Difference between revisions of "Al D'Amato"

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Alfonse Marcello D'Amato, Sr. (born August 1, 1937) is an American attorney who represented New York in the United States Senate as a Republican from 1981 to 1999. He subsequently established Park Strategies, a lobbying firm. He is the most recent Republican to represent New York in the U. S. Senate.​ He succeeded fellow Republican Jacob Javits, a liberal member of the party from New York City, whom he denied re-nomination to a fifth term in the 1980 party primary. After three terms, D'Amato was unseated in 1998 by the Democrat Chuck Schumer, the current Senate Democratic Leader.

Background

Of Italian Roman Catholic ancestry, D'Amato was born in the Brooklyn borough to Armand D'Amato, an insurance broker, and the former Antoinette Ciofarri. He was reared on Long Island, in thevillage of Island Park.^[1] He is a graduate of Chaminade High School, Syracuse University, and the Syracuse School of Law, both in Syracuse, New York. ​ From his first marriage to Penelope D'Amato, he had four children. By his second wife, Katuria, he has a son, Alfonso Marcello D'Amato, Jr. (born 2008), and a daughter, Luciana Cioffari D'Amato (born 2009).^[2] Katuria D'Amato filed for divorce in 2017.^[3]​

An avid poker player, D'Amato is a former chairman of the Poker Players Alliance which among other matters advocated the right of poker players to play on-line.^[4]

Political life

Before his Senate years, D'Amato held the appointive position of public administrator of Nassau County, in which capacity he was responsible for managing the assets of county residents who died intestate. He was first appointed and then elected as receiver of taxes for the town of Hempstead. He was also a town superviso] in Hempstead and in 1977 he was elected presiding supervisor. ^[5]​ ​ In 1979, Javits disclosed that he had Lou Gehrig's disease. Despite his obscurity as a statewide candidate, D'Amato unseated Senator Javits in their primary, 56 to 44 percent. Javits continued his campaign in the general election as he nominee of the New York Liberal Party. In that same election, Ronald Reagan carried New York, but Javits polled only 11 percent of the vote. D'Amato defeated the Democratic nominee then U.S. Representative Elizabeth Holtzman, 45 to 44 percent. D'Amato won again in 1986 and 1992 but lost to Schumer in 1998.​ ​ Because of his emphasis on constituent services, in the tradition of his colleague Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, he became known as "Senator Pothole." His supporters did not object to the appellation because they appreciated his focus on getting things done.​ D'Amato holds the record on the Senate floor for the second and eighth longest filibusters, some of which became comical in nature. In 1983, he voted for the Martin Luther King Holiday legislation, signed into law by President Reagan. In 1987, he backed the Civil Rights Restoration Act and voted to override President Reagan's veto of the legislation.^[6] He supported the confirmation of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to the United States Supreme Court; Bork was rejected by senators, including some Moderate Republicans,^[7] but Thomas was narrowly confirmed in 1991, 52 to 48, with the support of eleven Democrats.^[8]

In 1989, President George Herbert Walker Bush named D'Amato to the Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism.​ He chaired the Senate Banking Committee and was a member of the Senate Finance Committee.^[5] He became a leading critic of President Bill Clinton in the Whitewater scandal and chaired the hearings of the special committee conducting the investigation into the matter. He supported efforts to assist Holocaust survivors in obtain their relatives' mony in Swiss bank accounts.^[9]

Like Governor Thomas Dewey, D'Amato was viewed as the "boss" of the New York Republican Party. He was instrumental in securing the 1994 gubernatorial nomination for George Pataki, who unseated Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo.^[10]​

D'Amato was mostly conservative in his early career. He backed capital punishment and heavy sentences for narcotics offenses. In time he became more of a Moderate Republican and was one of only three senators of his party to vote to allow homosexuals to serve openly in the U. S. military. In 1996, D'Amato voted for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, pushed by the Democrats. In his failed 1998 reelection bid, in which George Pataki nevertheless won a second term as governor, D'Amato was endorsed by the homosexual Human Rights Campaign..^[11] In 1996, D'Amato, voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which drew the opposition of liberals.^[12]​ His ten-point loss to Schumer in 1998 apparently came from the loss of support from moderate voters in New York City. He once referred to Schumer as a "putzhead," a Yiddish vulgarity.^[13]

Prior to leaving office, Senator D'Amato published his memoir entitled "Power, Pasta and Politics. He also became a columnist for the since defunct George magazine and a contributor to Fox News.^[14]

In 2008, D'Amato endorsed U.S. Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee for the Republican presidential nomination, which instead went to John McCain, who was handily defeated by Barack Obama. In 2012, D'Amato supported Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and the current junior U. S. Senator from Utah], in the second losing race to Obama. In 2016, he endorsed Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Moderate Republican who claimed the ability to stop runaway deficits. In that race, former Governor Pataki was also a candidate. Kasich was quickly upended by D'Amato's fellow New York Republican, Donald Trump.

In 2020, the former senator spoke against the policy of Governor Andrew Cuomo to transfer coronavirus patients to nursing homes.^[15]

References