Claims put pressure on Ferraro

Press, 23 October 1984, Page 6

Claims put pressure on Ferraro

NZPA-Reuter , New York Geraldine Ferraro’s campaign, already stung by a story alleging that her parents were arrested in 1944, grappled yesterday with the impact of two new articles about past campaign funding and her husband’s real estate dealings. In New York, the Long Island newspaper “Newsday” reported that a man officially listed as an organised crime figure had raised nearly $U549,000 for her first Congressional campaign in 1978. “Newsday” also said that her husband’s family real estate firm had financed more than 90 per cent of a business complex owned by a man who had served eight months in jail in a labour racketeering case. In Philadelphia, “The Inquirer” reported that her

husband, John Zaccaro, had represented a reputed organised crime figure in the sale of two buildings in New York City’s “Little Italy”. “We’re confident that we can answer every point in those stories satisfactorily,” Ms Ferraro’s chief spokesman, Francis O’Brien, said. “We did the same thing in the first run of similar stories early in the campaign and no-one complained about our answers. These stories will have no impact on the candidate, but they will take time away from the campaign. 1 told our people that they can expect this stuff for the next 16 days.” He said that he found it “curious” that papers were publishing with only two weeks remaining in the campaign.

The Ferraro campaign has been gambling that the stories will not get wide circulation and create a last-minute negative impression in the minds of voters.

That strategy evidently paid off late last week when the national newspapers and broadcast companies generally ignored reports on Ms Ferraro’s past by two publications owned by Rupert Murdoch, the Australian press owner, whose main American dailies have sided strongly with the President, Mr Ronald Reagan. A senior Ferraro adviser, saying that Friday was “the hardest day in her life,” said yesterday that the stories had hurt the campaign’s momentum.He suggested that the two stories were part of a “smear” by the Murdoch organisation, and

said that the campaign’s policy would be to “tough it out, take the heat.”

That strategy apparently changed with yesterday’s reports in “The Inquirer” and “Newsday”, two newspapers that have won Pulitzer journalism prizes. “Newsday” said that a Ferraro fund-raiser, Nicholas Sands, who had changed his name from Dominick Santiago, had been convicted in 1975 of stealing funds from his carpenter’s union and was listed as an associate of a New York organised crime family.

Mr O’Brien told the newspaper and Reuter, that Ms Ferraro had had no knowledge of Sands’ criminal background. “Newsday” said that it had sent a four-page ques-

tionnaire to Ms Ferraro’s campaign office on October L and had received a reply from a deputy press official which said in parfc“Not only are the questions offensive, but they would divert the campaign at a crucial time from concentrating on the issues. We are simply not going to engage in such an exercise.” ■

Regarding the second part of the “Newsday” report, about Mr Zaccaro’s family firm’s ties to Michael Laßosa, who pleaded guilty to racketeering in a 1982 Federal probe of labour ties to organised crime, Mr O’Brien said that Laßosa had not been brought to court until years after dealings with Mr Zaccaro’s family firm.

In August, in response to questions about a Philadelphia “Inquirer” story on

campaign “ contributions from Laßosa", Ms Ferraro said: “I’ve known Mr Laßosa. He’s a businessman in New York and beyond that I’m just not going to comment.” ■“

At the “time. documents produced by the campaign were generally accepted as fair answers to the Laßosa reports. / Mr O’Brien said that the campaign would respond in full today to yesterday’s “Inquirer” story, which reported that a reputed organised crime figure had made a huge profit on a real estate deal after Mr Zaccaro interceded on his behalf.

The newspaper said that the, owner; of the building, a Chinese doctor, was told by Mr Zaccaro that he could not get a fairer price than the one being offered.