Questions about possible prejudice are germane whenever a candidate aspires to public office. In Mr. Paladino’s case, the questions are entwined with some of his specific policy positions. He believes that space in prisons should be turned into work camps in which poor people would get, among other types of training, classes in personal hygiene. The camps would be part of Mr. Paladino’s proposed “Dignity Corps,” the inference being that the poor lack dignity in the first place, along with their presumed lack of cleanliness. (It’s a good bet that Mr. Paladino is oblivious to the extreme irony of someone who sends out racist and pornographic e-mails counseling others about personal dignity.)

But while aiming to bolster the sagging dignity of poor New Yorkers, Mr. Paladino would simultaneously hack away at their health care. He has said that one of his first acts as governor would be to cut Medicaid  which provides health services to the poor  by $20 billion.

On an issue of particular concern to women, Mr. Paladino is opposed to abortion in virtually all instances, including cases of rape and incest. The only exception, according to a spokesman, would be if the life of the woman was at stake.

Michael Caputo, Mr. Paladino’s campaign manager, said the candidate is sorry for sending the e-mails and has apologized a number of times. But when asked to explain why his boss engaged in this pattern of distributing such offensive material, he could only repeat, as Mr. Paladino has: “Bad judgment.”

This does not give voters any insight into how Mr. Paladino really feels about blacks and other minorities; or about women, who just happen to make up half the population of the state that he would be governing; or about the most extreme forms of hard-core pornography.

As for the poor, Mr. Caputo said that Mr. Paladino has at times not fully explained his expansive plans for welfare recipients, failing public school students, and men and women who receive unemployment benefits. He said a Governor Paladino would ask parents of struggling students to send them to state-sponsored boarding schools, which would also house children taken from their parents “because of social service or child welfare reasons.”

He said all recipients of long-term unemployment insurance or welfare services (except for the disabled and mothers with small children) would be required to work (or be re-trained) in government programs in order to get their benefits. This would include, he said, those who are already very well educated.

I don’t think voters quite know what they might be getting with Mr. Paladino. New Yorkers need to hear much more from him.