For U.S. Senate

The race between Senator D'Amato and Representative Charles E. Schumer for the United States Senate is one that matters. Yet, again, there has been almost no campaigning for either man locally. Where are the South Fork's Democrats? They seem to have lost the leadership necessary to prove that viable opposition candidates are as necessary a part of a democracy as voting.

It is time to retire Senator D'Amato, the man who likes to be called Senator Pothole to remind folks that he has brought home the bacon for constituents and been able to provide for cronies. He also is a man accused of figuring out how to make graft legal, a man pragmatic to a fault, who is willing to compromise himself by trading votes. This is not what being a Senator should be about.

In his 18-year career, Senator D'Amato has turned simple opportunism into masterly construction of a political base, and he continues to speak to a broad, middle-class segment of the electorate, although he seems devoid of principle, as he reveals in using ethnic slurs. So far as East End values are concerned, he has been consistently anti-environment, voting the wrong way on corporate pollution, drinking water protections, and children's health. The National League of Conservation Voters has called his record "harmful to the air, water, and land."

Mr. D'Amato has voted against campaign finance reform and against gun control but for a broad expansion of the death penalty. He has Right to Life endorsement, but continues to be a cold-war monger.

Mr. Schumer is a middle-of-the-road Democrat who has an admirable record in the House. The D'Amato campaign against him, particularly that he is absent from many votes, is damaging but inconclusive. He was there to vote on 10 bills, for example, that Newsday picked out as "key" in 1997.

He was against penalizing doctors who perform late-term abortions, against allowing the Endangered Species Act to be waived when flood-damaged facilities were repaired or replaced, against limiting funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, against cost-of-living salary increases for Members of Congress, and in favor of balancing the budget and cutting taxes by $85 million over five years.

Mr. Schumer would be a breath of fresh air. This state does not need its potholes fixed at the expense of morality and compassion.