![]() ![]() Conspicuously absent from the pile, meanwhile, were the tax returns of her husband’s real estate companies. The documents, in fact, established that Ferraro and Zaccaro had underpaid taxes in 1978, forcing Ferraro to ante up more than $50,000 in arrears and interest to the IRS. 20, she released records going back six years and said she hoped this disclosure would put an end to things. This was a flat illegality on his part and suddenly it raised new questions about Ferraro’s judicial connections in Queens. Finally, she was forced to announce that she would indeed make full financial disclosure.īefore she got around to doing that, though, the media discovered that Zaccaro had used money from an elderly widow’s estate he was protecting as a court-ordered conservator for a real estate deal. It happened that they found nothing particularly amiss but Ferraro’s continued refusal to provide information kept raising more and more questions daily, and by early August the din was so great that she found herself unable to campaign effectively. They looked into Zaccaro’s business dealings and associates. Reporters began searching building records for code violations, failed inspections, unusual tenants. I = document.getElementById(‘footer-include’) If ( article_id != null ) article_id = article_id The public wondered: What exactly was it that Zaccaro didn’t want known?īecause Ferraro had listed herself on her congressional financial-disclosure form as secretary-treasurer of her husband’s firms, the family business was fair game for inquiry whether Zaccaro liked it or not. Two weeks after her nomination, Ferraro announced that her husband would not permit her to release his business records.Ĭampaigning with a grim smile, Ferraro joked that women married to Italian men “know what it is like.” Perhaps she had not consulted with Zaccaro on the matter. In post-Watergate America, political candidates were expected to make public their financial records, and indeed, Ferraro pledged to do that. John Zaccaro had real estate firms that did business mostly in Little Italy, Chinatown and SoHo. This overlooked the matter of her husband’s money. Her life story, as she liked to tell it: She started out as a legal secretary, put herself through Fordham Law School by night while teaching elementary school by day, stayed at home until the youngest of her three children went to school, then worked as an assistant district attorney in Queens for her prosecutor cousin before being elected to Congress in 1978 under her maiden name. ![]()
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