GETTING PERSONAL

October 28, 1998
		A nasty race is getting nastier. NewsHour media correspondent Terence Smith looks at the New York U.S. Senate race between Republican Sen. Alfonse D'Amato and Democratic challenger Rep.Charles Schumer.

Oct. 28, 1998: NewsHour coverage of the New York Senate race Oct. 22, 1998: Discussion of campaign ads with media experts. Oct. 22, 1998: RealAudio and RealVideo versions of some campaign ads. Browse the NewsHour's Election '98 index PBS' Election '98 site: Ad watch Oct. 19, 1998: A discussion on lawyers who appear on TV. Oct. 19, 1998: Background information on some lawyers who appear on TV. Sept.30, 1998: Have journalists become too dependent on anonymous sources? Sept. 22, 1998: How did the press handle the president's grand jury appearance? NewsHour coverage of Media issues     Rep. Schumer's Web site Sen. D'Amato's Web site Web, White and Blue Vote Smart	TERENCE SMITH: New York City's annual Columbus Day parade, an occasion for Italian Americans to strut their stuff -- and - during election years - for politicians to troll for the ethnic vote. At the head of the parade, New York's Republican triumvirate: Mayor Rudolph Giuliani -- Governor George Pataki -- and, arriving well behind schedule, Senator Alfonse D'Amato.
	Fighting dirty.
	SEN. ALFONSE D'AMATO: How are ya, big guy? It's good to see you. How are you? Where's the governor? TERENCE SMITH: D'Amato, an 18-year incumbent, has lots of friends in this largely Italian- American crowd. Now running for his fourth term, D'Amato is, well, running hard. Polls show him in a statistically dead heat with his opponent, the equally energetic Brooklyn Congressman, Charles Schumer. REP. CHARLES SCHUMER: I was raised in the Italian culture almost. I remember when I had my first pizza pie at four years old. TERENCE SMITH: Schumer, a nine-term Congressman, won the Democratic primary with a surprisingly easy victory over the much better-known Geraldine Ferraro, who, on this day at least, seems to hold no hard feelings. But, on the day after the primary, Schumer and D'Amato set the tone of this combative campaign by hitting the airwaves with television ads that include some of the nation's nastiest. D'AMATO AD: The facts don't lie. Chuck Schumer is a New York City liberal. Chuck Schumer. Wrong on crime. Wrong for us. SCHUMER AD: Al D'Amato's lying again. The truth: Chuck Schumer is the tough on crime Democrat who wrote the federal death penalty law and put new cops on the street. D'Amato. Too many lies for too long. TERENCE SMITH: According to D'Amato's ads, Chuck Schumer is a New York City liberal, who coddles violent criminals, has a soft spot for child pornographers, piles tax increases upon upstate New Yorkers and Long Islanders, while at the same time favoring foreign aid for Mongolia. AD SPOKESMAN: If you live in Mongolia, Schumer's your man. If you live in New York, Al D'Amato's there for you.
	Mano-a-mano.
	TERENCE SMITH: According to Schumer's ads, Al D'Amato is a liar who's voted for $300 billion in tax increases, opposes putting more cops on the street, doesn't really care about you or your family -- because, like the schoolyard bully, he takes lunch money from hungry kids. CHILD IN AD: Hey, Al, pick on somebody your own size. MAN ON STREET: Too much negative campaigning. You see it every ten seconds on the TV. TERENCE SMITH: The mano-a-mano approach continued Sunday on a televised debate that at times resembled a verbal food fight. REP. CHARLES SCHUMER: Let me just read this. D'Amato - you can respond after I read it - D'Amato is the - GABE PRESSMAN: All right. Gentlemen, gentlemen, this is getting out of hand. I am in charge here - temporarily. TERENCE SMITH: Much of the debate focused on each side's negative advertising. GABE PRESSMAN: First, the D'Amato commercial about Schumer, and let's look at it now. AD SPOKESMAN: Schumer missed over 100 votes in Congress -- the worst attendance record of the 31 New York congressmen -- Chuck Schumer: Full time pay -- part-time work. GABE PRESSMAN: How do you plead? Guilty or not guilty? REP. CHARLES SCHUMER: Not guilty. GABE PRESSMAN: One of your ads, Congressman, about Sen. D'Amato. This is a short one. AD SPOKESMAN: Al D'Amato's lying about Chuck Schumer on crime. The truth - Chuck Schumer is the tough-on-crime Democrat who wrote the law that put thousands of new police on the street and banned assault weapons. D'Amato voted "no." D'Amato -- too many lies for too long. SEN. AL D'AMATO: Well, now, do I get a chance to say something? GABE PRESSMAN: Yes, you will. Before you say anything, Senator, where do you guys get these pictures of each other? They look terrible. REP. CHARLES SCHUMER: Neither of us would win a beauty contest. We're trying to win a Senate contest.
	Negative campaigning.
	TERENCE SMITH: And with less than a week to go, there's no letting up. Hank Morris is Schumer's media strategist. HANK MORRIS: We are not going to let Al D'Amato win one argument in this campaign. He's going to make an argument and we're going to answer him strong -- TERENCE SMITH: As quickly as possible. HANK MORRIS: --stronger and better. TERENCE SMITH: Hank Morris knows negative campaigning. In 1996, his firm did the advertising for California Senator Dianne Feinstein, who was locked in an exceptionally bitter campaign with Congressman Michael Huffington. Or, as the ads called him - AD SPOKESMAN: The Texas oil millionaire Californians just can't trust. TERENCE SMITH: In the end, the two California candidates spent some $44 million, most of it on advertising, setting a single-race record that may yet be topped by the D'Amato-Schumer battle. REP. CHARLES SCHUMER: He's finally met an opponent who's standing up to him and who's showing Al D'Amato to the public for what he is. TERENCE SMITH: For the first time in his career D'Amato is running against a challenger who has the money, chutzpah, and street-fighter instinct to match his own. This is the Congressman, after all, who was immortalized by the famous Bob Dole quip that the shortest distance in Washington is the space between Chuck Schumer and a television camera. HANK MORRIS: You know, if one side attacks the other side and the other side ignores it, that side is at an enormous disadvantage. TERENCE SMITH: So your argument is that you're negative because he's negative? HANK MORRIS: Well, I--there's not any doubt about it! Look, we are not nice, little Democrats who are not going to fight back when an Al D'Amato doesn't like it. This is the man who, who was elected to the Senate by attacking Senator Javits for being 78 years old and for being -- and I think the line was -- AD IN 1980: And in failing health, he wants six more years. TERENCE SMITH: That ad lifted D'Amato out of political obscurity and into the Senate. In his eighteen years in office, the former Long Island local politician has gained the nickname, "Senator Pothole," because of his slavish attention to constituent requests. At the same time, he has risen to the chairmanship of the powerful Senate Banking Committee. The darkest moment in the D'Amato career came in 1991, when he was rebuked by the Senate for ethical lapses, including allowing his brother to use his Senate office as a lobbyist's suite. The D'Amato ad campaigns are the handiwork of the famously reclusive Republican strategist, Arthur Finkelstein. Neither he, the Senator, nor anyone else from the D'Amato campaign would grant an interview, but one prominent D'Amato supporter did. ED KOCH: You've gone over the line, and it's inexcusable. Chuck, stop it!
	ED KOCH: The ad calling D'Amato a liar is not truthful, and it is vile, and it affects the credibility of all public officials when a public official like Chuck Schumer uses that kind of language unfairly.
	The "Putzhead" incident.
	TERENCE SMITH: Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch got involved in another language dispute last week when he confirmed what Al D'Amato had denied on camera: that in a private meeting the Senator had used a Yiddish vulgarism, "Putzhead," to describe Schumer. D'Amato was forced to back down and a new Schumer ad was born. SCHUMER AD: What did Al D'Amato say six hours before being forced to admit he used a crass slur to attack Chuck Schumer? SEN. AL D'AMATO: I have just no knowledge of ever doing it. I just don't. SCHUMER AD: D'Amato - too many lies for too long. TERENCE SMITH: You're calling in these ads a United States Senator a liar!-- again and again! HANK MORRIS: You know, Al D'Amato six years ago promised New Yorkers it would be his last term. Is there anything more stunning or striking than that? Win or lose, Al says he's had it. TERENCE SMITH: So you have no apologies? HANK MORRIS: I'm proud of it! The man's a consumer fraud! And New Yorkers have a right to know it. And we're going to tell them! JERRY DELLA FEMINA: It's like watching a street brawl. I don't feel as though I'm a voter; I feel as though I'm a witness! TERENCE SMITH: Jerry Della Femina is an advertising executive who bemoans what political media strategists have done to the business and potentially, to voter turnout.
	Voter turnoff?
	JERRY DELLA FEMINA: I cannot handle this mountain of negative advertising that's coming at me. So, I' just totally, totally turned off. And I think a lot of voters feel the same way. If I ran a campaign like this for one of my clients - for example - I don't have Pepsi as a client - but if I said, Coca Cola is just a horrible, terrible, rotten product, it would never buy the commercial and they would think less of me for saying something like that. However, politicians can get away with everything because they only have to sell the product once, and that's in November. TERENCE SMITH: Right. JERRY DELLA FEMINA: See this is not a product that you can give back; this is a product that you buy once, and you are stuck with it for-- a lot of years. Though that's not - that, that does it for truth in advertising. TERENCE SMITH: So let's look a little more closely at the ads. Technically, the charges on each side are not false, but they are often oversimplified and distorted. Let's go to the videotape with this Schumer ad. SCHUMER AD: Compare D'Amato and Schumer on the issues: Schumer put new cops on the street. D'Amato voted no. TERENCE SMITH: Now D'Amato did vote against the 1994 crime bill that funded 100,000 new police officers. But many Republicans voted against it, on the grounds that it was laden with pork barrel spending. Now look at this D'Amato ad. D'AMATO AD: Chuck Schumer voted to allow violent criminals to leave jail before serving their full sentence. He voted against mandatory sentences for criminals who use guns. TERENCE SMITH: Yes, Schumer voted against a 1995 bill steering federal funding to states with mandatory minimum sentences. But he did so, he says, because New York didn't have such sentences. Now here's another D'Amato ad, followed by another Schumer ad. D'AMATO AD: He voted to impose the first ever statewide property tax on all Long Island homeowners. SCHUMER AD: D'Amato's been raising taxes on working families for three decades. TERENCE SMITH: Here, both sides are selectively mining ancient history. As a state assemblyman in 1976, Schumer voted to let local communities raise property taxes to pay for education. And, as a Long Island town supervisor in the 1970s, D'Amato did just that. D'AMATO AD: This year alone Chuck Schumer missed over 100 votes in Congress.
	Distorting the facts.
	TERENCE SMITH: With D'Amato's favorite "L" word - Liberal - seeming less sinister these days, he's now relentlessly attacking Schumer's attendance record. No matter that most of these missed votes were procedural, or on measures that passed overwhelmingly. Even his critics acknowledge that Schumer is one of the hardest working members of Congress. Nonetheless, he has been thrown on the defensive.. AD SPOKESMAN: The truth: Chuck Schumer has a 92 percent life-time attendance record - D'Amato - too many lies for too long. TERENCE SMITH: On Columbus Day, he raced back to Washington so he wouldn't miss a vote. That meant skipping his own fundraiser in New York where the President spoke up for him. PRESIDENT CLINTON: Every time it counts, just like today, Chuck Schumer is there to vote for you, for New York, for your children, and for the future, and I hope you'll give him a bigger vote in the United States Senate. TERENCE SMITH: For the President, the stakes are personal as well as political. D'Amato is an old foe who chaired the Senate Whitewater hearings and now sits among the hostile majority that may sit in judgment as the President's impeachment jury. In the home stretch of this exceptionally fierce fight, a New York Times/CBS News poll suggests that voters are growing increasingly critical of the caustic tone of the campaign, and that most are blaming D'Amato. As for the outcome, the two candidates are tied at 44 percent each, with some slight movement toward Schumer. The final result may depend on whose ads New Yorkers find least objectionable: an incumbent who calls his opponent a lazy liberal, or a challenger who says his opponent is a long-time liar.