More Hurt Than Angry

"I just feel very, very badly for what they've done to him "

After ten grueling days in the national spotlight, Geraldine Ferraro and John Zaccaro took a midweek break at their comfortable home in Forest Hills, N. Y. They were surrounded by their extended political family: accountants, campaign aides, Secret Service agents. In a wide-ranging interview with TIME New York Bureau Chief John Stacks and Washington Correspondent David Beckwith, the candidate and her husband spoke candidly, and heatedly, about what has happened to them. The correspondents' report:

Ferraro seemed fired up by her press conference, eager to get back into the political fight. Zaccaro, who has lost ten pounds in a fortnight, appeared tired. In the rush of events, he had postponed checking into a hospital for a minor hernia operation--an added problem in what Ferraro described as "one of the worst weeks of our lives."

It had been made so, in Ferraro's view, not by legitimate public interest in her family but by an excess of innuendo, including attempts to link Zaccaro with transgressions by tenants in buildings managed by his firm. Said she: "I think the public is entitled to know whether or not I'm married to Jack the Ripper. I think they're entitled to know whether or not we pay our fair share of taxes. But what I think is wrong is what's going on now. I mean, every day there is another story about another building." It pains her that such stories lack direct connection to her role in public life--or to anything she has done. Said she: "People have asked about things that took place in 1958. We got married in 1960."

Troubling her too is an imbalance she detects in the whirlwind of press reports. Among the examples she cited were the screaming headlines in local newspapers about peeling paint and other minor building violations in properties managed by Zaccaro, despite a solid endorsement of his record voiced by a New York City housing official. As she put it: "Over a number of years, P. Zaccaro Co. [the firm founded by his father] has managed thousands of buildings, been involved in probably thousands of sales and maybe tens of thousands of leases. With all that volume, if you want to question a lease, you're bound to find one to question. But where do you start, and where do you stop?

"I know my husband," she said. "He's a man of integrity, a man of honesty. I think many reporters are trying to be the investigative reporter who has that smash story that wins the Pulitzer Prize. They're going to be disappointed."

Surely they had expected this to be a tough campaign. But, Ferraro admitted, "we never thought this tough. We thought that what they were going to do is focus on me as an individual. Whether or not I am capable of the job of Vice President of the United States. Whether or not I'm the type of person who upholds the trust placed in me by the public." She feels the concern about Zaccaro has at times conveyed a misleading impression of her own record. For example, the inquiry into her husband's handling of an elderly woman's estate tends to overwhelm her own "100%" record with the aged. "This isn't starting out of nowhere," she said. "It's starting because people see this as a way to get at me. The way you get at me is you try to destroy my husband. It's not working, and it's not going to work."

But Ferraro revealed deep concern that the charges and public suspicion have been unnecessarily hurtful to Zaccaro. As she put it: "I didn't know I was going to subject my husband to this. I just never thought it." Given what has happened, would she accept the nomination again if she had it to do over? "I don't know," she replied, explaining that she would have turned it down when offered if Zaccaro had opposed her candidacy. Then Ferraro turned to her husband and asked, "How do you feel about it now?"

Zaccaro replied indignantly, "Who needs it? Who needs it? I'm not the candidate. Why should I be held for all this nonsense, questions about people that I do business with. They have no right to do that. My privacy is ruined."

Ferraro took some blame for the firestorm over their finances. "I remember John saying at the kitchen table, 'I don't want my tax return released to the public.' It was my error." Why had Zaccaro felt so strongly about this information? From a couch to Zaccaro's right, Accountant Charles Reynolds explained: "There's a competitive disadvantage when people you're negotiating with know your cost basis for properties. The more you know about his position, the more you know about how far he may be willing to come down in price." Added Ferraro: "He's got partners. You tell me how many people would want to go into partnership with someone who has been asked to have all their information exposed. It's just not done in the real estate business."

Asked whether they felt angry, Zaccaro drew an appreciative laugh from his wife by answering, "Let's say abused, O.K.?" Then Ferraro responded, "I'm not angry. I just feel very, very badly for what they've done to him. His mother called up Wednesday night in absolute tears, because some of the newspapers had written terrible things. I used to call my mother every day on the phone. Now I don't want to do it. She said she doesn't think God is listening to her prayers any more. And my kids are on television. That's what hurts. I wouldn't subject other people to all that. You don't feel angry, you feel hurt that they're hurt."

Despite the emotional costs--and the prospect of a $50,000 tab for accountants and lawyers (Ferraro: "We're spending a fortune out of our personal monies")--candidate and husband said they had given absolutely no thought to quitting the race. As she put it: "We've gone through this much, we're in it to stay, and we're going to win. You don't go through a bloodbath like this and then walk away from it." Zaccaro agreed, emphatically: "They want us to weaken, we don't weaken. Whatever it is, it is."