WASHINGTON, March 11: The first female US vice presidential candidate and a fundraiser for Hillary Rodham Clinton has suggested Democrat Barack Obama only achieved his status in the presidential campaign because he is black. The Obama campaign called on Hillary Clinton on Tuesday to denounce comments.
“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position,” Geraldine Ferraro told The Daily Breeze of Torrance, California, in an interview published on Friday.
“And if he was a woman (of any colour) 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 is a former New York congresswoman and was former Vice President Walter Mondale’s running mate when he was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1984. She has endorsed Ms Clinton and has been a fundraiser for her campaign.
Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod said Ferraro should be removed from her position with the Clinton campaign because of her comments.
“The bottom-line is this, when you wink and nod at offensive statements, you’re really sending a signal to your supporters that anything goes,” Axelrod said in a conference call with reporters.
“There’s no other way to send a serious signal that you want to police the tone of this campaign,” he added. “And if you don’t do those things then you are simply adding to the growing compendium of evidence that you really are encouraging that.”
Ferraro also said Obama has it easy because of a “very sexist media”.
“I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama’s campaign _ to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against,” she said. “For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It’s been a very sexist media. Some just don’t like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign.”—AP
