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Published: Wed, March 12, 2008 - 4:30 pm
Last Updated: Wed, March 12, 2008 - 4:33 pm
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former congresswoman and vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro is resigning her fund-raising position with Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign after controversial comments she made about Clinton's rival, Sen. Barack Obama.“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," Ferraro wrote in a letter to Clinton. "The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you. I won't let that happen."
Ferraro told CNN she sent the letter to Clinton Wednesday afternoon.
Ferraro stirred controversy with her recent remarks that Obama's campaign was successful because he was black.
"It wasn't a racist comment, it was a statement of fact," she said on CBS' "The Early Show," adding that she would leave Hillary Clinton's national finance committee if she were asked, but would not stop raising money for the New York senator's presidential bid.
She also blamed Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, for misinterpreting her remarks.
Ferraro also told ABC's "Good Morning America" that "every time" someone makes a negative comment about Obama, they are accused of racism.
Late Tuesday, she told an interviewer that she felt 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 Daily Breeze of Torrance, California. "Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"
In another interview Tuesday, Ferraro compared Obama's situation with 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?'
"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: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman, 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 also said Hillary Clinton had been the victim of a "sexist media."
Obama responded Wednesday to Ferraro's comments, saying "I think that her comments were ... ridiculous. ... I think they were wrong-headed. I think they are not borne out by our history or by the facts."
"The notion that it is a great advantage to me, an African American named Barack Obama, in pursuit of the presidency I think is not a view that has been commonly shared by the general public," he said during a campaign event at the Chicago History Museum.
"Divisions of race, gender, of region are precisely what has inhibited us from moving effectively forward to solve big problems like health care, energy, the war on terror," he said.
Obama's strategist, 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 she does not agree with Ferraro's remarks.
Clinton campaign spokesman Mo Eleithee told CNN's Sasha Johnson Tuesday evening that "Ms. Ferraro is speaking for herself. We have made clear that we do not agree with her remarks."
This is not the first time Ferraro has made a racially sensitive remark about a black presidential candidate.
In an April 15, 1988, article in The Washington Post, Ferraro is quoted as saying that because of his "radical" views, "if Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn't be in the race."
Jackson is quoted in the article as saying, "We campaigned across the South ... without a single catcall or boo. It was not until we got north to New York that we began to hear this from ... President Reagan and then Mrs. Ferraro. ... Some people are making hysteria while I'm making history."
The Post said in that 1988 article that Reagan suggested people did not ask Jackson tough questions because of his race.
Former congresswoman Ferraro is the latest Clinton surrogate to launch a firestorm with comments relating to Obama's heritage or ethnicity.
Black leaders sharply criticized Clinton's husband, former President Clinton, for comments he made before the South Carolina primary, including comparing Obama's campaign with the Rev. Jesse Jackson's 1984 run.
Shortly before the Texas primary, 84-year-old Clinton supporter Adelfa Callejo told CBS 11 News in Dallas, Texas, that Obama would have trouble attracting Latino support because he was African-American.
"When blacks had the numbers, they didn't do anything to support us," Callejo said. "They always used our numbers to fulfill their goals and objectives, but they never really supported us, and there's a lot of hard feelings about that. I don't think we're going to get over it anytime soon."
Last month, when Clinton was asked whether she would reject and denounce Callejo's remarks, she said, "People get to express their opinions," adding that "a lot of folks have said really unpleasant things about me over the course of this campaign."
Later, her campaign released a statement saying that she had been unaware of the substance of the remarks during that interview and both denounced and rejected them.
Obama has faced his own headaches. Foreign policy adviser Samantha Power ended her connection with his campaign last week after telling a Scottish interviewer that Clinton was a "monster."
Power also made remarks about Obama's Iraq war policy that were used by the Clinton campaign in recent attacks.
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The symbole of this country should also be one of our citizens excersising his or her right to burn that flag in protest. Defend that in our class rooms today. I have paid close attention to this elction and I feel that the reason that ALL of these people spend so much time shouting at each other is because they siply dont get it. And i was wrong, but its not that they dont get it but they cant sell it. We need serious people to solve serious problems today. I have yet to see an candidate in the 2008 election that in really interested in solving problems. They want to make us afraid of it and tell us whos to blame for it. And unfortuantly that is how you win elections today.
Its time we stop the name calling and look at what is going on and figure out how to fix our problems and not Blan somone cut down somone else. I want a Leader who whil get with the program and deal with the issues at hand.