Republican former gubernatorial nominee Carl Paladino is back in Albany today for a large anti-gun control rally — an event that is not only sharply criticizing Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s work to pass the law, but Senate Republicans.

Adding a different dimension to the rally, some GOP lawmakers upset with the law’s passage are appearing at the rally with Paladino today.

It doesn’t help matters that Paladino is calling on Senate Republican Leader Dean Skelos to resign.

“Skelos should get out of town,” Paladino told reporters at the Capitol before the rally started. “He should go and find himself a job at a car wash. He’s a bum and he’s a cowardly bum.”

Paladino decried the Senate Republican leadership — including Sens. Tom Libous and George Maziarz who both voted against the law — for being Republicans in name only.

“The people of the state of New York voted Republicans out of office for a reason. They can’t identify with the Republican Party. The Republican Party is in total disarray,” Paladino said, adding, “You got a bunch of RINOS running around pretending that they’re Republicans and the people — the rank and file — came out and voted in primary.”

Paladino, fueled in part by the tea party in 2010, upset preferred nominee former Rep. Rick Lazio in a September primary and lost in a landslide to Cuomo that November. Last year he threatened to fund primary efforts against several Senate Republicans, but those efforts largely failed.

But the Buffalo businessman remains deeply upset with the state’s Republican Party leadership and the Senate GOP.

“You got a whole bunch of people sitting in the state Senate calling themselves Republicans, but that’s in name only because they’re playing their games,” Paladino said. “Why do they do that? To perpetuate themselves in office, to line their pockets, to have the power of the seat and that’s what it’s about.”

Paladino did have kind words for his running mate, Chautauqua County Executive Greg Edwards, who in a Capital Tonight interview did not rule out running for governor in 2014. Edwards was actually the original running mate of Lazio, but in a quirk won his primary against Paladino’s preferred bottom half of the ticket, Tom Ognibene.

“I would highly support that,” Paladino said.

In the middle of the question and answer session, Sen. Greg Ball walked by and shouted, “Give ‘em hell Carl!”

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