ALBANY - New York Gov. David Paterson said Tuesday the McCain-Palin presidential campaign insinuated racist overtones into criticism of Sen. Barack Obama's work as a community organizer.
“There are overtones of potential racial coding in the campaign,” Paterson said at an event in New York City.
Paterson says the Republican candidates haven't directly talked about race, but it's strongly implied in comments Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and others have made about Obama.
“The Republican party is too smart to call Barack Obama ‘black' in a sense that it would be a negative,” Paterson said. “But you can take something about his life, which I noticed they did at the Republican convention. A ‘community organizer,' they kept saying it, they kept laughing, like what does this mean?
“It means that an individual who could have gone to Wall Street and made a lot of money, and then run for office because he could buy media time, chose to go back and work in programs in a neighborhood where he thought he could make a difference and became an elected official based on his involvement right in his own community.”
Peter Feldman, a spokesman for Sen. John McCain, says the accusation is untrue.
“This is a tactic that the Obama campaign has used before, and which McCain campaign manager Rick Davis correctly called divisive, shameful, and wrong,” Feldman said. “Governor Palin's remark about Barack Obama's work as a community organizer was in response to the Obama campaign's belittling of her executive experience.”
At the Republican National Convention, Palin compared her work as a small-town mayor to Obama's work as a community organizer.
“Since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities,” she said then.
Feldman says Palin's comments were a response to insults about her own political experience.
Paterson is New York's first black governor.
Paterson says the Republican candidates haven't directly talked about race, but it's strongly implied in comments Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and others have made about Obama.
“The Republican party is too smart to call Barack Obama ‘black' in a sense that it would be a negative,” Paterson said. “But you can take something about his life, which I noticed they did at the Republican convention. A ‘community organizer,' they kept saying it, they kept laughing, like what does this mean?
“It means that an individual who could have gone to Wall Street and made a lot of money, and then run for office because he could buy media time, chose to go back and work in programs in a neighborhood where he thought he could make a difference and became an elected official based on his involvement right in his own community.”
Peter Feldman, a spokesman for Sen. John McCain, says the accusation is untrue.
“This is a tactic that the Obama campaign has used before, and which McCain campaign manager Rick Davis correctly called divisive, shameful, and wrong,” Feldman said. “Governor Palin's remark about Barack Obama's work as a community organizer was in response to the Obama campaign's belittling of her executive experience.”
At the Republican National Convention, Palin compared her work as a small-town mayor to Obama's work as a community organizer.
“Since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities,” she said then.
Feldman says Palin's comments were a response to insults about her own political experience.
Paterson is New York's first black governor.
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