The following articles from today's New York Times describes the fierce public response to, and the political fallout from, the blatantly racist remarks by the former fundraiser for the Clinton campaign, Ms. Geraldine Ferraro, who resigned yesterday when a tidal wave of public protests called for her to apologize and step down from her role in the Clinton campaign. What is especially noteworthy about the articles is that they also describe just how outraged and disgusted the national African American community is by Ferraro's remarks and Hillary Clinton's initial lukewarm response to them. Clinton seems today however to have changed her tune. Ummmmm...I wonder why...
The other noteworthy aspect of these articles is that they also chronicle just how "racially divided" voting trends are becoming in the Democratic primaries by citing the wide disparity between African Americans giving 90% of their votes to Obama and white voters responding by only casting 26% of their votes for Obama in the recent Mississippi primary. Of course this happened in a state which has always had a notorious reputation (and justly so) for historically being the most violently racist state in the entire country. So it's not exactly a fully accurate barometer of national voting trends where issues of "race" are concerned. But I'm certainly not naive or pollyanna about these matters. I get the general point various observers and pundits are trying to make...Stay tuned...
The other noteworthy aspect of these articles is that they also chronicle just how "racially divided" voting trends are becoming in the Democratic primaries by citing the wide disparity between African Americans giving 90% of their votes to Obama and white voters responding by only casting 26% of their votes for Obama in the recent Mississippi primary. Of course this happened in a state which has always had a notorious reputation (and justly so) for historically being the most violently racist state in the entire country. So it's not exactly a fully accurate barometer of national voting trends where issues of "race" are concerned. But I'm certainly not naive or pollyanna about these matters. I get the general point various observers and pundits are trying to make...Stay tuned...
Kofi
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/us/politics/13dems.html?_r=1&nl=pol&oref=slogin&emc=pol&pagewanted=print
March 13, 2008
Democrats Face Racial Issue Again
By PATRICK HEALY and JEFF ZELENY
After the Democratic primary in South Carolina turned racially divisive in January, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama essentially declared a truce and put a stop to fighting between their camps. But this week, race has once again begun casting a pall over the battle between the two.
On Wednesday a close ally of Mrs. Clinton, Geraldine A. Ferraro, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 1984 who was on the Clinton finance committee, resigned from the campaign after being criticized by Mr. Obama’s advisers, among others, for her recent comments that “if Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position” as a leading presidential contender.
Ms. Ferraro did not disavow that remark. Mrs. Clinton called it regrettable but did not take any action.
At an event in Washington after Ms. Ferraro's resignation, Mrs. Clinton addressed Mrs. Ferraro's comment: "I certainly do repudiate it and I regret deeply that it was aid. Obviously she doesn't speak for the campaign, she doesn't speak for any of my positions, and she has resigned from being a member of my large finance committee."
Mr. Obama, speaking to reporters on Wednesday, said he did not believe that there was “a directive in the Clinton campaign saying, ‘Let’s heighten the racial elements in the campaign.’ I certainly wouldn’t want to think that.”
He said he was puzzled at how, after more than a year of campaigning, race and sex are at the forefront as never before.
“I don’t want to deny the role of race and gender in our society,” he said. “They’re there, and they’re powerful. But I don’t think it’s productive.”
Yet race, as well as sex, have been unavoidable subtexts of the Democratic campaign since the two candidates began seeking to be the first African-American or the first woman to lead a party’s presidential ticket. In the primaries and caucuses this winter, too, Mrs. Clinton has enjoyed substantial support from women, while Mr. Obama has increasingly drawn overwhelming votes from blacks.
The Tuesday primary in Mississippi, a state where the electorate has historically been racially polarized, generated one of the most divided votes. Mrs. Clinton received 8 percent of the black vote, and Mr. Obama received 26 percent of the white vote, according to exit polls by Edison/Mitofsky for The Associated Press and television networks.
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said Wednesday that they were concerned about her standing among blacks, once a core constituency for her and her husband, but that they also believed that black support for Mr. Obama was a foregone conclusion at this point.
They said they were wrestling with ways to make inroads with blacks in Pennsylvania, which holds the next primary, on April 22.
Mrs. Clinton’s reluctance to sideline Ms. Ferraro, who made her comments last week to The Daily Breeze in Torrance, Calif., left the specter of race hanging over the Democratic contest.
That decision drew a sharp rebuke on Wednesday from the Rev. Al Sharpton, the black political leader in New York and a former presidential candidate, who questioned whether Mrs. Clinton’s campaign was keeping the issue alive as a way to win white votes in Pennsylvania.
In addition to Ms. Ferraro’s remark, Mr. Sharpton cited Mrs. Clinton’s decision not to fire her top ally in Pennsylvania, Gov. Edward G. Rendell, for saying in February that some white voters there were “probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate.”
“When you hear the lack of total denunciation of Ferraro, when you hear Rendell saying there are whites who will never vote for a black, one has to wonder if the Clinton campaign has a Pennsylvania strategy to appeal to voters on race,” Mr. Sharpton said in an interview. “I would hope Mrs. Clinton would make it clear that she is not doing that.”
Mr. Sharpton ran against Ms. Ferraro in 1992 in New York in a primary for a Senate seat.
Howard Wolfson, the Clinton campaign’s communications director, said in response: “She has made it clear. She makes it clear all the time.”
From virtually the start of the contest between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama in January 2007, they have sought to move beyond race and sex, acknowledging that their possible nominations would be historic, yet saying they were running on their qualifications.
At the same time, each has used the issue against the other. Mr. Obama’s advisers suggested that Mrs. Clinton was playing the sex card last fall after a brutal debate where several male contenders criticized her.
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers and former President Bill Clinton suggested that black candidates like Mr. Obama had done well in South Carolina because of support among African-Americans there.
Although Mr. Obama did not directly call on Ms. Ferraro to quit the campaign finance committee, his aides worked to keep the issue alive. They set up a conference call with reporters to draw attention to the comment.
On Wednesday, Mr. Obama called the remark wrongheaded but said he did not believe that Ms. Ferraro intended it to be racist.
“The Clinton campaign has talked more during the course of the last few months about what groups are supporting her and what groups are supporting me and trying to make a case that the reason she should be the nominee is that there are a set of voters that Obama might not get,” he said. “And that seems to track in a certain racial demographic.”
Mr. Obama’s advisers noted that his support among whites in Mississippi increased, to a small degree, over that in South Carolina, when some Democrats had feared that Mr. Obama could be called a candidate who appealed just to black voters.
Race has been a defining feature of the primary contests. Beyond Mississippi, Mrs. Clinton was backed by 5 percent of black voters in Illinois, Mr. Obama’s home state; 8 percent in Wisconsin, where black voters made up 8 percent of the Democratic primary vote; 9 percent in Delaware; 10 percent in Virginia; and 11 percent in Georgia, all states Mr. Obama won.
Mr. Obama’s 26 percent support among whites in Tuesday’s primary was one of his worst performances with this group.
He had previously been supported by 16 percent of white voters in Arkansas; 23 percent in Florida, where the candidates did not actively campaign; 24 percent in South Carolina, where John Edwards was still competing; and 25 percent in Alabama.
Dalia Sussman contributed reporting.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/clinton-addresses-ferraro-backlash/index.html?ref=politics
March 12, 2008
Clinton Addresses Ferraro Backlash
By ARIEL ALEXOVICH
WASHINGTON — On the hot seat in front of a largely African-American media audience, Hillary Rodham Clinton again rejected comments made by Geraldine Ferraro, the former vice presidential nominee whose repeated remarks in the past week have ignited another round of racial identity politics.
Senator Clinton was asked Wednesday night – though it wasn’t the first question — about the Ferraro contretemps and whether she had “done enough” to address comments some have interpreted as racist. Senator Barack Obama deemed them divisive just yesterday.
Ms. Ferraro, a former vice presidential candidate, has repeatedly said in recent days that Senator Obama wouldn’t have been in the position he’s in now if he wasn’t black. Outcry from the Obama camp and the greater public led her to resign from the post she held on the Clinton campaign finance team earlier today.
“I said yesterday that I rejected what she said, and I certainly do repudiate it,” said Senator Clinton at the forum sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a group that represents more than 200 African-American papers. “And I regret deeply that, you know, it was said. Obviously she doesn’t speak for the campaign, she doesn’t speak for any of my positions. And she has resigned from being a member of my very large finance committee.”
Senator Clinton added:
“You know, both Senator Obama and I have throughout this campaign had to take occasion to remind our supporters and our staff that we want to run this campaign based on our issue differences, our records, our qualifications, our experience.
I think, I recall, it was in one of these debates maybe in January where both of us said, ‘Look, we know that we don’t control what is said by everybody who supports us.’ One of his top advisers had to resign about something she said about me.
So we are aware that this happens, but we are particularly sensitive to it because of the nature of this campaign and who each of us is. So we do stand against it, we repudiate it, we try to take action wherever we can, and we will continue to do that.”
When another audience member brought up Bill Clinton’s characterization of Senator Obama’s popularity during the South Carolina primary, when the former president likened his support to that of the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s years ago in a way that seemed to minimalize Mr. Obama’s candidacy, she said, “I’m sorry if anyone was offended. It was certainly not meant, in any way, to be offensive.”
Mrs. Clinton again said that she’s proud to be in this election, and that she would urge her supporters to vote for Mr. Obama if he made it through to the general election.
The other questions she fielded dealt with Hurricane Katrina victims – she said as president she’d appoint a staff member just to deal with the situation – and racial profiling. She also reiterated her commitment to fighting AIDS and improving health care in low-income communities.
Tomorrow night, Senator Obama is to be honored by the media organization as newsmaker of the year. This will be the second time he has received this award from the organization. The first was in 2005.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/ferraro-quits-clinton-post/
March 12, 2008, 5:17 pm
On Wednesday a close ally of Mrs. Clinton, Geraldine A. Ferraro, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 1984 who was on the Clinton finance committee, resigned from the campaign after being criticized by Mr. Obama’s advisers, among others, for her recent comments that “if Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position” as a leading presidential contender.
Ms. Ferraro did not disavow that remark. Mrs. Clinton called it regrettable but did not take any action.
At an event in Washington after Ms. Ferraro's resignation, Mrs. Clinton addressed Mrs. Ferraro's comment: "I certainly do repudiate it and I regret deeply that it was aid. Obviously she doesn't speak for the campaign, she doesn't speak for any of my positions, and she has resigned from being a member of my large finance committee."
Mr. Obama, speaking to reporters on Wednesday, said he did not believe that there was “a directive in the Clinton campaign saying, ‘Let’s heighten the racial elements in the campaign.’ I certainly wouldn’t want to think that.”
He said he was puzzled at how, after more than a year of campaigning, race and sex are at the forefront as never before.
“I don’t want to deny the role of race and gender in our society,” he said. “They’re there, and they’re powerful. But I don’t think it’s productive.”
Yet race, as well as sex, have been unavoidable subtexts of the Democratic campaign since the two candidates began seeking to be the first African-American or the first woman to lead a party’s presidential ticket. In the primaries and caucuses this winter, too, Mrs. Clinton has enjoyed substantial support from women, while Mr. Obama has increasingly drawn overwhelming votes from blacks.
The Tuesday primary in Mississippi, a state where the electorate has historically been racially polarized, generated one of the most divided votes. Mrs. Clinton received 8 percent of the black vote, and Mr. Obama received 26 percent of the white vote, according to exit polls by Edison/Mitofsky for The Associated Press and television networks.
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said Wednesday that they were concerned about her standing among blacks, once a core constituency for her and her husband, but that they also believed that black support for Mr. Obama was a foregone conclusion at this point.
They said they were wrestling with ways to make inroads with blacks in Pennsylvania, which holds the next primary, on April 22.
Mrs. Clinton’s reluctance to sideline Ms. Ferraro, who made her comments last week to The Daily Breeze in Torrance, Calif., left the specter of race hanging over the Democratic contest.
That decision drew a sharp rebuke on Wednesday from the Rev. Al Sharpton, the black political leader in New York and a former presidential candidate, who questioned whether Mrs. Clinton’s campaign was keeping the issue alive as a way to win white votes in Pennsylvania.
In addition to Ms. Ferraro’s remark, Mr. Sharpton cited Mrs. Clinton’s decision not to fire her top ally in Pennsylvania, Gov. Edward G. Rendell, for saying in February that some white voters there were “probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate.”
“When you hear the lack of total denunciation of Ferraro, when you hear Rendell saying there are whites who will never vote for a black, one has to wonder if the Clinton campaign has a Pennsylvania strategy to appeal to voters on race,” Mr. Sharpton said in an interview. “I would hope Mrs. Clinton would make it clear that she is not doing that.”
Mr. Sharpton ran against Ms. Ferraro in 1992 in New York in a primary for a Senate seat.
Howard Wolfson, the Clinton campaign’s communications director, said in response: “She has made it clear. She makes it clear all the time.”
From virtually the start of the contest between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama in January 2007, they have sought to move beyond race and sex, acknowledging that their possible nominations would be historic, yet saying they were running on their qualifications.
At the same time, each has used the issue against the other. Mr. Obama’s advisers suggested that Mrs. Clinton was playing the sex card last fall after a brutal debate where several male contenders criticized her.
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers and former President Bill Clinton suggested that black candidates like Mr. Obama had done well in South Carolina because of support among African-Americans there.
Although Mr. Obama did not directly call on Ms. Ferraro to quit the campaign finance committee, his aides worked to keep the issue alive. They set up a conference call with reporters to draw attention to the comment.
On Wednesday, Mr. Obama called the remark wrongheaded but said he did not believe that Ms. Ferraro intended it to be racist.
“The Clinton campaign has talked more during the course of the last few months about what groups are supporting her and what groups are supporting me and trying to make a case that the reason she should be the nominee is that there are a set of voters that Obama might not get,” he said. “And that seems to track in a certain racial demographic.”
Mr. Obama’s advisers noted that his support among whites in Mississippi increased, to a small degree, over that in South Carolina, when some Democrats had feared that Mr. Obama could be called a candidate who appealed just to black voters.
Race has been a defining feature of the primary contests. Beyond Mississippi, Mrs. Clinton was backed by 5 percent of black voters in Illinois, Mr. Obama’s home state; 8 percent in Wisconsin, where black voters made up 8 percent of the Democratic primary vote; 9 percent in Delaware; 10 percent in Virginia; and 11 percent in Georgia, all states Mr. Obama won.
Mr. Obama’s 26 percent support among whites in Tuesday’s primary was one of his worst performances with this group.
He had previously been supported by 16 percent of white voters in Arkansas; 23 percent in Florida, where the candidates did not actively campaign; 24 percent in South Carolina, where John Edwards was still competing; and 25 percent in Alabama.
Dalia Sussman contributed reporting.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/clinton-addresses-ferraro-backlash/index.html?ref=politics
March 12, 2008
Clinton Addresses Ferraro Backlash
By ARIEL ALEXOVICH
WASHINGTON — On the hot seat in front of a largely African-American media audience, Hillary Rodham Clinton again rejected comments made by Geraldine Ferraro, the former vice presidential nominee whose repeated remarks in the past week have ignited another round of racial identity politics.
Senator Clinton was asked Wednesday night – though it wasn’t the first question — about the Ferraro contretemps and whether she had “done enough” to address comments some have interpreted as racist. Senator Barack Obama deemed them divisive just yesterday.
Ms. Ferraro, a former vice presidential candidate, has repeatedly said in recent days that Senator Obama wouldn’t have been in the position he’s in now if he wasn’t black. Outcry from the Obama camp and the greater public led her to resign from the post she held on the Clinton campaign finance team earlier today.
“I said yesterday that I rejected what she said, and I certainly do repudiate it,” said Senator Clinton at the forum sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a group that represents more than 200 African-American papers. “And I regret deeply that, you know, it was said. Obviously she doesn’t speak for the campaign, she doesn’t speak for any of my positions. And she has resigned from being a member of my very large finance committee.”
Senator Clinton added:
“You know, both Senator Obama and I have throughout this campaign had to take occasion to remind our supporters and our staff that we want to run this campaign based on our issue differences, our records, our qualifications, our experience.
I think, I recall, it was in one of these debates maybe in January where both of us said, ‘Look, we know that we don’t control what is said by everybody who supports us.’ One of his top advisers had to resign about something she said about me.
So we are aware that this happens, but we are particularly sensitive to it because of the nature of this campaign and who each of us is. So we do stand against it, we repudiate it, we try to take action wherever we can, and we will continue to do that.”
When another audience member brought up Bill Clinton’s characterization of Senator Obama’s popularity during the South Carolina primary, when the former president likened his support to that of the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s years ago in a way that seemed to minimalize Mr. Obama’s candidacy, she said, “I’m sorry if anyone was offended. It was certainly not meant, in any way, to be offensive.”
Mrs. Clinton again said that she’s proud to be in this election, and that she would urge her supporters to vote for Mr. Obama if he made it through to the general election.
The other questions she fielded dealt with Hurricane Katrina victims – she said as president she’d appoint a staff member just to deal with the situation – and racial profiling. She also reiterated her commitment to fighting AIDS and improving health care in low-income communities.
Tomorrow night, Senator Obama is to be honored by the media organization as newsmaker of the year. This will be the second time he has received this award from the organization. The first was in 2005.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/ferraro-quits-clinton-post/
March 12, 2008, 5:17 pm
Ferraro Quits Clinton Post
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Updated | 8:25 p.m.
After a two-day firestorm, Geraldine Ferraro has quit Senator Hillary Clinton’s finance committee, saying that Senator Barack Obama’s campaign was twisting her words to make her appear racist and that this was hurting Mrs. Clinton.
“I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign,” Ms. Ferraro wrote in a letter to Mrs. Clinton. “The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you. I won’t let that happen.”
For the last two days, Ms. Ferraro has been sharply criticized for comments she made last week, but which surfaced only recently, that suggested Mr. Obama had succeeded as far as he had because he was black.
“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position,” she told the Daily Breeze, a newspaper in Torrance, Calif.
While critics, including Mr. Obama, pounced on her, a defiant Ms. Ferraro defended her remarks, saying they were accurate and not racist. She has said that she herself benefited from being a woman because otherwise, she would not have been the vice presidential nominee in 1984.
But by mid-afternoon, she resigned from her membership on the finance committee.
Senator Clinton addressed Ms. Ferraro’s remarks at a forum sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.
There was no immediate comment from the Clinton campaign, but Howard Wolfson, a spokesman, said that Ms. Ferraro had decided to leave on her own.
Ms. Ferraro continued to speak out and press her point, telling NBC News after her resignation: “This is the last time the Obama campaign is going to be able to play this kind of race card. They should apologize to me for calling me a racist.”
Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said the campaign had not twisted her words. “I find that notion to be completely ludicrous,” he said.
He added: “As Barack Obama has repeatedly said, it is time to move beyond the politics that slices and dices the electorate by race, region, or gender so that we can finally come together and focus on the challenges that unite all of us as Americans.”
Mrs. Clinton said yesterday that she “rejected” Ms. Ferraro’s original comments. But questions persisted about why she had not denounced them more sharply and whether they actually worked to the Clinton camp’s advantage with white voters.
On a conference call this afternoon with Clinton officials, before Ms. Ferraro stepped down, Andrea Mitchell of NBC News asked why Mrs. Clinton had not been more emphatic and if there hadn’t been a pattern by the Clinton campaign of exploiting such remarks.
Howard Wolfson, Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman, replied that the campaign was “completely unaware” of Mrs. Ferraro’s remarks before she made them. “We did not in any way encourage them,” he said.
He noted that when Mrs. Clinton responded to a question about the comments, she “made clear she disagreed with them and she rejected them.”
Ms. Mitchell persisted, noting that in previous cases where people associated with both campaigns had made problematic remarks, the campaigns had taken aggressive action.
Mr. Wolfson said that Mr. Obama had not always removed people from his campaign, citing the cases of David Geffen, the Hollywood mogul, and General Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, both of whom had sharply criticized Mrs. Clinton but neither of whom were removed.
“Each circumstance is different,” Mr. Wolfson said. “Geraldine Ferraro is not an adviser, she is not a member of the staff and we have made clear that we reject her comments, that we disagree with her comments, that she was not speaking on behalf of the campaign.”
Mr. Obama was asked about the matter this morning on NBC’s “Today.”
“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.”
Ms. Ferraro went on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” where she was asked if she was sorry for what she had said. “Absolutely not,” she responded.
She was also asked whether the Clinton campaign might actually agree with her but could not say so publicly.
“That’s not of concern to me,” Ms. Ferraro said. She said that the Obama campaign was spinning her as a racist and “doing precisely what they don’t want done.”
Since Ms. Ferraro was named to the Democratic ticket in 1984, she has said she would not have been picked if she had not been a woman. In 1988, she said of Jesse Jackson that if he were not black, “he wouldn’t be in the race.”
This interview in February on Fox Radio’s John Gibson show gives you a good flavor of Ms. Ferraro’s view that race is playing a big role in this campaign. She was talking about Representative John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat who is a superdelegate and who switched his endorsement from Mrs. Clinton to Mr. Obama.
“I’m very disappointed,” she said. “When I see John Lewis. He’s turning around _ this is a civil rights leader. What in God’s name did he change his vote from Hillary to Barack Obama? I’ll tell you why. Because he faces, he’s not going to lose a Democratic primary in his district in two years, but he sure as hell will face one if he sticks it to Barack Obama when he has a greater majority of blacks in his district. So he’s looking at, he’s not going to lose. I’m so disappointed in him, I could die. I look at Rosa DeLaura up in Connecticut. She represents New Haven. Tell me, I mean I don’t care what she says, tell me why she’s endorsing Barack Obama and came to his defense on an issue like choice when he voted six times maybe? When he voted present? I’m a lunatic about this stuff. I can’t believe people are doing it.”
Mr. Gibson asked her if it was possible that Mr. Obama had a wave behind him and that politicians wanted to reflect the views of their constituents.
“John,” she said, “between me and you and your millions of listeners, if Barack Obama were a white man, would we be talking about this as a potential real problem for Hillary? If he were a woman of any color, would he be in this position that he’s in? Absolutely not.”
Mr. Gibson then asked, “Geraldine, are you playing the race card?”
“No, and that’s the problem,” she said. “Every time you say the truth — I’m the first person, John, and you know how honest I am — I am the first person who will say in 1984, if my name were Gerard instead of Geraldine, I would never have been picked as the vice presidential candidate.”
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Updated | 8:25 p.m.
After a two-day firestorm, Geraldine Ferraro has quit Senator Hillary Clinton’s finance committee, saying that Senator Barack Obama’s campaign was twisting her words to make her appear racist and that this was hurting Mrs. Clinton.
“I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign,” Ms. Ferraro wrote in a letter to Mrs. Clinton. “The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you. I won’t let that happen.”
For the last two days, Ms. Ferraro has been sharply criticized for comments she made last week, but which surfaced only recently, that suggested Mr. Obama had succeeded as far as he had because he was black.
“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position,” she told the Daily Breeze, a newspaper in Torrance, Calif.
While critics, including Mr. Obama, pounced on her, a defiant Ms. Ferraro defended her remarks, saying they were accurate and not racist. She has said that she herself benefited from being a woman because otherwise, she would not have been the vice presidential nominee in 1984.
But by mid-afternoon, she resigned from her membership on the finance committee.
Senator Clinton addressed Ms. Ferraro’s remarks at a forum sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.
There was no immediate comment from the Clinton campaign, but Howard Wolfson, a spokesman, said that Ms. Ferraro had decided to leave on her own.
Ms. Ferraro continued to speak out and press her point, telling NBC News after her resignation: “This is the last time the Obama campaign is going to be able to play this kind of race card. They should apologize to me for calling me a racist.”
Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said the campaign had not twisted her words. “I find that notion to be completely ludicrous,” he said.
He added: “As Barack Obama has repeatedly said, it is time to move beyond the politics that slices and dices the electorate by race, region, or gender so that we can finally come together and focus on the challenges that unite all of us as Americans.”
Mrs. Clinton said yesterday that she “rejected” Ms. Ferraro’s original comments. But questions persisted about why she had not denounced them more sharply and whether they actually worked to the Clinton camp’s advantage with white voters.
On a conference call this afternoon with Clinton officials, before Ms. Ferraro stepped down, Andrea Mitchell of NBC News asked why Mrs. Clinton had not been more emphatic and if there hadn’t been a pattern by the Clinton campaign of exploiting such remarks.
Howard Wolfson, Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman, replied that the campaign was “completely unaware” of Mrs. Ferraro’s remarks before she made them. “We did not in any way encourage them,” he said.
He noted that when Mrs. Clinton responded to a question about the comments, she “made clear she disagreed with them and she rejected them.”
Ms. Mitchell persisted, noting that in previous cases where people associated with both campaigns had made problematic remarks, the campaigns had taken aggressive action.
Mr. Wolfson said that Mr. Obama had not always removed people from his campaign, citing the cases of David Geffen, the Hollywood mogul, and General Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, both of whom had sharply criticized Mrs. Clinton but neither of whom were removed.
“Each circumstance is different,” Mr. Wolfson said. “Geraldine Ferraro is not an adviser, she is not a member of the staff and we have made clear that we reject her comments, that we disagree with her comments, that she was not speaking on behalf of the campaign.”
Mr. Obama was asked about the matter this morning on NBC’s “Today.”
“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.”
Ms. Ferraro went on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” where she was asked if she was sorry for what she had said. “Absolutely not,” she responded.
She was also asked whether the Clinton campaign might actually agree with her but could not say so publicly.
“That’s not of concern to me,” Ms. Ferraro said. She said that the Obama campaign was spinning her as a racist and “doing precisely what they don’t want done.”
Since Ms. Ferraro was named to the Democratic ticket in 1984, she has said she would not have been picked if she had not been a woman. In 1988, she said of Jesse Jackson that if he were not black, “he wouldn’t be in the race.”
This interview in February on Fox Radio’s John Gibson show gives you a good flavor of Ms. Ferraro’s view that race is playing a big role in this campaign. She was talking about Representative John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat who is a superdelegate and who switched his endorsement from Mrs. Clinton to Mr. Obama.
“I’m very disappointed,” she said. “When I see John Lewis. He’s turning around _ this is a civil rights leader. What in God’s name did he change his vote from Hillary to Barack Obama? I’ll tell you why. Because he faces, he’s not going to lose a Democratic primary in his district in two years, but he sure as hell will face one if he sticks it to Barack Obama when he has a greater majority of blacks in his district. So he’s looking at, he’s not going to lose. I’m so disappointed in him, I could die. I look at Rosa DeLaura up in Connecticut. She represents New Haven. Tell me, I mean I don’t care what she says, tell me why she’s endorsing Barack Obama and came to his defense on an issue like choice when he voted six times maybe? When he voted present? I’m a lunatic about this stuff. I can’t believe people are doing it.”
Mr. Gibson asked her if it was possible that Mr. Obama had a wave behind him and that politicians wanted to reflect the views of their constituents.
“John,” she said, “between me and you and your millions of listeners, if Barack Obama were a white man, would we be talking about this as a potential real problem for Hillary? If he were a woman of any color, would he be in this position that he’s in? Absolutely not.”
Mr. Gibson then asked, “Geraldine, are you playing the race card?”
“No, and that’s the problem,” she said. “Every time you say the truth — I’m the first person, John, and you know how honest I am — I am the first person who will say in 1984, if my name were Gerard instead of Geraldine, I would never have been picked as the vice presidential candidate.”
