Al D'Amato

In 1986, in a filibuster against a military bill that lasted 23 1/2 hours, he read the District of Columbia telephone book.

Alfonse Marcello D'Amato (born August 1, 1937) is an American attorney, lobbyist, and politician who served as a United States senator from New York from 1981 to 1999.

He left this office to become a town supervisor in Hempstead and in 1977 he was elected presiding supervisor.

He was also vice chairman of the Nassau County Board of Supervisors from 1977 to 1980.

In 1980, after 25 years of involvement in the politics and government of Long Island, D'Amato defeated four-term Republican Sen. Jacob Javits in a Republican U.S. Senate primary.

D'Amato went on to Prevail in the 1980 general election for that office.

Although a relatively obscure candidate, D'Amato defeated incumbent senator Jacob Javits by 56% to 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 represented the state of New York in the Senate from 1981 to 1999.

He was re-elected in 1986 and 1992, but was defeated in 1998 by Democratic Rep. Chuck Schumer.

Following his departure from the Senate, D'Amato founded Park Strategies, a lobbying firm.

As of 2024, D'Amato is the last Republican to have represented New York in the U.S. Senate.

D'Amato, of Italian ancestry, was born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, in the small village of Island Park.

He is the son of Antoinette (Ciofarri) and Armand D'Amato, an insurance broker.

D'Amato is a graduate of Syracuse University and Syracuse University College of Law.

He is an attorney.

D'Amato began his career in politics in Island Park (Long Island).

He was involved heavily in the Unity Party of Island Park, the local political party that ran village elections in the small village of Island Park.

He was then appointed the village attorney.

Later, as a member of the Nassau County Republican Party, he was appointed Public Administrator of Nassau County, where he was responsible for managing the assets of county residents who died without wills.

He was first appointed and then elected Receiver of Taxes of Hempstead, New York.

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.

D'Amato holds the record for the second and eighth longest filibusters ever recorded in the United States Senate.

He is remembered for his unique and rather comical filibusters.

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.

D'Amato voted in favor of the nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court.

D'Amato was a member of the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism (PCAST), which was set up in September 1989 to review and report on aviation security policy in light of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

D'Amato was chair of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs and was a member of the Senate Finance Committee.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.