Character questions dominated the contest for governor Wednesday as Republican Carl P. Paladino charged that Democrat Andrew M. Cuomo had had an affair while he was married.

Earlier the Cuomo camp pointed to a 20-year-old drunken driving charge against Paladino's campaign driver and all three New York City newspapers plus the Wall Street Journal ran stories this week reporting ethical and legal problems associated with four of Paladino's staff members.

The most dramatic moment of the day in what has quickly become a very bitter campaign came before Paladino appeared at an evening meeting of the state Business Council at a Lake George resort.

Fireworks erupted when a New York Post reporter confronted Paladino, asking if he had evidence supporting his allegation that Cuomo had an affair when he was married to Kerry Kennedy.

"Of course, I do," Paladino snapped. "You'll get it at the appropriate time."

The confrontation between Paladino and reporter Fred Dicker featured shouting, pushing and campaign aides hustling Paladino into a bathroom to escape the scene.

"You're his stalking horse. You're his bird dog," Paladino snapped at Dicker.

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Video: Confrontation from CBS 6 in Albany

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Politics Now blog: Quips from the campaign trail and more

Earlier: Conservative Party endorses Paladino

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Paladino accused the Post of sending a photographer to Buffalo to get pictures of his 10-year-old out-of-wedlock daughter. Paladino, who earlier this year acknowledged fathering the girl, has said his daughter is "off limits" to the press.

"I want to know why you sent goons after my daughter," Paladino shouted.

"You send another goon to my daughter and I'll take you out," Paladino added. Asked how, "Watch," Paladino fumed.

Earlier in the evening, the Web site Politico posted an interview it conducted with Paladino on Tuesday. "Has anybody asked Andrew Cuomo about his paramours -- when he was married -- or asked him why his wife left him or threw him out of the house? Has anybody ever done that? What are they doing intruding on my life?"

Cuomo's divorce several years ago made headlines in the New York City tabloids.

Wednesday's charges and counter-charges amounted to some of the most vicious campaign activity to date in a race that is growing increasingly rugged.

The Cuomo camp launched a concentrated assault on Paladino insiders from three top Democrats: lieutenant governor candidate Robert J. Duffy, the mayor of Rochester; state Democratic Chairman Jay S. Jacobs; and attorney general candidate Eric T. Schneiderman, a state senator from Manhattan.

"As a candidate for New York's highest office, Paladino should be associating himself with people with the highest ethical values -- not aides who don't pay their taxes, have been indicted on felony fraud charges, convicted of drunk driving, or linked with billion-dollar pay-to-play scandals," Jacobs said. "Instead of the best and the brightest, Paladino went out and got the usual suspects."

Schneiderman said the revelations point to the kind of government Paladino will assemble, while Duffy -- the former chief of the Rochester Police Department -- asked why Paladino did not complete a thorough vetting of his campaign staff.

"He needs to explain to voters why he has surrounded himself with individuals that likely couldn't pass a simple background check for state employment," Duffy said.

The Paladino team offered no apologies. In suburban Albany, the candidate accused Cuomo of being responsible for the media leaks about his staff.

"He's reached down to the bottom of the barrel. Obviously, his clip is empty," Paladino told reporters after the Conservative Party put him on its ballot line.

"He's welcome to take his shots at me. He better stay away from my family," Paladino said, calling it "disgraceful that he has to chase campaign workers and put them on the front page of the New York Times."

Paladino dismissed Democratic charges that problems involving his staffers are a reflection on his judgment.

"You want me to vet out his entire team? You want me to vet them? You want me to vet you?" he asked. "Seriously, you find me somebody, all right, who doesn't have some problems in their life."

Paladino also noted Cuomo's ties with former Republican Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato.

"When Al D'Amato was in the Senate, he was under ethics scrutiny his entire term in the Senate," he said.

And Michael R. Long, the state Conservative Party chairman, noted that Cuomo attended an event this week with Rep. Charles B. Rangel, the Harlem Democrat facing a House trial after being accused of 13 congressional ethics violations.

Paladino spokesman Michael R. Caputo also responded, noting that tax difficulties and DWI charges don't compare to revelations that Cuomo, as HUD secretary, accused a company owned by financier Andrew Farkas of making $7.6 million in kickbacks as part of a federal housing program, only to later go to work for Farkas. The financier also became a major contributor to Cuomo's political career.

"This pales in comparison to bribes Andrew Cuomo has taken to drop his responsibility as attorney general and head of HUD to prosecute those he's supposed to be regulating or prosecuting," Caputo said.

Caputo also accused the Cuomo campaign of providing "investigative reports" to the newspapers, noting the coincidence in the timing of the stories.

But Caputo himself is now part of that scrutiny.

The Times reported Wednesday that Caputo failed to pay nearly $53,000 in federal taxes over the last few years, prompting the Internal Revenue Service to take action against him.

The newspaper said that by 2008, Caputo had fallen far enough behind in his tax payments that the federal government filed a lien against him, prompting a payment plan with the IRS and a back bill now totaling $9,302.

"Most people I know have had problems paying their taxes," Caputo told the Times. "I am just like everybody else."

In a Wednesday interview with The Buffalo News, Caputo explained that his tax problems do not stem from any kind of fraud. He said the Dallas company for which he worked -- Allegiance Telecom -- declared bankruptcy. And that spawned major losses in stock options and the collapse of his 401(k), reducing him from millionaire status to a net worth of about $6,000.

"I went through a corporate meltdown that cost me dearly," he said.

In addition, he said he endured a "messy divorce" that forced him to sell many of his assets and incur substantial tax costs in capital gains. At the same time, he said he started a new public relations business in Florida that attracted tax penalties because he was unfamiliar with business practices.

"I'm not a businessman; I'm the attack dog," he said of his political consulting career.

Both the Times and Daily News also reported Wednesday on a DWI arrest attributed to tea party activist Rus Thompson of Grand Island, who is one of two men who talked Paladino into running for governor and who has served as Paladino's paid driver. The arrest occurred in Arizona in the early 1990s, and the Times said he never showed up for one scheduled court appearance.

"We're focusing on high crimes and felonies of Andrew Cuomo, not the driving record of his chauffeur," Caputo said.

As previously reported in The News and many other publications, the Times also pointed to the June indictment by a Manhattan grand jury of John F. Haggerty Jr., a veteran Republican operative who masterminded Paladino's petition effort and remains as one of the campaign's top strategists. He is accused of stealing $1.1 million from the campaign of New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Paladino has repeatedly affirmed that he stands by Haggerty.

But some of the most strident reaction to the Times story stemmed from former Erie County Comptroller Nancy A. Naples, now chairwoman of the Paladino campaign. She denied resigning her office in 2005 because of stories in The News indicating she had directed 80 percent of the county's bond business to one of her campaign donors.

Rather, she said she left because she felt her continuing battles with then-County Executive Joel A. Giambra were hindering efforts to solve a major fiscal crisis.

"I certainly did not resign because I did something wrong and put my tail between my legs and ran out," she said. "Unfortunately, I thought the hostility of the county executive toward me was detrimental to solving Erie County's fiscal problems."

While she did not challenge the 2005 reports of her bond counsel transactions in The News, she noted that her appointed successor -- James M. Hartman -- steered the same business to the same bond counsel even though he was not running to win the post.

"He 'coincidentally' gave the same business to the same investment banker because he was the best and gave Erie County the best prices," she said.

rmccarthy@buffnews.com; tprecious@buffnews.comnull