N.Y. Nasty Boys Duke It Out

The New York Senate race - America's election most foul - has reached a down-and-dirty climax with a fresh splatter of negative TV commercials.

Veteran GOP incumbent Al D'Amato and his Democratic challenger, Chuck Schumer, have been happily hitting each other below the belt for months in the meanest and most exciting election of Campaign '98. Polls show the race to be a toss up.

In some of the campaign's gentler moments, D'Amato, 61, has been compared to a bully who steals the lunch money of little children while Schumer, 47, has been denounced for voting for foreign aid for Mongolia at the expense of economically depressed upstate New York.

Schumer spent much of the campaign calling D'Amato a liar while D'Amato dwelled on Schumer's congressional attendance record.

Now, in the closing days of the campaign, the two political warriors were - in effect - calling each other crooks. Schumer is airing an ad that calls D'Amato the "most investigated Senator in New York" and points to what it says is a "30-year pattern of ethical transgressions" by the senator.

Al D'Amato

D'Amato is a political street fighter whose industrial-strength negative campaigns have kept him in the Senate from this Democratic state for 18 years. Schumer is a relentlessly ambitious workaholic who has spent 18 years in the House. The author of the Brady Bill is a liberal, but you can forget the bleeding heart part.

The war of words and images between the two men has made this the nation's most expensive election. D'Amato is expected to spend more than $20 million. Schumer will shell out a mere $15 million. But late-in-the-campaign donations from the likes of movie mogul Steven Spielberg and billionaire Warren Buffett will enable Schumer to match D'Amato mud pie for mud pie on television.

Bill and Hillary Clinton have also helped Schumer to raise quick cash. This is payback time for the Clintons, who have not fogotten Al D'Amato's Whitewater hearings.

The campaign has been marked by one major tactical blunder. That came in late October when D'Amato made a typically aggressive move to corral a chunk of New York's substantial Jewish vote. Since both candidates were strong supporters of Israel, D'Amato needed a dramatic gesture to set himself apart from his Jewish rival.

The senator chose a ceremony at the Holocaust memorial wall in Manhattan to attack Schumer. As about 15 elderly Holocaust survivors looked on, D'Amato lambasted Schumer for everything from opposing the Gulf War to missing a vote on whether to use the U.S. Capitol for a Holocaust event.

Schumer cried foul, accusing D'Amato of exploiting the murder of six million Jews for political purposes. One of Schumer's supporters, Manhattan Congressman Jerrold Nadler, said D'Amato's use of the Holocaust survivors was "nothing short of disgusting."

Following hard on the heels of the Holocaust explosion was word that D'Amato had called the rotund Nadler "Jerry Wadler" and referred to Schumer as a "putz head" at a private meeting with Jewish leaders. "Putz" is the Yiddish word for penis.

There are probably more overweight New Yorkers than voters who understand Yiddish, but it was the "putz head" remark that created a crisis.

D'Amato compounded his problem by initially issuing a rambling denial: "I would never . . . I have not engaged in that. I wouldn't engage in it. It's wrong. I haven't done it. Why am I going to do it now? It's ridiculous."

D'Amato later acknowleged making the remark and the Schumer camp gleefully turned the episode into an attack ad that highlighted D'Amato's lie.

Lively as the campaign has been, it has not generated much light. Polls showed that many voters had no idea that D'Amato - who is also the Right-to-Life nominee - opposes abortion. A pair of debates did not help. Listeners had an opportunity to count the number of times D'Amato pointed out that Schumer had missed a roll call vote on higher standards for mammography equipment. Schumer, meanwhile, brought up the "putz head" denial at every opportunity.

CBS New Consultant Norm Orenstein of the American Enterprise Institute may have summed up the race best when he said:

"May the better 'putz head' win."

Written by Dan Collins, CBS.com Producer
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