Former New York Sen. Al D’Amato is hospitalized with COVID-19.
“I’m weak but I feel good,” D’Amato, 83, told The Post in a phone interview while being treated at St. Francis Hospital.
D’Amato said he has a “light fever” and is experiencing “congestion.”
D’Amato was once one of the most powerful New York leaders when he served as US senator and exerted enormous sway over the state Republican Party.
He’s still a power broker, running one of the state’s most lucrative lobbying firms, Park Strategies.
D’Amato, who resides in Lido Beach, said he started feeling ill late last week. He’s been working mostly from home and didn’t know how he contracted the deadly bug.
“I wear a mask all the time. I walk all the time. I don’t know,” he said.
He said he now lives alone and believes he didn’t expose anyone else to COVID-19.
D’Amato played a big role in helping then Republican challenger George Pataki defeat three-term Gov. Democratic Mario Cuomo, the father of current Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
But he’s played both sides of the fence since becoming a lobbyist, holding fundraisers to support Democrat Andrew Cuomo’s re-election bids.
D’Amato did slam the Cuomo administration’s since-rescinded policy of ordering nursing homes to accept recovering coronavirus patients from hospitals during the peak of the pandemic in the spring.