Ferraro comments anger Obama campaign

PHILADELPHIA — The Democratic presidential contest was jolted Tuesday by accusations surrounding race and gender, set off by remarks by Geraldine Ferraro, the former congresswoman and vice-presidential candidate, who said Sen. Barack Obama had received preferential treatment because he is black.

Ferraro, who backs Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, told The Daily Breeze, a small 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."

She made the comments last week, but Tuesday, the Obama camp latched onto them, calling them outrageous and demanding Clinton repudiate them.

In an interview with The Morning Call of Allentown, Pa., the Illinois Democrat said the idea that his race has helped him in his presidential bid is "patently absurd."

"I would expect that the same way those comments don't have a place in my campaign, they shouldn't have a place in Sen. Clinton's," he said.

Clinton told The Associated Press she disagrees with Ferraro's comments.

"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," the New York senator said.

Later Tuesday, Ferraro defended her comments and said she was furious with the Obama campaign, accusing it of twisting her words.

"Every time that campaign is upset about something, they call it racist," she said. "I will not be discriminated against because I'm white. If they think they're going to shut up Geraldine Ferraro with that kind of stuff, they don't know me."

Despite calls that Ferraro step down from the Clinton campaign, where she is a member of the finance committee, there was no indication Tuesday that she would.

The Ferraro comments overshadowed an increasingly bitter dispute between the campaigns about the candidates' qualifications to serve as commander in chief.

On Tuesday, Greg Craig, a former official in the administration of President Clinton, and now a vocal supporter of Obama, issued a blistering rebuttal to Clinton's assertions that she had been deeply involved in her husband's foreign-policy successes.

"She never managed a foreign-policy crisis, and there is no evidence to suggest that she participated in the decision-making that occurred in connection with any such crisis," Craig said. Referring to her "red-phone" commercial, he said: "As far as the record shows, Sen. Clinton never answered the phone either to make a decision on any pressing national-security issue — not at 3 a.m. or at any other time of day."

The Clinton campaign said Craig's memorandum was baseless and the Obama campaign had been unable to make a positive case for Obama's experience.

Information from the Chicago Tribune is included in this report.