Geraldine Ferraro Broke Ground as First Woman and First “Ethnic” on a Major Party Ticket
A 1984 Campaign Button.
On July 19, 1984 the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco confirmed Walter Mondale’s choice of Geraldine Ferraro to be his Vice Presidential running mate. She became the first woman, first Italian American, and one of the few Catholics ever to run on a major party ticket.
That summer Mondale, a liberal icon as a former Senator from Minnesota and Jimmy Carter’s Vice President, faced an uphill battle against a popular Republican incumbent, Ronald Regan. Regan’s sunny disposition and morning-in-America patriotism had drawn many blue collar workers away from their traditional Democratic Party loyalties and had swept many former strongholds in the Northeast and Midwest in 1980. Most observers felt he didn’t have a chance against the “Great Communicator.”
Mondale knew it, too. He was under pressure to do something to “stir things up.” Women, energized by the resurgent Women’s Movement, campaigns for equal employment and wages, the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment, and for abortion rights, pressed the candidate to add a woman to the Ticket. Mondale was publicly considering Ferraro and San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein for the slot. But Ferraro was a popular three term Member Congress from Archie Bunker’s District in Queens, a protégé of House Speaker Tip O'Neil, and a rising star on women’s issues. She was also an ethnic Italian instead of a Jew and as a former prosecutor had reputation for being tough on crime. Mondale picked Ferraro in the desperate hope that she could win enough support among Women, Catholics, and working class “ethnics” to win back at least some North Eastern States.
Ferraro was born Newburgh, New York on August 26, 1935 to immigrant parents. Her father was the successful operator of two restaurants, but he died when she was 8 years old. Her mother lost the family business and had to move to the hard scrabble South Bronx where she supported her family laboring in the garment industry.
With money from the sale of some inherited property in Italy, Ferraro’s mother was able to send her the respected Catholic boarding school, Marymount Academy in Tarrytown, New York where the young woman excelled academically. She went on to college at Marymount Manhattan College working multiple jobs to pay her way.
While she was at school she met an Iona College student, John Zaccaro of Queens. The couple remained in a relationship while he served as a Marine Corps officer. She married him when he got out of the service in 1959.
Ferraro graduated with her Bachelor’s Degree in English in 1956 and followed the path of many women college graduates by becoming an elementary teacher in the New York City Public Schools. But she wanted more and pursued law school at night at Fordham University School of Law, graduating with her Juris Doctor with honors in 1960.
Ferraro kept her birth name for professional usage but was Mrs. Zaccaro in private life. She was soon the mother of three children. While they were young she confined most of her practice to her husband’s business interests occasionally taking outside clients and often representing women on a pro bono basis. She also became involved in community affairs and local level Democratic politics. She gained the attention of rising star Mario Cuomo who became her political mentor.
In 1974 Ferraro got her first full time job as a lawyer when she was hired by her cousin Queens County District Attorney Nicholas Ferraro. Despite understandable charges of nepotism, her performance on the job was outstanding and she won over many skeptics and critics. She became one of the first prosecutors in the brand new Special Victims Bureau (sound familiar?) prosecuting child abuse and sex crimes. By 1978 she had risen to head of the unit and was attracting press attention for personally and passionately arguing some cases with dramatic closings. Despite her success she was incensed to learn that she was being paid less than first year male attorneys because, “she was married and her husband had a good income.” She began to explore other options.
Cuomo, by then New York Secretary of State urged her to throw her hat in the ring for Congress when a seat opened up in Queens by retirement. Ferraro was an underdog in a three way primary for the 9th Congressional District seat. But hard campaigning and a generous infusion of cash from her husband led to an upset victory in the primary, where she ran as a “conservative with a small ‘c’ Democrat” and crime fighter. In the general election she beat a Republican candidate by 10 points.
After the primary most of husband Zaccaro’s loans and donations to her campaign were ruled illegal by the Federal Election Commission. She had to re-pay the loans just before the General Election by selling property she owned with her husband. The next year Zaccaro and Ferraro’s campaign organization paid small fines for the irregularities.
Despite the controversy, Ferraro was a star in Congress, in which few women then sat, almost from the beginning. Her quickness on her feet in debate and in committee work drew the attention of Tip O’Neil who helped her rise to the leadership position of Secretary to the House Democratic Caucus in her second term. On the Steering and Public Works Committees she was able to “bring home the pork,” to her district helping her to greater margins of victory in her two re-election campaigns.
The general public got to know Ferraro first as an outspoken advocate for Women’s rights and the environment. On other issues she could be conservative, reflecting her district. She controversially co-sponsored a proposed Constitutional Amendment to prohibit “force bussing” to address school segregation. On the whole, however, she moved from a self-proclaimed conservative to a “moderate.” She got a 78% favorable rating from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and only 8% approval by the American Conservative Union. The AFL-CIO rated her a solid 91% for her voting record.
It was on the strength of this record that Mondale chose her.
His gamble seemed to pay off. Ferraro’s acceptance speech to the Convention, which emphasized her immigrant heritage brought many in the Hall to tears and was praised by the commentators who were still doing live gavel-to-gavel coverage of the big party meetings. She said, “The daughter of an immigrant from Italy has been chosen to run for vice president in the new land my father came to love.”
She proved herself a tough and aggressive campaigner, forcefully taking on the Regan administration in ways Mondale could not. Indeed the novelty of her position often led her to seem to overshadow the top of the ticket. Voters seemed excited. From down 16 points before the Convention the Mondale/Ferraro ticket surged even by late August.
Then the attacks and press scrutiny of her husband’s business dealings began. First came questions about the couple filing separate Income Tax Returns and hints that it was to distance Ferraro from her husband’s alleged “shady business dealings.” While the establishment press ran with the story, the generally kept away from a well orchestrated Republican whisper campaign that Zaccaro had “Mob ties.” Much of Middle America was prepared to believe that any high profile Italians had to “connected.”
Meanwhile she slugged it out toe-to-toe in a Vice Presidential Debate with George Bush, which she was widely believed to have won handily. The performance and her tough talk on the campaign trail caused Barbara Bush to describe her in an ungraded moment as “that four-million-dollar-I can't say it, but it rhymes with ‘rich’.”
Ferraro's steadfast support of legal abortion rights brought her into the cross hairs of the hierarchy of her Catholic Church. She was publicly attacked by New York City’s John Cardinal O’Connor and other Catholic prelates.
Undeterred she pressed on racking up more public appearances than all three of the other top-of-the-ticket candidates combined. Women who flocked to her speeches chanted “Geri! Geri! Geri!”
Despite her efforts, the Regan/Bush ticket began to surge ahead. Then in October Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post reported that shortly before his death her father had been arrested for “holding numbers tickets” and that her mother was held but released after he died. Furious, Ferraro slammed back that Murdoch “does not have the worth to wipe the dirt under [my mother's] shoes.”
On Election Day it wasn’t even close Regan won 59% of the popular vote and all of the Electoral College votes except for Minnesota and the District of Columbia. Ferraro could not even carry her own Congressional District.
Post election analysis determined that at best Ferraro brought a net gain of less than 1% to the Democratic ticket. But as Mondale acknowledged, no Democrats could have won that year.
After the election Ferraro weathered a Congressional investigation into her husband’s finances which found “innocent” irregularities. No fines or action was taken as she was leaving Congress anyway.
Despite her election loss and travails, Ferraro’s future looked bright. Her post election memoir of the campaign Ferraro: My Story was a best seller. She found herself in wide demand as a speaker. She even shot a Diet Pepsi commercial. She founded Americans Concerned for Tomorrow specifically to raise money to get 10 women elected to Congress in 1986. Eight of her candidates won, increasing her reputation as both a powerful fund raiser and the Godmother of a new generation of women politicians. As she turned her attention to running against First term Republican Senate incumbent Al D'Amato she had every reason to expect success.
Then new scandals erupted around her husband’s business dealings. Late in 1985 the Justice Department launched a new investigation Zaccaro’s finances and his relation to the 1984 campaign. Ferraro was forced to opt out of the race against D’Amato. Earlier that year her husband was convicted of using fraudulent documents to secure a loan and sentenced to 150 hours of community service. The new Federal investigation resulted in an indictment in October 1986 for allegedly bribing Queens Borough President Donald Manes in a cable television contract case. Although he would eventually be acquitted on the charge, it was a black cloud over Ferraro’s career.
Even more personally painful was the arrest of her son for possession of cocaine. The young man was sentenced to four month in prison. Ferraro feared that her high profile had attracted undue attention from prosecutors on her family.
Ferraro lowered her public profile some but remained a popular speaker and party fundraiser. In 1988 she was named as co-chair of the Democratic Victory Fund for Michael Dukakis’s Presidential campaign.
In 1992 she entered a crowded multi-candidate field in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. She surged ahead of her rivals based on her reputation, hard driving campaigning and strong support among both women and ethnic voters. The election took a nasty tone when another leading feminist in the campaign, Elizabeth Holtzman unleashed a negative campaign based on claims of impropriety by Zaccaro. The move split Jewish from Italian voters, divided the women’s vote and allowed State Attorney General Robert Abrams to edge past Ferraro by 1% of the vote. Abrams at the head of a shattered New York party lost in November to D’Amato who polls indicate would have lost to Ferraro.
After her primary defeat Ferraro, threw her considerable energies into Bill Clinton’s campaign becoming close to both the Arkansas Governor and his wife Hillary.
In 1993 Clinton appointed her to the United States delegation to United Nations Commission on Human Rights. In less than a year she was elevated to Ambassador to the Commission. For the next three years she played a high profile role at international conferences and became the face of the Clinton administration’s Human Rights agenda. She attracted wide spread attention by calling out abuses in China despite the growing trade relationship of that country with the U.S.
After her stint as Ambassador, Ferraro signed on with CNN to be the left anchor of its political debate program Crossfire arguing with the Right’s Pat Buchanan. The job kept her in the public spotlight and she felt it set up yet another run for the Senate seat still held by D’Amato. But this time the formidable fund raiser could not get an early start for fear of charges of conflict of interest over the CNN job. When she quit the network she found another candidate with deep ties to Wall Street, Congressman Charles Schumer. Schumer ended up out-spending Ferraro by more than five times and handily won a three-way primary. Despite her defeat, she gladly endorsed Schumer the morning after the primary and actively worked for his election. This time with a united party Schumer was able to beat D’Amato in November.
The race was Ferraro’s last hurrah at an active politician. Soon after the election she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a form of bone cancer. Although her prognosis was bleak, she did not publicly acknowledge her illness. Fortunately she responded to new treatments including a bone marrow transplant and new drugs. In the end she far exceeded her life expectancy with this form of cancer.
Ferraro kept busy with a variety of public service projects, business ventures, and some practice as a lawyer/lobbyist. She worked part time as an occasional commentator on the fledgling Fox News Channel and she penned a memoir about the struggle of her immigrant mother and grandmother.
She was called back to the political fray by the candidacy of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Presidential nomination. She was an ardent supporter and sometime informal advisor to the campaign. She also used her pulpit as a Fox New commentator to support her friend and attack her main rival Barack Obama who she felt was unfairly allowing Clinton to be attacked by his surrogates. Things got nasty when she said, “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” The statement drew howls of protest and charges that Ferraro was racist. She attempted to explain her statement, but defiantly refused to apologize. She kept up a barrage of criticism of Obama for the rest of the primary campaign season and was among Clinton’s ardent supporters who wanted her to go all the way to the Convention on the off chance that she could convince enough Super Delegates to snatch the nomination. After Clinton conceded, she even publicly stated that she might not vote for Obama in November. She also had kind words for Sarah Palin, the first Republican nominee for Vice President.
Eventually her friend Joe Biden and Clinton herself convinced Ferraro to give at least a tepid public endorsement of Obama in the General Election. Despite all of the storm-und-drang she and other die hard Clintonistas really had no choice but to support the Democratic nominee.
All during this drams, Ferraro continued her treatment for cancer. The disease was never in remission, only being managed by adjusting drug doses. After the election she was in and out of hospitals receiving more and more dire treatments. She rallied enough to rejoin Fox News with Sarah Palin to comment on the 2010 mid-term elections.
The following March she was hospitalized in Boston with bone fractures and then came down with pneumonia. She died there on March 26, 2011 surrounded by her husband and children.
Her funeral mass was held in New York’s Church of St. Vincent Ferrer despite rumors that Church authorities might deny her because of her continued support of abortion rights. Both Clintons and Walter Mondale spoke at the funeral. She was buried in consecrated ground within her old Queens Congressional District. Tributes from political friends and foes poured in for a tough and formidable pioneer.