Ferraro Will Not Run for Senate in ’86 : Cites Continuing Probe; Will Campaign Against D’Amato

Former Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine A. Ferraro said today she will not run against Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato in 1986 because of a continuing federal investigation into her finances.

Ferraro, appearing at a news conference near her home in Queens, said she was, however, committed to working on other Democratic efforts to unseat the Republican senator.

“He can be beaten. He should be beaten and if I have anything to do with it, he will be beaten,” Ferraro said.

She said she came to the “reluctant conclusion not to be a candidate” and that “the one factor in this decision” was a Justice Department investigation of her 1978 finances and the financing of her congressional campaign.

Target of Attacks

“The knives were out for her,” one political source said. “It wasn’t so much the electoral situation as the idea of being the target of personal negative advertising in the next year targeted on her and her family.”

A spokesman for D’Amato said the senator had no immediate comment. To date, D’Amato has raised nearly $5 million for his campaign and had expected to be running against Ferraro.

Among others whose names have been mentioned as possible Democratic contenders against D’Amato are former New York Gov. Hugh Carey, New York Rep.Thomas J. Downey and Mark Green, who worked for Ralph Nader and lost a bid for the House several years ago.

Trouble Over Finances

Ferraro, a former New York congresswoman who in 1984 became the first woman to run for vice president on a major party ticket, ran into trouble during the campaign over her personal finances and those of her husband.

Her husband, John A. Zaccaro, was later indicted and pleaded guilty to New York state charges relating to his real estate dealings.

At times during the campaign, it seemed Ferraro’s message was overshadowed by a different controversy every week. Most of them involved her husband’s business practices and allegations of links to organized crime figures.

Most Americans had never heard of Ferraro before she was picked by Walter F. Mondale as his running mate. Even on Capitol Hill, where she single-mindedly worked her way into Democratic leadership circles, she was not as well known as some other three-term House members.

But she never lacked for confidence. Ferraro was unafraid to scold an audacious reporter, demand union workers to explain why they were voting Republican or upbraid her running mate’s top aide for booking her schedule too full.