The leader of the Independence Party, Lenora Fulani, added an unexpected hiccup in Mayor Bloomberg’s bid for re-election when she made comments this week that critics called anti-Semitic. Mr. Bloomberg then failed to distance himself from her.

During an interview on NY1 television Wednesday night, Ms. Fulani was asked whether she would retreat from some remarks she reportedly made about Jews in 1995. She was quoted in a report by the Anti-Defamation League as saying Jews “had to sell their souls to acquire Israel and are required to do the dirtiest work of capitalism – to function as mass murderers of people of color – in order to keep it.”

Ms. Fulani said she couldn’t remember making those comments but then proceeded to explain them.

“What I’m saying is that as a leftist and as a progressive, many people have been concerned about the role of the state of Israel relative to the Palestinian people, the fight,” she said on the television station’s “Road to City Hall” news program. “I’ve supported a two state solution. I’m a leftist. I’m a progressive. I’m not an anti-Semite. And that quote, in my opinion, isn’t anti-Semitic. It’s raising issues that I think need to be explored.”

Mr. Bloomberg, who needed the Independence Party’s support to win in 2001 and is widely believed to need it again to win this November, seemed to tread carefully and said he didn’t hear her.

Late in the day, the Bloomberg campaign was more specific. “The mayor strongly disagrees with Dr. Fulani’s statements, as would the tens of thousands of New Yorkers who vote on the Independence Party line,” Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign manager, Kevin Sheekey, said. “The Independence Party is the voice of the growing centrist movement in New York politics, which is why centrist Democrats like Senator Schumer, Attorney General Spitzer, and Council Education Chair Eva Moskowitz have taken that line in recent years.”

The mayor’s opponents, on both sides of the aisle, wasted no time in calling on him to distance himself from Ms. Fulani once and for all.

“As the mayor for all the citizens of this city, I believe it is essential that you distance yourself from this apparent extremist anti-Semitic left-wing philosophical base,” a Republican Party mayoral challenger, Thomas Ognibene, said in a letter he sent the mayor yesterday. Mr. Ognibene is a former City Council minority leader.

The City Council speaker, Gifford Miller, who is running in the Democratic Party primary, made a similar call.

“There is absolutely no room in the public debate for the poisonous rhetoric spewed by Ms. Fulani,” he said. “It is the responsibility of the leaders of this city to speak up against such hateful remarks.”

Mr. Miller called on the mayor to “publicly denounce the hateful philosophy of his political ally” and reject the Independence Party ballot line as long as Ms. Fulani leads the party.

The campaign of the former Bronx borough president Fernando Ferrer, who has been leading in the polls, took a similar line.

“We never sought the Independence Party’s support and never will as long as she’s part of it,” a campaign spokesman, Chad Clanton, said. “You need to ask Mayor Bloomberg about this – he and she are supporters of each other.”

Ms. Fulani, a fixture of New York’s far left for a quarter-century, seems to revel in her role as a well-known radical. She was one of the leaders of the New Alliance Party, which was accused by the Anti-Defamation League of “Jew baiting.”

She and others associated with New Alliance later tried to move into the mainstream by taking leading roles in the Independence Party, which began as an offshoot of H. Ross Perot’s 1992 presidential run.

Two years ago, Ms. Fulani and Mr. Bloomberg joined forces in supporting a failed Charter revision proposal to provide for nonpartisan elections for city offices, a move that would have helped bolster the Independence Party.

While it is widely believed that Mr. Bloomberg will need the Independence Party’s support if he is to eke out a win in what is likely to be a close race in November, he has been known to draw the line when he judges that Ms. Fulani has overstepped the bounds of decency.

After the September 11, 2001, attacks, for example, Ms. Fulani suggested America had asked for the terrorist onslaught. And Mr. Bloomberg denounced the comment.

Once in office, however, he invited Ms. Fulani to City Hall for a meeting on education and appointed the Independence Party’s lawyer to a city commission.

Analysts said that however Mr. Bloomberg really feels about Ms. Fulani, a simple political calculus has compelled him to keep her on his side. The Independence line provided Mr. Bloomberg, who only recently affiliated with the Republican Party, with more than 59,000 votes in 2001. That exceeded his margin of victory over his opponent, Mark Green, who had the Democratic and Working Families parties’ ballot lines.

Mr. Bloomberg donated at least a quarter-of-a-million dollars to Ms. Fulani’s party last year.