BARACK Obama's camp has called on Hillary Clinton to fire a prominent supporter who put the Illinois senator's stunning rise in the US presidential campaign down to his race.
The latest controversy ripped between the two campaigns shortly before Senator Obama won the Mississippi primary, the latest installment of the dramatic Democratic White House race. But while Senator Clinton was fending off the furore in this row, she was seen as being able to largely dodge the fallout from the sex scandal engulfing New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, another of her supporters.
Geraldine Ferraro, who sits on Senator Clinton's finance committee and is a surrogate speaker for her, sparked the latest firestorm when she was quoted by a California newspaper as saying: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.''
"And if he was a woman - of any colour - he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is,'' she said.
In an interview with the Daily Breeze newspaper, Ms Ferraro was also quoted as saying that Senator Obama's success revealed the "very
sexist'' attitudes of the media.
"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.
"For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her (Senator Clinton). It's been a very sexist media. Some just don't like
her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign."
'Don't get personal'
Senator Clinton distanced herself from the statements, but did not comdemn them.
"I do not agree with that," she said in Pennsylvania. "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.
"We ought to keep this on the issues. That's what this campaign should be about."
Ms Ferraro later refused to apologise for her remarks, claiming the Obama camp was waging a campaign of hate against her and reiterating that she had merely spoken "the truth".
"I said this (Obama's) is one of the best campaigns. I speak about his star quality. I talk about how exciting it is to have two campaigns, but you know, the truth is the truth is the truth," she said on Fox News.
Ms Ferraro was the first woman on a major presidential ticket when she stood for vice president in 1984 alongside Democratic nominee Walter Mondale.
Republican Ronald Reagan won re-election in a landslide.
Senator Obama's top strategist David Axelrod said the comments were part of an "insidious pattern that needs to be addressed,'' bringing up
previous racially tinged rows between the two camps.
"When you wink and nod at offensive statements you are really sending a signal that anything goes,'' he said.
"We call on the Clinton campaign to take firmer action in this regard. (Ms Ferraro) ought to be removed from those positions.''
Another Obama advisor, foreign policy aide Susan Rice, told MSNBC the comments were "outrageous and offensive'' and worse than those of her campaign colleague Samantha Power who quit last week after branding Senator Clinton a "monster''.
The Democrats headed into the Mississippi primary, their final ballot clash before the more significant contest in Pennsylvania in six weeks, staring at a potential deadlock all the way to their August nominating convention in Denver.
Polls gave the African-American Senator Obama a wide lead in the southern state, where more than half of Democratic voters are black.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23361072-5012572,00.html


