Following up on Eliot Spitzer's comments last week about his aloofness in the gubernatorial race thus far, the NY Times criticizes Andrew Cuomo in an editorial this weekend for his above-it-all attitude: "Indeed, Mr. Cuomo is barely campaigning. He rarely grants on-the-record interviews...goes for days without a campaign event and leaves it to surrogates and commercials to criticize his opponent. The voters have noticed."

They also get some shots in at his opponent, Carl Paladino, whom they call "a blowhard without a serious plan to govern New York." But it seems all the recent criticism of Cuomo's campaigning style has made an impression on him, since he has started making motions to debate Paladino after several calls from his camp. Now, the issue is who else will be involved with the debate; Cuomo allegedly only wants the debate to include the three major candidates, himself, Paladino and Rick Lazio, but Paladino wants to open it up to minor-party candidates such as former Black Panther Charles Barron and former madam Kristin Davis. "Why is Andrew Cuomo trying to limit the debate to white men only?," the Paladino campaign questioned in a mass e-mail, according to the News.

But just because he's got Cuomo sweating a bit doesn't mean that Paladino doesn't have his own major concerns with voters; despite associating himself with the Tea Party, not all Tea Party leaders are gung-ho for Paladino, let alone convinced that the former Democrat is a true Tea Party candidate: “Personally, I haven't made up my mind yet,” said Lorraine Scanni, co-founder of the Staten Island Tea Party.