orm, the views of the candidate's would have been very clear and easy to decipher. Yet during the campaign this wasn't so. The campaign was so negative and so focused on the other opponent's past voting record, that the issue of education was clouded and discussed primarily in that context (Zeh, 1998). When asked if he was an anti-education senator, D'amato responded that he wasn't; he voted for a bill to hire 100,000 new teachers, but when that bill came up on the house floor, Schumer wasn't there. He once again reinforced his point that Schumer was out campaigning rather than doing his job as a congressman (Hardt 1, 1998). Their views on education reform were printed on paper and asserted clearly during individual platform speeches, but they were completely overlooked during debates. Their focus was on their opponent's poor past performance in office, missed votes, and some juvenile name-calling tactics. Every issue in the campaign was used by D'amato as a chance to scold Schumer for missing votes in congress and vice versa. In response to a question about how the candidates differed on education, Schumer simply retorted that "Senator D'amato is one of the worst senators. His record is one of the worst for education in New York's history." Schumer went on to point out that D'amato voted against education aid and voted to cut the very successful government program, Head Start (Hardt 2, 1998). This led to D'amato's rebuttal that Schumer missed the Head Start vote altogether, and this went on indefinitely. The overall altruistic and beneficial views that the candidates touted about education never even came up when they were debating. This proved true of their entire campaign: very good, strong platforms on the issue of education which were lost among the mud-slinging and negative campaigning.The race between these two long-time politicians with the ability to raise massive amount of campaign funds was close until the end. W...
