Geraldine Ferraro, who died on March 26 aged 75, was the first woman to run on a main party ticket in an American presidential election, although she also entered the record books by going down to defeat in the greatest Republican landslide in American history.
Geraldine Ferraro on the campaign trail in Mississippi in 1984. Behind her (left) is Walter Mondale Photo: AP
Her example inspired women in the United States to seek high political office, preparing the way for Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy in 2008 and John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate in the same year; Sarah Palin herself said that Ferraro “broke one huge barrier”.
As running-mate to the Democratic candidate Walter Mondale in the 1984 presidential elections, Geraldine Ferraro had come a long way from her upbringing as the daughter of working-class Italian immigrants in the South Bronx.
Not that the party had much of a hope. Buoyed by a booming economy and by low inflation and low unemployment, the Republican president, Ronald Reagan, was riding high. Meanwhile, Mondale had emerged from a bruising fight for the Democratic nomination with Senator Gary Hart and, by the time of the party’s Convention, was trailing Reagan in the polls by 19 points.
The selection of Geraldine Ferraro, a relatively unknown congresswoman from Queens, as the Democratic vice-presidential candidate generated excitement in the media and among the party faithful, delivering a united party convention which took the spotlight away from Mondale’s critics in the party.
Her photogenic looks and warm, personable style promised to be an asset to his campaign. She represented, Mondale ventured, the “classic American dream”. She also represented his hope of wooing the all-important women’s vote, and it was also hoped that the happily-married Roman Catholic “housewife” would appeal to “family values” voters everywhere.
Accepting the vice-presidential nomination, Geraldine Ferraro told delegates: “My name is Geraldine Ferraro. I stand before you to proclaim tonight: America is the land where dreams can come true for all of us.” At the end of her speech there was an eight-minute ovation.
Geraldine Ferraro toured the country, drawing huge crowds, but they did not always consist of people who were intending to vote for the Democratic party ticket. A poll taken after her selection revealed that a majority of both men and women — 60 per cent — believed that Mondale had made his choice because of pressure from women’s groups.
After the campaign, Geraldine Ferraro commissioned research at her own expense to find out what American women thought about her. She discovered that many saw her not as an ally, but as a threat to their status as wives and mothers.
Hopes of winning the Christian vote also foundered on her pro-choice stance on abortion. During the campaign, people at rallies would hold up tombstones with her children’s names on them. When, after the campaign, she made an advertisement for Pepsi, it had to be taken off the air after complaints that it was “pro-abortion”.
Partly because she was a woman, Geraldine Ferraro came in for intense press scrutiny; and her campaign was dogged by allegations about the financial shenanigans of her husband, John Zaccaro, a property dealer in lower Manhattan.
The Washington Post reported that Zaccaro was renting warehouse space to a company that distributed pornography; there were also rumours that he owed back taxes, had connections with the Mob and had raided a trust fund of which he was a trustee. Why, the media wanted to know, had Geraldine Ferraro consistently avoided listing her husband’s business interests on congressional financial disclosure forms?
Her efforts to rebut her critics only landed her in more trouble. At first she said that she would release both her and her husband’s tax returns. Yet a month later she backtracked, saying that she would release only her returns.
Then she backtracked again, saying that her husband would release “a financial — a tax statement”, only to have her husband contradict her. Finally, he agreed to make public his tax returns from 1979 to 1984, after Republican attacks began to detract from his wife’s campaign. (After the campaign, in 1985, he was convicted of “scheming to defraud” on a loan application which grossly overstated his wealth.)
As she became mired in allegations of sleaze, there was some discussion in the Mondale camp of taking Geraldine Ferraro’s name off signs and bumper stickers, though removing her from the Democratic ticket was never a serious consideration as it would have torpedoed the campaign.
In October, Geraldine Ferraro seemed to hold her own in the televised vice-presidential debate with her Republican counterpart George HW Bush, although most pundits agreed that Bush had succeeded in carrying out the instructions of his advisers “to win, but not to have her lose”. No such considerations applied to Bush’s wife Barbara, who was quoted as describing Geraldine Ferraro as “a four million dollar ... I can’t say it, but it rhymes with rich” — implying that the homespun, housewifely image was a fraud.
On November 6, Reagan and Bush defeated Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro in the greatest Republican landslide in American history. The Republicans carried every state but Minnesota — Mondale’s home state. It was the largest landslide since Franklin D Roosevelt’s first re-election over Alf Landon in 1936. Geraldine Ferraro left Congress in 1985.
Geraldine Anne Ferraro was born on August 26 1935 at Newburgh, New York. Her father, Dominick Ferraro, was a first-generation Italian immigrant who in the 1930s ran a popular nightclub — possibly, some reports suggested, under the patronage of the organised crime boss Michael DeVasto. When Geraldine was eight her father died, and the family moved to the Bronx, where her mother found work sewing beads.
Geraldine won a scholarship to Marymount College in Manhattan, then worked as a teacher while studying for a Law degree at night school. After graduating in 1960, the year in which she married John Zaccaro, she practised law part-time for 13 years while bringing up her son and two daughters.
In 1974 she was appointed assistant district attorney in the Investigations Bureau in Queens; then, a year later, she joined the Queens County District Attorney’s office, where she started the Special Victims Bureau, overseeing the prosecution of sex crimes, child abuse, domestic violence and crimes against the elderly.
Four years later she was elected to Congress, representing the 9th Congressional District in Queens, and would be re-elected to two more two-year terms.
During her time in Congress, Geraldine Ferraro championed women’s rights, supported a wide range of liberal causes and became a strong critic of the Reagan government’s economic policies and its support for the Contras in Nicaragua. In 1980 she was elected secretary of the Democratic caucus, and in 1984 was appointed chairman of its platform committee.
After leaving public office following the 1984 election, Geraldine Ferraro returned to her legal practice. In 1992 she ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for a Senate seat in New York, when she again had to face down allegations about her husband’s business dealings along with stories about her son, who had been convicted of cocaine dealing.
In 1994 President Bill Clinton appointed her American ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. She served there until 1996, then became host of CNN’s Crossfire, a political talk show.
In December 1998, following another unsuccessful bid for a seat in the Senate, she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer. While being treated, she became a spokesman for thalidomide, the drug that had been taken off the market after causing more than 10,000 severe deformities in children whose mothers took it for morning sickness but is thought to hold out hope for multiple myeloma sufferers.
Geraldine Ferraro was the author of three books: Ferraro: My Story; Changing History: Writings on Current Affairs; and Framing a Life: A Family Memoir.
She is survived by her husband and by their three children.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/8409431/Geraldine-Ferraro.html
Geraldine Ferraro toured the country, drawing huge crowds, but they did not always consist of people who were intending to vote for the Democratic party ticket. A poll taken after her selection revealed that a majority of both men and women — 60 per cent — believed that Mondale had made his choice because of pressure from women’s groups.
After the campaign, Geraldine Ferraro commissioned research at her own expense to find out what American women thought about her. She discovered that many saw her not as an ally, but as a threat to their status as wives and mothers.
Hopes of winning the Christian vote also foundered on her pro-choice stance on abortion. During the campaign, people at rallies would hold up tombstones with her children’s names on them. When, after the campaign, she made an advertisement for Pepsi, it had to be taken off the air after complaints that it was “pro-abortion”.
Partly because she was a woman, Geraldine Ferraro came in for intense press scrutiny; and her campaign was dogged by allegations about the financial shenanigans of her husband, John Zaccaro, a property dealer in lower Manhattan.
The Washington Post reported that Zaccaro was renting warehouse space to a company that distributed pornography; there were also rumours that he owed back taxes, had connections with the Mob and had raided a trust fund of which he was a trustee. Why, the media wanted to know, had Geraldine Ferraro consistently avoided listing her husband’s business interests on congressional financial disclosure forms?
Her efforts to rebut her critics only landed her in more trouble. At first she said that she would release both her and her husband’s tax returns. Yet a month later she backtracked, saying that she would release only her returns.
Then she backtracked again, saying that her husband would release “a financial — a tax statement”, only to have her husband contradict her. Finally, he agreed to make public his tax returns from 1979 to 1984, after Republican attacks began to detract from his wife’s campaign. (After the campaign, in 1985, he was convicted of “scheming to defraud” on a loan application which grossly overstated his wealth.)
As she became mired in allegations of sleaze, there was some discussion in the Mondale camp of taking Geraldine Ferraro’s name off signs and bumper stickers, though removing her from the Democratic ticket was never a serious consideration as it would have torpedoed the campaign.
In October, Geraldine Ferraro seemed to hold her own in the televised vice-presidential debate with her Republican counterpart George HW Bush, although most pundits agreed that Bush had succeeded in carrying out the instructions of his advisers “to win, but not to have her lose”. No such considerations applied to Bush’s wife Barbara, who was quoted as describing Geraldine Ferraro as “a four million dollar ... I can’t say it, but it rhymes with rich” — implying that the homespun, housewifely image was a fraud.
On November 6, Reagan and Bush defeated Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro in the greatest Republican landslide in American history. The Republicans carried every state but Minnesota — Mondale’s home state. It was the largest landslide since Franklin D Roosevelt’s first re-election over Alf Landon in 1936. Geraldine Ferraro left Congress in 1985.
Geraldine Anne Ferraro was born on August 26 1935 at Newburgh, New York. Her father, Dominick Ferraro, was a first-generation Italian immigrant who in the 1930s ran a popular nightclub — possibly, some reports suggested, under the patronage of the organised crime boss Michael DeVasto. When Geraldine was eight her father died, and the family moved to the Bronx, where her mother found work sewing beads.
Geraldine won a scholarship to Marymount College in Manhattan, then worked as a teacher while studying for a Law degree at night school. After graduating in 1960, the year in which she married John Zaccaro, she practised law part-time for 13 years while bringing up her son and two daughters.
In 1974 she was appointed assistant district attorney in the Investigations Bureau in Queens; then, a year later, she joined the Queens County District Attorney’s office, where she started the Special Victims Bureau, overseeing the prosecution of sex crimes, child abuse, domestic violence and crimes against the elderly.
Four years later she was elected to Congress, representing the 9th Congressional District in Queens, and would be re-elected to two more two-year terms.
During her time in Congress, Geraldine Ferraro championed women’s rights, supported a wide range of liberal causes and became a strong critic of the Reagan government’s economic policies and its support for the Contras in Nicaragua. In 1980 she was elected secretary of the Democratic caucus, and in 1984 was appointed chairman of its platform committee.
After leaving public office following the 1984 election, Geraldine Ferraro returned to her legal practice. In 1992 she ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for a Senate seat in New York, when she again had to face down allegations about her husband’s business dealings along with stories about her son, who had been convicted of cocaine dealing.
In 1994 President Bill Clinton appointed her American ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. She served there until 1996, then became host of CNN’s Crossfire, a political talk show.
In December 1998, following another unsuccessful bid for a seat in the Senate, she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer. While being treated, she became a spokesman for thalidomide, the drug that had been taken off the market after causing more than 10,000 severe deformities in children whose mothers took it for morning sickness but is thought to hold out hope for multiple myeloma sufferers.
Geraldine Ferraro was the author of three books: Ferraro: My Story; Changing History: Writings on Current Affairs; and Framing a Life: A Family Memoir.
She is survived by her husband and by their three children.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/8409431/Geraldine-Ferraro.html
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