Politics

N.Y. Senate Race: Tight, Tough

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 26, 1998 / 5:35 PM EST / CBS

It's just over a week to Election Day, and among the stakes are a third of the l00 seats in the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate.

One of the most closely watched races is one where a Democratic challenger stands the best chance of knocking off an incumbent Republican. It is also down and dirty, negative, and nasty, as CBS News Correspondent Phil Jones reports.

Eighteen-year Senate incumbents usually have little trouble getting another six-year term, especially notorious political street fighters like Alfonse D'Amato of New York. But this time, D'Amato is in a dead heat. He has met an opponent who is just as street tough.

Democratic Congressman Charles Schumer is dropping hourly television bombs on every issue possible. One particularly coarse segment states, "D'Amato opposes abortion rights even in cases of rape incest. Schumer is pro-choice. D'Amato, too wrong for too long."

Whatever the issue -- crime, Medicare, welfare, education -- it is always one guy accusing the other of lying about his record.

In the final days before the election, D'Amato has turned this into a one issue campaign: Schumer's absenteeism from Congress.

Politics as usual? Perhaps. But the latest CBS News/New York Times poll finds that 60 percent of the voters are bothered by Schumer's missed votes.

D'Amato, who was swept into office with Ronald Reagan in 1980, never misses an ethnic beat. Monday he was in New York's Little Italy, campaigning with a cup of cappuccino.

Meanwhile, his challenger, who has been endorsed by major newspapers throughout the state, says the issue in this campaign is D'Amato himself. In Schumer's most recent ad, he shows D'Amato singing on the Senate floor, calling him an embarrassment.

D'Amato has called his opponent something else: a phrase Schumer claims is a slur. Former New York Mayor Ed Koch heard D'Amato use the word.

"Putzhead or the word putz means jerk, fool," says Koch. "Now everybody at sometime in their life has been a putz. No question about it. In fact, if you're a big fool, you're a schmuck."

Before it is over, D'Amato and Schumer are expected to spend more than $40 million for a job that will pay the winner $136,700 a year for the next six years.