Ferraro's 'Black' Comment and Discrimination Claim Not New

Geraldine Ferraro was elected to congress from New York's 9th district in 1978, but first appeared on the national scene in 1984 when Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale picked her as his running mate. In Maureen Dowd's words, she "helped Walter Mondale lose 49 states" in what was a landslide victory for Ronald Reagan.

The next year a New York state organized crime investigator reported that Ferraro's husband, real estate broker John Zaccaro, had been seen meeting with reputed mob figure and known pornographer Robert DiBernardo. DiBernardo ran his pornography distribution business from a warehouse managed by Zaccaro's company, of which Ferraro was an officer. In 1986 DiBernardo was killed on orders from Gambino crime family boss, John Gotti.

In 1996 Zaccaro was sued for theft and false representation by Charles Gattoni, his partner in a hotel project near the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut, although the suit was eventually dismissed. Gattoni is a mysterious figure whose "prior business and current whereabouts" could not be determined when the Village Voice investigeated in 1998. Zaccaro replaced Gattoni, with his son, John Zaccaro, Jr. who had been convicted of felony drug charges in Vermont in 1988. Zaccaro, Sr. also brought in Emmet Delany to work on the project. Delaney had pled guilty in 1992 to five felony counts including witness tampering and mail fraud.

Zaccaro's office, which for years he shared with Ferraro, was visited by a regular rogues gallery of organized crim figures, including "Luchese soldier Michael LaRosa, Gambino capo Joe LaForte, Gambino associate Lawrence Latona, Chinatown gangster Eddie Chan, and mob-tied fixer Harold Farrell." According to the Voice's Wayne Barrett, some of these characters dealt directly with Ferraro.

Questioned in 1992 about her husband's alleged mob associations, Ferraro dismissed them as anti-Italian "slurs."

In the current political context, Ferraro served until recently on Hillary Clinton's fundraising committee, and was serving in that capacity when she was interviewed by a southern Calfornia local paper, theDaily Breeze. Here are her remarks as originally reported on March 7:

"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.

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," she continued. "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 does not buy the notion of Obama as the great reconciler.

"I was reading an article that said young Republicans are out there campaigning for Obama because they believe he's going to be able to put an end to partisanship," Ferraro said, clearly annoyed. "Dear God! Anyone that has worked in the Congress knows that for over 200 years this country has had partisanship - that's the way our country is."

The initial response from the Clinton campaign as "We disagree with her."

Obama campaign advisor David Axelrod described the Clinton campaign response as inadequate and called for Ferraro to be removed from any positions of responsibility.

“Ferraro should be denounced and censured by the campaign,” Axelrod said. “Samantha [Power] resigned, because it was not consistent with the kind of campaign we want to run. We want a candidate and president who will live by their words.”

In an appearance on NBC's Today Show, Obama ridiculed Ferraro's assertions:

"If you were to get a handbook on what's the path to the presidency, I don't think that the handbook would start by saying, 'Be an African-American named Barack Obama. I don't think that would be generally considered an advantage."

Clinton's eventual response did not include any explicit censure of Ferraro:

"I do not agree with that. It is regrettable that any of our supporters on both sides, because we’ve both had that experience, say things that kind of veer off into the personal. We ought to keep this on the issues.

And in behavior reminiscent of her response to allegations of her husband's mob ties, Ferraro charged that it was she who was being discriminated against:

"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. Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"

Ferraro resigned from Clinton's finance committee on March 12, saying in a letter to Clinton that it was "so I can speak for myself and you can speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign.

Commentators noted that this was not the first time that Ferraro had declared blackness a political advantage. In 1998 she told the Washington Post that because of his "radical" views, "if Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn't be in the race." Jackson responded at the time, "Millions of Americans have a point of view different from" Ferraro's. "Some people are making hysteria while I'm making history."