D'Amato's
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D'Amato D'Amato's
For the last few months, William F. Weld's bid to become governor of New York has had a sharp thorn in its side: the outspoken opposition of the onetime kingmaker of state Republican politics, former Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, who has said that Mr. Weld is without any real experience in New York. Mr. D'Amato yesterday vigorously denied that the encounter had taken place and said he had not even met Mr. Weld until recently, at a Feb. 23 fund-raiser for Representative Vito J. Fossella. Mr. D'Amato, who in 1994 helped shepherd a little-known George E. Pataki to the governor's mansion, has been openly praising the presumed Democratic front-runner for governor, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, and yesterday he attacked Mr. Weld's stewardship of Decker College, a financially troubled Kentucky school that is the subject of a federal investigation.