Mar 12, 2008 10:47 pm US/Eastern
Ferraro Gives Up Post With Clinton Campaign
Moves Comes After Remarks Former New York Congresswoman Made About Obama's Race
WASHINGTON (CBS) ―
CBS station WCBS-TV has learned Geraldine Ferraro has quit the Hillary Clinton campaign over her comments directed at the Illinois senator.
Ferraro had suggested that if Obama was white, he wouldn't be the Democratic frontrunner.
She says she was only sorry that her words were misinterpreted.
"It's an historic candidacy," she said. "I would think he would celebrate the fact that black voters in this country are so excited this is happening. It's not a racist comment. It's a comment, a statement of fact."
Democratic Sen. Barack Obama assailed as "slice and dice" politics Geraldine Ferraro's assertion that he wouldn't be where he is in the presidential race if he weren't black.
The back-and-forth between the two Democratic trailblazers — Obama, seeking to be the nation's first black president, and Ferraro, who was the first woman on a major party presidential ticket in 1984 — continued for a second day as they made appearances on network and cable morning news programs.
"Part of what I think Geraldine Ferraro is doing, and I respect the fact that she was a trailblazer, is to participate in the kind of slice and dice politics that's about race and about gender and about this and that, and that's what Americans are tired of because they recognize that when we divide ourselves in that way we can't solve problems," Obama said on NBC's "Today" show.
Later, at a news conference in Chicago, Obama said he did not think Ferraro's comments were racist.
"I think that her comments were ridiculous. I think they were wrong-headed," he said. "The notion that it is a great advantage to me to be an African American named Barack Obama and pursue the presidency, I think, is not a view that has been commonly shared by the general public."
Ferraro, who was Walter Mondale's vice presidential running mate, said Wednesday that her remarks were not racist and had been taken out of context. She accused Obama's campaign of twisting her remarks to undercut his rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"I was talking about historic candidacies and what I started off by saying (was that) if you go back to 1984 and look at my historic candidacy, which I had just talked about all these things, in 1984 if my name was Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would have never been chosen as a vice presidential candidate," Ferraro said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "It had nothing to do with my qualification."
Ferraro said she has a 40-year history of opposing discrimination of all kinds, including race, and that she was outraged at criticism of her remarks by David Axelrod, Obama's chief media strategist, because he knows her and her record.
"David Axelrod, his campaign manager, has chose to spin this as a racist comment because everytime anybody makes a comment about race who is white — he did it with Bill Clinton, he was successful; he did it with (Pennsylvania governor and Clinton supporter) Ed Rendell, he was less successful; and he is certainly not going to be successful with me," Ferraro told CBS' "The Early Show." "He should have called me up ... He knows I'm not racist."
The controversy began Tuesday when the national media picked up on comments Ferraro made in an interview last week with the Daily Breeze newspaper in Torrance, Calif.: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."
Ferraro said she stands by her assertion that Obama's success in the Democratic campaign is due "in part" to his race.
Obama, however, said that if someone in his campaign had suggested that Hillary Clinton "is where she is only because she is a woman" she would be offended.
Clinton has said she disagrees with Ferraro's remarks. In an interview with The Associated Press, she said, "It's regrettable that any of our supporters — on both sides, because we both have this experience — say things that kind of veer off into the personal."
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
