U.S. Senate
presenting Al D'Amato and other New York leaders with a check for Westway Project Funds, September 1981 Although a relatively obscure candidate, D'Amato defeated incumbent senator
Jacob Javits by 56–44% in the 1980 Republican
primary election following Javits' 1979 diagnosis of
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Javits nevertheless pursued the seat on the
Liberal Party ticket,
splitting the left-wing vote in ordinarily liberal New York with Democratic Congresswoman
Elizabeth Holtzman and leading to D'Amato's 45%
plurality victory. D'Amato was re-elected in
1986 and
1992, but lost in
1998 to Democratic congressman
Chuck Schumer, a future
Senate Majority Leader. D'Amato drew the nickname "Senator Pothole" for his delivery of "constituent services", helping citizens with their individual cases. While some New Yorkers meant the nickname as a
pejorative, others saw it as a positive affirmation of his attention to getting things done. in 1986 D'Amato holds the record for the third- and eleventh-longest
filibusters ever recorded in the U.S. Senate. He is remembered for his unique and rather comical filibusters. In 1986, in a filibuster against a military bill that lasted 23 1/2 hours, he read the
District of Columbia telephone book. In 1992, D'Amato filibustered a bill that would have caused the loss of 750 jobs in upstate New York by singing "South of the Border (Down Mexico Way)". D'Amato is remembered for presenting a poster of a "Taxasaurus Rex", which he then stabbed with an oversized pencil. D'Amato voted in favor of the
bill establishing
Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a
federal holiday and the
Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987. In 1987, D'Amato voted to confirm
Robert Bork to the
U.S. Supreme Court, but Bork's nomination was rejected. In 1991, D'Amato voted to confirm
Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court; Thomas was confirmed by the Senate. D'Amato was chair of the
Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs and was a member of the
Senate Finance Committee. As a member of the former, he became a leading critic of the
Clinton administration regarding the
Whitewater scandal, and during 1995 and 1996 he chaired the hearings-heavy
Senate Special Whitewater Committee. As a member of the latter, he facilitated the
lawsuit of
Holocaust survivors trying to recover relatives' funds from accounts in
Swiss banks. D'Amato was influential in New York Republican politics and was considered the "boss" of the state party during his Senate years. For example, he played a leading role in recruiting
George Pataki and in securing him the Republican nomination in the gubernatorial race of 1994. D'Amato was known for being fairly
conservative, a reflection of then-strongly conservative
Nassau County and
Long Island. He strongly supported the conservative positions of his party on "law and order" issues such as
capital punishment and harsh penalties for drug offenses. On some issues, he agreed with the opposition: in 1993, D'Amato was one of only three Republicans to vote in favor of allowing gays to serve openly in the U.S. military. While D'Amato voted for the
Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, he was among the minority of Republicans to vote for the
Employment Non-Discrimination Act that year. In
1998, the LGBTQ advocacy group
Human Rights Campaign endorsed D'Amato for re-election over socially liberal Democratic Congressman
Chuck Schumer. ,
Pete Domenici,
Jack Reed,
Paul Sarbanes, and
Daniel Patrick Moynihan announce an agreement on mass transit funding legislation in 1998 D'Amato's 54–44% loss in 1998 was attributed to a lack of support among moderate voters in
New York City, the site of opponent Schumer's U.S. congressional district. ==Later career==