Mar 11, 2008 10:01 pm US/Central
Obama Supporters Angry Over Comments On His Race
Ill. Senator Headed To Chicago Tuesday After Clinching Mississippi Primary Victory
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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Illinois Senator Barack Obama and his wife Michelle (File)
Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images
Thirty-three delegates were up for grabs Tuesday night, but it's the big prize, 188 delegates in Pennsylvania, on the minds of both candidates.
Sen. Barack Obama returned home to Chicago Tuesday night with the Mississippi primary victory in this back pocket, a state in the heart of the old South where almost two out of every five citizens are black.
"Sen. Clinton and I have very real differences about how we're going to change this country," Obama said.
But as CBS 2's Derrick Blakely reports, 1984 vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, a prominent Clinton fundraiser, touched off a furor because she's repeatedly said, Obama owes his campaign success to his color.
"If Barack Obama were a white man would we be talking about this as a real potential problem for Hillary?" Ferraro said on a Fox radio show. "If he were a woman of any color would he be in this position? Absolutely not."
Obama supporters were outraged.
"I think Geraldine Ferraro's comments were outlandish and insulting," said Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. "The Clinton campaign should immediately denounce and reject Mrs. Ferraro's divisive and derogatory comments."
Clinton distanced herself, but gently.
"I don't agree with that... and both of us have had supporters and staff members who go over the line and we have to rein them in," she said.
But Obama's campaign insists this is just the latest in a series of caustic comments about race from Clinton surrogates, including husband Bill, businessman Robert Johnson and former ambassador Andrew Young.
"These kind of things have happened several times and at some point the campaign has to say no, these are not the kinds of things that are tolerable," Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said in a phone interview.
Another senior Obama adviser, Chicagoan David Axelrod, called Ferraro's comments part of an "insidious pattern."
Axelrod said, "When you wink and nod at offensive statements, you're really sending a signal to supporters that anything goes."
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