BY CELESTE KATZ, on NY Daily News Blog, The Daily Politics

Howie Hawkins, the Green Party's candidate for governor, is out with a new web video in which he chastises GOP gubernatorial hopefuls Rick Lazio and Carl Paladino for focusing on attacking the proposed Park51 mosque and cultural center instead of dealing with issues like unemployment.

"September 11th, 2001 remains a pivotal moment for New York and our country. All of us share great sadness and often anger for the many innocent people who were killed that day. As the Green Party pointed out then, it would be wrong to blame an entire religion or culture or nation for the criminal terrorist act committed that day. Yet that is exactly what the opponents of the Park 51 Islamic Cultural Center are doing today: blaming Islam and condemning all Muslims who had nothing to do with the attack on 9/11 for the acts of a small group of criminal terrorists. The words that the Green Party of New York spoke on September 11, 2001, as we cautioned against turning this criminal act into a call for war, remain just as true nine years later," Hawkins said in a statement.