Posted on 03/23/2006 10:13:50 PM PST by neverdem
For the last few months, William F. Weld's bid to become governor of New York has had a sharp thorn in its side: the outspoken opposition of the onetime kingmaker of state Republican politics, former Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, who has said that Mr. Weld is "without any real experience" in New York.
Yesterday, Mr. Weld struck back in force, telling how their feud dated at least to a 1996 encounter in which Mr. D'Amato gave him $750,000 in donations for his Senate campaign that year against John Kerry of Massachusetts. The donations, according to Mr. Weld, came with an expletive-laced warning: that Mr. Weld distance himself from Robert S. Mueller III, who as a Justice Department official oversaw a federal fraud investigation of Mr. D'Amato's brother, Armand, in the early 1990's.
"If I ever see that expletive Mueller at an expletive fund-raiser, I'm going to get every expletive dollar of this back out of your hide," Mr. Weld, a former Massachusetts governor, quoted Mr. D'Amato as saying. Mr. Mueller, a friend of Mr. Weld's, has been the director of the F.B.I. since 2001.
Mr. D'Amato yesterday vigorously denied that the encounter had taken place and said he had not even met Mr. Weld until recently, at a Feb. 23 fund-raiser for Representative Vito J. Fossella. But newspaper articles indicate that Mr. D'Amato introduced Mr. Weld at a 1996 Republican fund-raiser in Washington.
The clash exposed in the most bare-knuckled form the searing divisions that have afflicted state Republicans as they seek to find credible candidates to run for governor and to challenge Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in November.
Mr. D'Amato, who in 1994 helped shepherd a little-known George E. Pataki to the governor's mansion, has been openly praising the presumed Democratic front-runner for governor, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, and...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Can never forgive D'Amato for losing to Schumer.
A Coyote Leads a Crowd on a Central Park Marathon
FReepmail me if you want on or off my New York ping list.
Al's time has come and gone.
Do you think he wanted to lose?
Of course not, but I'm not rational about Schumer.
D'Amato is an ass. He had the opportunity to blow wide open the Vince Foster investigation but refused to call troopers Perry and Patterson to testify.
The NY State Republican Party has been in a downward spiral for decades. The rare victories of D'Amato and Pataki have obscured that fact. In essence, there is no viable statewide Republican Party in New York. The loss of Nassau County to the liberals was the tipping point. This article is all inside baseball nonsense that means nothing.
Are we to believe that D'Amato is really praising Spitzer. I'm considering the source here ,NYT . Spitzer makes Schumer look like a conservative , which is almost impossible in my book .
Al always picks winners. Spitzer will probably win.
May they destroy eachother.
The Fonz should stay squirrel away in his Long Beach money pit with the child bride and only come out for the Columbus Day Parade.
D'Amato was a craven coward. He feared the Clintons and got his head handed to him by Schumer. Worthless.
I believe that in other contexts, that's known as a cripple fight.
Yecch!...Yucky...digusting NY politics.
Attempting to dissect the politics of NYS in any reasonable fashion will get you nothing but stink...the stink of the village feud and the Old World politics.
No wonder Hilliary and Slick decided to reside here.
Fonzie was a senator from NY for 18 years and he was shooting for 24 years. Of the 3 elections he won, two were squeakers that he won with less than 50% of the vote, and the other was a commanding victory over Mark Green, but Mark Green has been beaten like a rented mule in all of his big elections. :-)
People get tired of most politicians sooner or later. The truth is, Schumer better reflected the values of NYers than D'Amato did in 1998, and he won by an over 10 point margin.
D'Amato was a good senator and he had a very good 18 year run. He just ran for one election too meny and got kicked in the balls by the electorate.
Pataki made a similar error - he opted to run for Governor again in 2002 for a third term, when I thought he should have taken his shot against Hillary in 2000 once Rudy bowed out. He had nothing to lose, and if he won he would have gone to the Senate, and if he lost, he would still be Governor and he would finish out his second term.
His third term has been underwhelming almost from the get-go. A politician should be careful not to overstay their welcome - both D'Amato and Pataki did just that.
Thanks for the ping
Can anyone tell me if there is any issue where Weld and Romney disagree?
Uh gay marriage?
I can't.
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