalo Sabres and vice chairman of Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp. "He just comes from an old Italian way of thinking that may not be politically correct, but it's not racial."

Paladino, however, declined to document claims he has made on the campaign trail about his employment practices and acts of charity.

What's more, The News found he has has done little to advance the cause of school reform aside from criticizing school officials.

And while he has done business in the inner city, his legacy also includes influencing City Hall to redirect the state Empire Zone program away from promoting economic development in distressed sections of the city to benefit downtown business interests -- including his real estate holdings.

Using 'poor judgment'

In these final weeks of the gubernatorial campaign, Democratic candidate Andrew M. Cuomo, who has been criticized by some black leaders as taking the African-American vote for granted, huddled with black advisers in his campaign and released a long-awaited urban agenda. The 202-page report explains Cuomo's plan for dealing with inner-city poverty and related issues disproportionately affecting blacks.

Paladino, with an all-white senior campaign staff, has done little outreach in black communities in Buffalo or elsewhere during the campaign. The lastest Marist poll shows that only 7 percent of nonwhite voters favor Paladino.

Policywise, Paladino's proposals affecting urban areas have been largely limited to potentially devastating cuts in Medicaid, which primarily serves the poor and the elderly, and the retrofitting of prisons to house the poor to help them gain job skills -- and learn personal hygiene.

Rather than softening the impact of the racist e-mails he forwarded, some analysts believe his proposals only reinforced the image, whether warranted or not, that emerged at the beginning of his campaign, when WNYmedia.net, a local blogging network, disclosed that Paladino had forwarded racist and pornographic e-mail to friends and business associates.

One e-mail showed a group of blacks trying to get out of the path of an airplane moving across a field with a caption that read: "Run n-----s run."

A second depicted dancing African tribesmen with the caption "Obama Inauguration Rehearsal."

A third e-mail involved a photo of the Obamas doctored to simulate a 1970s pimp and prostitute.

Paladino first dismissed as a "smear" aimed at bringing down his candidacy, then acknowledged exercising "poor judgment" in forwarding the e-mails, which also included pornographic images that included a woman having sex with a horse. His racial attitudes were called into question long before the e-mails, however.

Blacks have taken offense at a number of statements attributed to Paladino over the years:

• That some black members of the Council were better suited to clean, rather than serve in, the Council.
• That unspecified black female leaders in the city represented a "parasitic Black Sisterhood."
• That Pitts operated as a "shadow mayor ... in more ways than one."
• That the predominantly black Commodore Perry Homes were "full of crack, craziness and nonsense."

Paladino has denied making some of the comments, including the one about cleaning Council Chambers, and has been unrepentant about others, saying his critics have tried to play the race card to silence him from discussing politically incorrect truths.

There isn't much to dispute about Paladino's campaign contributions, however. Paladino is one of the region's largest contributors to political campaigns, and a News analysis of those donations shows that he gives almost exclusively to whites.

The campaign committees of three former gubernatorial candidates -- Paterson, H. Carl McCall and Randy Daniels -- account for $11,800 of the $16,198 he gave to black candidates at the federal and state level since 1999 and the local level since 2006.

By contrast, he gave more than $70,000 to the gubernatorial campaigns of white candidates Spitzer and George E. Pataki.

While Paladino has given $1,000 or more to 64 candidates, Paterson, McCall and Assemblywoman Crystal D. Peoples-Stokes, D-Buffalo, are the only black candidates who have been recipients of that largess. Peoples-Stokes received a series of donations totaling $1,450 earlier this decade but has not received any money from Paladino since 2002.

No other black candidate has received more than $700, led by City Judge Robert T. Russell Jr., a candidate in 2005 for State Supreme Court, and city Firefighter Bryon J. McIntyre, when he challenged then-Council Member Brian C. Davis for his Ellicott District seat in 2007.

In the last couple of years, Paladino's contributions to black candidates have dried up. The last money he gave to any black candidate -- the $10,000 to Paterson -- was donated nearly two years ago in December 2008. Aside from that, Paladino has given only $950 to two black candidates -- McIntyre and University Council Member Bonnie E. Russell -- since 2006.

Opposed to Pitts, Brown

But Paladino has a track record of spending heavily against black candidates for citywide office in Buffalo.

In 2009, he gave $12,000 to South Council Member Michael P. Kearns and raised a substantial but undetermined amount of money from others on his behalf to underwrite his challenge to Brown in the Democratic mayoral primary.

In 2005, Paladino and his companies donated $37,500 to the campaign of Kevin J. Helfer, a Republican who challenged Brown during his first run for mayor. Paladino raised an additional $27,000 for Helfer from family members and business associates.

Before Brown, there was Pitts.

Paladino began to whip out his checkbook in an effort to defeat Pitts starting in 1995, when he ran for Council president to succeed the retiring George K. Arthur. That year, Paladino gave $5,500 to the campaign of former Parks Commissioner Stanley A. Buczkowski, who was aligned with then-Mayor James D. Griffin.

Four years later, Paladino gave $25,000 to Council Member David A. Franczyk of the Fillmore District when he challenged Pitts for the Council presidency. A year later, he contributed $20,000 to a committee that was championing a referendum to reduce the Council from 13 members to nine through the elimination of three at-large seats and that of a separate president. The measure passed.

And when Pitts in 2003 sought a return to elective office when he ran for city comptroller, Paladino gave $5,000 to his opponent, Andrew A. SanFilippo, who won the election and effectively ended Pitts' political career.

Rebutting his critics

The Paladino campaign has offered several lines of defense in rebutting accusations of racism.

• Paladino, out of the limelight, has helped people of all backgrounds, including blacks.

"I've known the guy for 35 years, and 90 percent of the phone calls I get from Carl Paladino are about helping someone who needs help: They need a job, their mother has cancer, they were in a car accident," Quinn said.

Paladino's campaign Web site says he has raised millions of dollars since 1994 to support St. Luke's Mission of Mercy School, which serves "the destitute, battered and broken, and poorest of the poor on Buffalo's East Side."

Neither Paladino nor the mission would discuss his involvement, however. Nor was Paladino or his campaign willing to discuss any other good deeds in the black community.

• Paladino's companies have created a lot of jobs for minorities.

"I'm proud to say that I have created jobs for people of every ethnicity, color and sexual preference," he wrote in April to Arianna Huffington, editor in chief of the Web site Huffington Post, in an attempt to refute accusations that he is racist.

The News twice asked Paladino's campaign to provide a racial breakout of his companies' payroll. It refused.

Interviews with friends and business rivals failed to produce a consensus on the racial composition of that work force, aside perhaps from the fact that his front office is predominantly white and includes a number of his relatives. In terms of race, Quinn said, that's no different from other developers in the city.

A spokesman for the state Division of Human Rights said that it has not adjudicated any discrimination cases against Paladino-owned companies.

• Paladino has developed commercial properties in the inner city.

He has built drugstores, as the designated developer for Rite Aid, some of which now stand empty. He also has constructed dollar discount stores and a couple of small shopping plazas. These properties account for a fraction of his holdings, the critical mass of which is located in downtown and for which he has received more than $3.3 million in tax breaks through the Empire Zone program.

The legislative intent of the program was to help impoverished sections of urban areas. Paladino was among the business operators who successfully lobbied City Hall to draw the zone boundaries to include most of downtown at the expense of more impoverished sections of the city. A News investigation in 2003 found that the program did little to promote investment and create jobs in poor neighborhoods, although it did provide Paladino and other influential business operators with major tax breaks.

• Paladino has gone to bat for minority students, who comprise three-quarters of the enrollment the city, by taking on the school system.

In the last several years, he has taken the superintendent, the teachers union and the Board of Education to task through letters, op-ed articles, remarks to the board and a billboard on one of his buildings along the downtown section of the Thruway.

"The poorest city of its size in America has a totally dysfunctional school system cheating students from destitute homes out of their right to a decent education," he said in a letter last year to Philip Rumore, president of the Buffalo Teachers Federation.

In his letter to Huffington, Paladino described those defending the status quo in city schools as practicing "the worst form of racism."

Paladino has not gone much beyond words, however. He hasn't followed the lead of other local businesses, who adopt schools, make donations to school foundations or otherwise involve themselves in schools. He has not supported any School Board candidates with campaign donations.

He has not joined the reform movement for charter schools, although one of his companies got the contract to build Tapestry Charter School -- reaping $625,000 in tax breaks in the process. School officials praise him for his hands-on involvement and delivering the project on time and under budget.

Paladino did sit down two years ago with the District Parent Coordinating Council, comprising parents from the city's 59 public schools and focused on improving student performance.

"When we met with him, it was clear he was interested more in a personal attacks on the superintendent and School Board members," said Samuel L. Radford III, vice president of the Coordinating Council. "When it came down to it, it was more rhetoric than substance."

Radford doesn't dismiss Paladino's efforts altogether, however.

"I wouldn't say he's been of no value," Radford said. "He spoke out, which is more than other developers do, more than what most other people do. That's a beginning, but we need follow-through."

jheaney@buffnews.comnull