Buffalo, NY – Rus Thompson, the man who talked Carl Paladino into running for governor, is a gravelly voiced concrete-truck salesman who a few years ago struggled to find enough work to support his wife and six children.
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He and Mr. Paladino, a multimillionaire real-estate developer, did have at least one thing in common: They had long been working to push aside elected officials whom they viewed as out of touch and responsible for high taxes and bad government.
Without Mr. Thompson’s urging and his tea-party ties, it’s unlikely that Mr. Paladino would have run for governor—let alone pulled off his upset win in the Republican primary against the more moderate, party-supported Rick Lazio.
There are many ways that the 54-year-old Mr. Thompson, who now serves as Mr. Paladino’s driver, adviser and liaison to many tea-party groups, embodies the forces that propelled Mr. Paladino to victory.
He’s an upstate conservative who was having a hard time finding home-improvement jobs. He’s angry at Albany, viewing it as corrupt and too focused on the needs of New York City at the expense of the rest of the state. Much of his ire comes from his experience working for elderly homeowners, who he said could barely afford to maintain their homes and pay property taxes with their fixed incomes.
Mr. Thompson got his start in local politics, fighting battles such as an unsuccessful attempt to remove the tolls from the bridge to his hometown of Grand Island, which sits in the middle of the Niagara River just north of Buffalo. He led protests against politicians and formed early tea-party groups.
He sought out Mr. Paladino as an ally in those fights because he had heard the developer’s radio ads criticizing the Buffalo school board and respected his charge to lift tolls on another major area highway.
Read full story at The Wall Street Journal
Go Paladino. U got my family’s vote & all my freinds
we support u Paladino all the way!
enough with this fake funny political fraud people.
we need people doing whats good for us new york’s even all this local political jewish groups supporting all this crooks, we jews will be united and support Paladino for governor. we showed this by DAVID GREENFELD will proof it ones again. VOTE Paladino
I can not believe that any Jew would vote for such an anti-Semite. He has given no real plans no policies, only just rhetoric that people agree with in concept he has no clue to figure out how to get it done though. It is nice concept lets clear out Albany but you do need some allies there and he has basically just name called everyone expecting that to work.