What was Al D’Amato, a Republican, doing on the podium taking bows at the appointment of Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat, to the US Senate (“Dem Red ‘Al’ert on Sen. Kirsten,” Jan. 24)?
D’Amato was once a Rockefeller Republican, then a Reagan Republican, and then he morphed into an Albany hack who runs a “consulting service” for the power elite.
In assisting a Democrat, he confirms that he is a nonsectarian hack who regrettably made his name by representing the Republican Party that he now embarrasses by this latest rather tawdry activity.
Albany and Springfield, Ill., vie as to which is the more corrupt Gomorrah in the republic.
Albany appears to have the advantage in this contest in that it has a former US senator, D’Amato, a GOP successor to the splendid and honorable James Buckley, wheeling and dealing like some Tammany huckster of a century ago. The republic is in sorry shape these days and nowhere more so than in the once-vibrant Empire State.
Anthony Spinelli
Manhattan