 March 11, 2008
Posted: 05:27 PM ET
(CNN) – Geraldine Ferraro is defending her controversial comment that Barack Obama’s campaign was successful because he was black, telling an interviewer Tuesday that she was being attacked because she was white. "Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up," she told the (Torrance, California) Daily Breeze. "Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?" In another interview Tuesday, she compared Obama’s situation to her own 24 years ago, when she was the first female candidate for vice president. She told a FOX News interviewer: “I got up and the question was asked, ‘Why do you think Barack Obama is in the place he is today” as the party’s delegate frontrunner. “I said in large measure, because he is black. I said, Let me also say in 1984 – and if I have said it once, I have said it 20, 60, 100 times – in 1984, if my name was Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would never have been the nominee for vice president,” she said. In her first interview with Daily Breeze, published late last week, Ferraro said Obama himself has called the comments “patently absurd,” and his chief strategist, David Axelrod, has called for Clinton to cut ties with the former New York congresswoman, who serves on her campaign’s finance committee. Clinton has said that she does not agree with Ferraro’s remarks. UPDATE: Clinton campaign spokesman Mo Eleithee told CNN's Sasha Johnson that "Ms. Ferraro is speaking for herself. We have made clear that we do not agree with her remarks."
–CNN Associate Political Editor Rebecca Sinderbrand Filed under: Barack Obama • Geraldine Ferraro • Hillary Clinton |
 
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