Unsuccessful New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino still owes about $130,000 to "about a dozen" employees from his campaign last year, according to the Buffalo News, his very same hometown paper that endorsed his rival, now-governor Andrew Cuomo. The paper claims that various "salaries, fees and expenses" are owed to a handful of "consultants, vendors and staff members," while the shyster's company Paladino for the People sits in about $6.1 million in debt with a balance of just $5,305, according to public records. "I would have expected a nice thank-you from Carl for all the hard work I had contributed, but instead I got screwed," said Paladino's former manager of internal operations.More »

Those suffering the slings and arrows of Tuesday's election results should avoid the big map in the Times today showing a shower of nasty little red-colored and rightward-surging darts flowing across America. Each little arrow shows a Congressional district where the Party of No gained ground. But if the graphic makes you wince, there is some small solace found in this statistic: Tuesday night was even more painful for most of the multimillionaire candidates who saw their money go to waste in failed bids for office.

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Late last night Carl Paladino came on the air for his final hurrah and to admit defeat by Andrew Cuomo. He choked back tears, snarled at the media, and gave us one final reminder that -- no matter how much great theater he brought to this race -- we should count our blessings that we live in a state where his kind of toxic tea leaves get swept into the November trash. That happened when he produced a baseball bat -- his long-declared weapon of choice for cleaning up Albany. He stood there with the bat above his shoulder and a grimace on his face, looking like he'd enjoy the hell out of a big swing at someone's head, and just about anyone -- from Shelly Silver to the Times reporter who asked about his pit bull's license -- would suffice.

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Stan Shaw

For what it's worth, this voter will bubble in "NO" and "NO" again to the two Charter revision questions on the flip side of today's ballot.

Question #1, Term Limits, is Mike Bloomberg's payback to fellow billionaire Ron Lauder who agreed not to oppose the mayor's 2008 coup to give himself a third term in return for Bloomberg's pledge to roll them back to two terms this year. The original deal also included a seat for Lauder on this year's Charter Revision Commission -- a promise that was cited high up in Lauder's own press release two years ago. But the two billionaires decided that wasn't such a good idea after several good government groups and critics pointed out it was probably illegal.

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The frantic, pre-election, get-out-the-vote push is on everywhere. But aside from President Obama, whose last-minute stumping attracted a crew of stunningly self-defeating AIDS-activist hecklers over the weekend, the biggest star-power has been mustered by the Working Families Party which got Matt Damon to do his second video in a week urging New Yorkers to vote Row E.

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Nixon's Checkers speech: Paladino needs one

The Greater Murdoch Empire may be pumping millions into national Republican races, but it's working overtime to drive the GOP's Carl Paladino bananas.

Today, the Post gives a rare tip of the Murdoch hat to Sir Rupert's much-loathed rival, the Times, for its story yesterday about how Paladino allegedly short-changed his own aunt, handing her home over to his mistress at a below-market price. The Post popped Paladino yesterday about the story and got a "no comment," which was enough of a news peg to recycle the piece in today's paper.

Meanwhile, the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal for some reason paid a pollster a fair amount of money to ask New York City residents about their preferences in the race for governor. The unsurprising results are that the Tea Party champion from Buffalo barely registers in Gotham, with Andrew "Muscle Car" Cuomo swamping him to the tune of 73 percent to 12 percent.

The scary part will come next year when Murdoch presents the bill for this glorious coverage to the next governor. And you know it's going to be a fat one.

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Morgan Schweitzer

Would-be state Attorney General Dan Donovan says that the reason he hasn't had any public corruption cases as Staten Island District Attorney, is that the borough's too small to have its very own corrupt officials. The Voice pointed out that for years you could walk into restaurants in Richmond County and spot politicians dining with mobsters, which might offer some intriguing investigative trails.

But the city's smallest borough has clearly had a bumper crop of a different kind of problem -- home foreclosures. And in most urban areas, foreclosures have been accompanied by predatory lending and mortgage fraud. But, Donovan, DA since 2004, appears to have been missing in action on that front as well.

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This is the way campaigns are supposed to work: A pair of top officials of two of the state's largest public employee unions are today calling out Andrew Cuomo for his tough-on-labor comments in Sunday's New York Times. Cuomo was described as "girding for war" with big unions aided by a "more formidable" business lobby. To that end, he told the Times' Nicholas Confessore that he had sent union leaders copies of a new book about an old battle that he'd found helpful: "The Man Who Saved New York: Hugh Carey and the Great Fiscal Crisis of 1975," by former Brooklyn state senator Seymour Lachman and ex-Newsday reporter Robert Polner.

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Wartella

The results are in and the hands-covered candidate was the hands-down winner of last night's Theatre-of-the-Absurd gubernatorial debate.

At first you wondered if Jimmy McMillan, with his magnificent Chester A. Arthur muttonchops and Colonel Sanders goatee, was wearing black gloves as a kind of homage to the departed Gloved One, Michael Jackson. But post-debate, the ex-mail man candidate of the Rent is Too Damn High Party explained that a psychological malady incurred from Agent Orange while he served in Vietnam made them a necessary part of his wardrobe. Which explains it.

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New Yorkers get their first look at The Magnificent Seven gubernatorial candidates tonight, and if you can't find someone to embrace on this stage then you're a choosy beggar who doesn't even deserve true democracy and you might as well head straight for Tehran.

The assortment includes a bosomy ex-madam, a mutton-chopped ex-mail man, a Tongan-speaking Naderite, a steel-drum-playing former Black Panther, and a libertarian traffic-court lawyer.

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