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Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, who is stepping down from Hillary Clinton’s finance team after telling a California newspaper that Barack Obama has been aided politically by his race, said Wednesday evening that the remarks were nothing more than a “statement of fact.”

Ferraro told FOX News she’s leaving her unpaid post on the Clinton finance committee because she doesn’t want the flap to become a campaign distraction, but blamed the fallout on Obama’s operatives.

“Somebody must have seen this (article) and said, ‘Wow, this is really something — we go after Ferraro, we go after Clinton,” Ferraro said in an interview Wednesday night on FOX News’ “Hannity & Colmes. “They made this a divisive issue, not me.”

Ferraro, who also is a FOX News contributor, she said she was simply exercising her First Amendment rights: “It was a statement of fact — nothing more, nothing less.”

Word of Ferraro’s departure spread Wednesday afternoon following calls from Obama’s team to restore civility by not letting the debate devolve into race-based arguments.

Speaking to reporters in Chicago, Obama said he didn’t think the comments were racist, but he did call them “ridiculous” and “wrong-headed.”

“The notion that it is a great advantage to me to be an African American named Barack Obama and pursue the presidency, I think, is not a view that has been commonly shared by the general public,”Obama said.

Ferraro notified Clinton by letter that she would no longer serve on Clinton’s finance committee as “Honorary New York Leadership Council Chair.” She wrote that the Obama campaign “is attacking me to hurt you.”

Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson said Ferraro made the decision on her own to leave the campaign post.

And Clinton reiterated Wednesday evening during a forum in Washington, D.C., with the Black Press of America that Ferraro was not speaking for her.

“I said yesterday that I rejected what she said, and I certainly do repudiate it, and I regret deeply that it was said,” Clinton said. “Obviously she doesn’t speak for the campaign, or any of my positions, and she has resigned from being a member of my very large finance committee.”

A sign that she acknowledges some race-based comments have soured voters, Clinton also apologized at the Washington forum for comments made by Bill Clinton after Obama won the South Carolina primary. The former president said Jesse Jackson also won South Carolina when he ran for president in 1984 and 1988, a comment many viewed as belittling Obama’s success.

“I want to put that in context. You know I am sorry if anyone was offended. It was certainly not meant in any way to be offensive,” Hillary Clinton said. “We can be proud of both Jesse Jackson and Senator Obama.”

Clinton said she wants the campaign to stick to the issues, but added “we don’t control what is said by everyone who supports us.”

She brought up the resignation last week of Obama’s foreign policy adviser Samantha Power, who left the campaign after calling Clinton a “monster” in an interview with a Scottish newspaper.

The latest controversy began when the national media picked up on comments Ferraro made in an interview last week with the Daily Breeze 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 accused the media of being “sexist” toward Clinton.

Ferraro was unrepentant about her comments. She said she has a 40-year history of opposing all kinds of discrimination and that she was speaking from a historical context, noting that she would not have been chosen as Walter Mondale’s running mate in 1984 if she had been a man.

“I’m sorry, I said nothing negative,” she told FOX News earlier Wednesday. “I care about the black vote in this country. I really don’t think this is right that they should attack me as racist.”

Former Maryland Lieutenant Gov. Michael Steele, who is black, said that Ferraro’s comments are true, and the fact she can’t speak them “goes to the heart and ugliness of racism.” He said Obama’s candidacy is not diminished by her words, but an oversensitivity is harming debate in America.

“It just speaks to the fact that race, no matter how you slice and dice it,” is all too present in people’s minds, he said.

FOX News’ Aaron Bruns and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 5:17 pm and is filed under Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.